Avoid closers at your own risk

Interesting article, thanks.  I feel like with everyone not paying for saves, it might be time to cut against the grain a little.  Strategies work best when they work alone, right?

I think it’s good advice to never draft with a strategy that involves having to make a trade. I’ll keep that in mind this year b/c I was stuck with two quality 2B I couldn’t quite get value for all season.

Thanks for taking my half-handed criticism in stride, Derek. As I say in the article I think your advice was solid, but there are always situations where even the best advice becomes no longer applicable and this type of situation with closers is one of them.

First line of The Book says “Everything about baseball (for that matter everything about anything) is about context.” Fantasy baseball is no exception.

Thanks for the positive responses John and Dave. Regarding both of your statements that people are perhaps undervaluing saves, let me clarify something:

Personally, I do not believe saves are undervalued in leagues today. If you can plan on being successful in the waiver wire, then I would, every time, opt try to get saves by drafting a few closers late and then having waiver pickups make up for any shortcomings. I am still against picking any of the elite closers in the early rounds they get drafted in since those picks can be more profitably used on hitting or starting pitching.

The point I am trying to make in this article is that you cannot become disillusioned into thinking you will be able to add a few of the emergency-pickup closers over the course of the season, when you are in fact going to be outmatched by your league-mates in the race to get free-agents.

If that is the case, then maybe instead of drafting a couple of closers in the very risky 200 ADP-area, you will make an effort to draft a more secure closer in the 150-175 range, which is still not making a large investment in closers but is a slightly larger one.