{"id":266,"date":"2012-04-12T07:51:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=266"},"modified":"2012-04-12T07:51:15","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:51:15","slug":"closers-blow-first-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"Closers Blow First Week"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Moonshiners relief pitcher Sergio Santos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well into the second full day of the regular season, it appeared the early narrative of the 2012 season would be more of the same from 2011:\u00a0 dominating pitching performances with runs being at a premium.\u00a0 But by the time the first full week was in the books, a different pitching-themed story emerged.\u00a0 Across the league, closers were blowing games like their jobs didn’t depend on it.\u00a0 No one was immune.\u00a0 Even the immortal Mariano Rivera blew his first save opportunity of the season.\u00a0 But for the most part, these games were being blown by closers who had a less than firm grip on the ninth inning job as it was.\u00a0 If this trend continues, expect bullpen changes to be made very soon.<\/p>\n

Here are some numbers to illustrate the early struggles of relief pitchers.\u00a0 Since we don’t keep track of blown saves in this league, I’m going to use ERA instead.\u00a0 Last season, the cumulative league ERA was 3.39 for the full year.\u00a0 That’s a very low number which goes to show just how good the pitching was in 2011.\u00a0 But relief pitchers were even better.\u00a0 The league ERA of all relief pitchers was 3.02.\u00a0 In the first week of 2012, the total league ERA is up significantly, 45 points, to 3.84 and the bullpen ERA has increased even more, 53 points, to 3.55.\u00a0 So relief pitchers are largely responsible for this early inflation.\u00a0 I don’t have the stats to prove it, but usually the pitchers are ahead of the hitters this time of year.\u00a0 So it’s possible we could see these numbers go up even more.<\/p>\n

Since the only bullpen job that carries significant weight in a fantasy league is that of closer, it will be very interesting to see if some changes are on the way.\u00a0 Most of the closers who have struggled were not on solid ground to begin with.\u00a0 Alfredo Aceves was named the Red Sox closer the day before the opener, following the injury to Andrew Bailey.\u00a0 He proceeded to blow his first two appearances (one save opp, one tied game) and had an infinity ERA\/WHIP before picking up a save on Monday.\u00a0 The other prime candidate, Mark Melancon, hasn’t been much better.\u00a0 If neither of these two prove capable, will they move Daniel Bard back to the pen?\u00a0 Sergio Santos also blew his first two save opportunities.\u00a0 Although he was a bit more of an established closer than Aceves, he has to be looking over his shoulder with veteran closer Francisco Cordero in the Blue Jays bullpen as well.\u00a0 Sticking in the AL East, Tampa Bay initially leaned on Joel Peralta to fill in for the injured Kyle Farnsworth, but he has already been replaced by Fernando Rodney.<\/p>\n

There is another category of closers who are probably less likely to lose their job after a couple bad outings, but aren’t great bets to finish the year in that role either.\u00a0 These are guys who are almost universally acknowledged to not be the best relief pitcher in their respective bullpens:\u00a0 guys like Chris Perez, Joe Nathan and Jonathan Broxton.\u00a0 Perez could be replaced by Vinnie Pestano at any moment, and that time may be sooner than later if he blows another three run lead like he did on Opening Day.\u00a0 The Rangers bullpen is full of guys with dominating stuff, but at this stage of his career, Nathan is not one of those guys.\u00a0 For a team that fancies itself as one of the World Series favorites, it remains to be seen if they will to continue to use their fourth or fifth best reliever as the closer.\u00a0 Broxton was the obvious candidate to close for the Royals when they lost Joakim Soria to Tommy John surgery, since Broxton has closed before.\u00a0 But on a young, up-and-coming team, it might make more sense to see if someone like Greg Holland or Aaron Crow can do the job.\u00a0 Also, if Broxton does pitch well, he would be an ideal candidate to get traded to a contender later this summer.<\/p>\n

Of course, an argument could be made that you don’t necessarily want to have your best relief pitcher as the closer.\u00a0 Depending on how a bullpen is managed, it is quite possible that a set-up guy will pitch in a lot more pressure innings than a closer ever will.\u00a0 The role of protecting a one run lead in the 8th is probably more important than trying to save a three run game in the 9th.\u00a0 I highly recommend checking out this recent article by Jonah Keri<\/a> where he argues that saves should be replaced by a more meaningful stat for relief pitchers.\u00a0 I think he’s right, but I also think most MLB managers will continue to go with their pre-appointed closer whenever there is a three run game in the 9th inning.\u00a0 So figuring out who that guy will be is still a crucial part of fantasy baseball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well into the second full day of the regular season, it appeared the early narrative of the 2012 season would be more of the same from 2011:\u00a0 dominating pitching performances with runs being at a premium.\u00a0 But by the time the first full week was in the books, a different pitching-themed story emerged.\u00a0 Across the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}