Quick, grab a coin from your pocket. Now hurl it in a river, and imagine it’s at someone in your office two cubicles away. Now mid-flight, make a wish. Get back to me in two-three days and let me know how it went. This luck and wish game is much like the closer game. We hope and pray that all is well, but at the end of the day, we only care about the accumulation. This late in the season its all about the job. Who is doing it and who isn’t, period. The stalwarts are on cruise control into the final stretch of the season and are mostly on more winning teams than the teams that have situations that aren’t the most ideal. Good bullpens usually equal good-to-moderately-good success in real life. Much is the same with fantasy closer investment and going into next year if you struggled for saves this year. Invest in teams that will have aspirations of playoff baseball. The investment in drafting a round or two earlier than usual should pay off in the long run of the ever treacherous 180 days of fantasy baseball. So with the season winding down, let’s see what is happening in the saves market around the game as we transition into fantasy football, basketball, hockey and SOCCER!
$12 Salads
You know that restaurant your girlfriend/wife/what-have-you likes to go to that charges, like, $12 for a salad? Every time you go there, you have a thoroughly solid meal. No complaints, except you just paid $12 for a salad when you could’ve went to McDonald’s and stuffed you and your woman for ten schmools and had $2 in quarters left over to make the hotel bed vibrate. These closers are $12 salads.
1. Kenley Jansen – (Pedro Baez, Josh Fields)
2. Wade Davis – (Justin Wilson, Koji Uehara)
3. Craig Kimbrel – (Addison Reed, Joe Kelly)
4. Cody Allen – (Joe Smith, Bryan Shaw)
5. Felipe Rivero – (Daniel Hudson, A.J Schugel)
6. Ken Giles – (Will Harris, Chris Devenski)
7. Roberto Osuna – (Dominic Leone, Danny Barnes)
8. Aroldis Chapman – (David Robertson, Dellin Betances)
9. Corey Knebel – (Jacob Barnes, Anthony Swarzak)
Donkeycorns
Imagine you’re following a donkey, who’s wearing a wool cap, through a desert for 1700 miles. Why are you following a donkey? Because he promises you something wonderful and you just need to trust him. Does the donkey talk? Yes. Yes, he does talk. So when you and the donkey in the wool cap arrive at his destination, he removes the wool cap to reveal a horn. The donkey is a unicorn and his gift to you for your trust is saves. These closers are Donkeycorns.
10. Alex Colome – (Steve Cishek, Tommy Hunter)
11. Brad Hand – (Kirby yates, Craig Stammen)
12. Edwin Diaz – (Nick Vincent, Marc Rzepczynski)
13. Sean Doolittle – (Ryan Madson, Brandon Kintzler)
14. Raisel Iglesias – (Michael Lorenzen, Kevin Shackelford)
15. Arodys Vizcaino – (Jose Ramirez, Sam Freeman)
16. Fernando Rodney – (Archie Bradley, David Hernandez)
17. Greg Holland – (Jake McGee, Pat Neshek)
18. Brad Brach – (Mychal Givens, Darren O’Day)
Employed
These guys are the men that make the save market go round. They punch in, punch out. Have the job, no real threat to speak of, and are basically just there to collect great benny’s so they can take care of their crippled brother. Who is only really crippled because he is scared of the sun.
19. Shane Greene – (Alex Wilson, Daniel Stumpf)
20. Sam Dyson – (Hunter Strickland, Cody Gearrin)
21. Blake Treinen – (Chris Hatcher, Ryan Dull)
22. Brad Ziegler – (Kyle Barraclough, Drew Steckenrider)
Brain Freezes
I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing apples, bananas and Carlos Marmol– Wait, he just gave up 12 earned runs and hit Castro in the head with a pick-off throw. Brain freeze! Make it stop! Use the following closers at your own risk.
23. A.J. Ramos – (Jeurys Familia, Jerry Blevins)
24. Juan Nicasio – (Seunh-Hwan Oh, Tyler Lyons)
25. Alex Claudio – (Matt Bush, Tony Barnette)
26. Matt Belisle – (Taylor Rogers, Trevor Hildenberger)
27. Blake Parker / Yusmeiro Petit / Cam Bedrosian
28. Mike Minor / Scott Alexander / Brandon Maurer
29. Juan Minaya – (Danny Farquhar, Gregory Infante)
30. Hector Neris – (Luis Garcia, Edubay Ramos)
