Fantasy Baseball -- Taking a Look at the Value of Closers; Who is the Most Valuable

Fantasy baseball can be a difficult game when it comes to deciding what to do with your closers. Most leagues have it so that you need to have a couple of them to compete, and there are times where you have between 12 and 14 teams within a single league. When there are that many teams looking at the same group of closers, it becomes very important that you scout out exactly which ones are going to be the most valuable to your team. In addition to that, you want to know a lot about each one of them, because if you find yourself trying to draft one after a bunch of the big names are off the board, you want to have that information handy at a moments notice.

When drafting a closer, you want to look at a few intangibles that could speak volumes about how much they are worth. When it comes to closing games, a huge indicator is going to be past performance, and the stats for the last year years will help you decide where they rank. Being on a team that will win a lot of games also plays into the equation, because when a team has the lead a lot, it means there will be more opportunities to pick up a save. For instance, having the closer for the Yankees will tend to be more valuable than having a closer for the Royals, no matter who the pitcher might be. The most valuable stat for a closer is going to be the saves, but some of the fireball pitchers can bring you a lot of strike-outs as well, which will help the bottom line for teams in 5x5 leagues. The thing to not worry too much about when it comes to closers is the ERA and WHIP. Sure it is nice to have the best closers, who have the lowest ERA's and rarely give up any hits or runs, but those are far between. The thing to keep in mind is that the closers aren't pitching very many innings, so even if they have an ERA of 4.50 it isn't going to hurt your team ERA or WHIP by very much at all over the course of a season.

The Sure Bets at Closer:

Picking up one of these guys is a sure bet at 40 saves and for most close to or exceeding the 100 strike-out mark with impressive ERA's and WHIP. They will also be the cream of the crop each year. If you somehow end up with two of them, you are going to be golden.