It was a very risk averse league on the closer side. I might have grabbed 3 cheaper closers in this league and tried to wins saves for less than Papelbon's price tag. Then, again, it's tough to shift on the fly if closers aren't coming up early and you are already spending on your pitching staff and offense.Would this work? Could you buy three cheap closers in a 5x5 league and try to win saves?
I decided to take a look back at the Tout Wars expert league for the last two years, in both the American and the National League, to see if such a strategy might work.
2007 Tout Wars A.L. Closers, < $14 Bid: Joe Borowski $13 (45 saves), Eric Gagne $12 (16), Todd Jones $12 (38), Octavio Dotel $10 (11). Best Outcome: 99 saves. Worst Outcome: 55 saves.
So far, Eugene's theory looks dead on. You'd spend $37 for Borowski, Gagne and Jones, but you'd also wind up with enough saves that you could probably flip a closer pretty early on and still finish near the top of the category, even if you guessed wrong and kept Gagne. If you did buy both Dotel and Gagne and lost both to the N.L., you'd still would have picked up only three less saves from the pair than Mariano Rivera ($25) got, and you would have saved $3.
I omitted Al Reyes at $1 because it wasn't clear who the closer was in Tampa Bay when Tout Wars convened. Chad Orvella ($3) and Seth McClung ($2) both went for more money.
2007 Tout Wars N.L. Closers, < $14 Bid: Jason Isringhausen $12 (32), Ryan Dempster $11 (28), David Weathers $5 (33), Taylor Tankersley $5 (1). Best Outcome: 93 saves. Worst Outcome: 61 saves.
In the N.L., this strategy works, too, and it's even cheaper. Five bucks for David Weathers? Yeah, I know owning David Weathers isn't a thrill ride a minute, but $5??? You could have had any of these three guys in Tout Wars for a combined $28 and even if you got stuck with Tankersley instead of Weathers, you still would have had a Top 4 finish in saves.
2006 Tout Wars A.L. Closers, < $14 Bid: Bobby Jenks $13 (41), Chad Orvella $11 (0), Bob Wickman $11 (15). Outcome: 56 saves.
At $13, Jenks finished with the second highest save total in the American League in 2006. Still, you would have been better off here using your reserve list or FAAB budget to try and grab saves. Orvella was $11 that could have been spent better elsewhere, and Wickman's 15 saves certainly helped, but if you spent $35 for this group, you might have been better off with an established closer who would have provided you with better than the 4.01 ERA and 1.39 WHIP that Jenks put up.
2006 Tout Wars N.L. Closers, <$14 Bid: Joe Borowski $12 (36), Chris Reitsma $12 (8), David Weathers $6 (12). Outcome: 56 saves.
Once again, you're one for three here on your success rate. Borowski came through nicely, but both Reitsma and Weathers didn't pan out. Fifty-six saves is a nice total, but the $18 you spent on Reitsma and Weathers sure could have come in handy elsewhere.
So does this strategy work?
On the whole, I have to say that Eugene has opened my eyes somewhat. I've always been a fan of either dumping the category altogether or buying one expensive closer early and then fishing for $1 bargain bin relievers later. But this bidding strategy looks like it could net you plenty of saves with about $30 worth of bids.
I'd guess that the strategy would work a little better in the N.L. With 13 teams vying for 16 closers, three teams are going to wind up with two closers, and the variability in the second-tier of stoppers makes it more likely that one or more teams will simply chuck saves overboard. In the A.L., it appears that you're going to have to pay at least $10 for one of your three closers, and maybe pay $12-13 for each depending on your league.
It seems to me that the best thing to do would be to watch your league for signs of stopper slippage. If you're considering dumping saves, try to leave a little money floating around in the middle rounds for a $5-10 closer. If you can nab one or even two, you might not win the category, but you might pick up more points than a team that spent $50 for his closers. Picking up three closers might be hard to do, but if you can do it for under $30, I say you have to go for it.
6 comments:
This is a brilliant blog. Thanks for offering these thoughts.
Seems to me that you making a big assumption by not also looking at the ERA and WHIP impact of these second-tier closers. If you win one category cheaply, but tank two more in the process, it isn't such a successful strategy, is it?
Mike has the formulas handy to address the WHIP/ERA impact, but I generally find that if you are working with 1000-1100 innings, it takes some brutal work by those closers to offset your league average or better ERAs and WHIPs.
Mike can tell you if my gut feeling is on or not.
You caught me!
I agree, a more complete analysis would also look at ERA/WHIP for these second tier closers. I alluded to that with Bobby Jenks, but was a little lazy and didn't write a complete piece. Maybe I'll get to that in a future post.
By the way, welcome aboard!
Very good analysis. In the two AL 5x5 leagues I'm in there are varying closer strategies, but nobody's every tried 3 cheap closers. I think the price difference is the reason.
The general practice in both is one good closer and one cheap closer, one good closer and a couple middle relievers who might steal some saves, or no closer at all. But, because both drafts are very close to the start of the season (one the weekend before opening day, one the Saturday after) the closers are a little more known. This leads to a little more chasing the known closers at the end of the draft- I can't imagine a closer going for under $10 if he's already named so $13-14 seems to be the floor in both of my leagues with the better ones going up from there. It would be a lot harder in these leagues to get 3 closers for less than $40-45, so it's not really an option. But, given the prices in these "expert" leagues I thought it might be.
Eugene - you make a very nice point about the timing of auctions and these prices. Since there always seems to be a battle for closer jobs in February, any auction held first week of March or earlier is a good time for this gambit. It strikes me that, as the jobs begin to clear up, the prices go up, and, as you said, the price becomes prohibitive.
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