CCO Fantasy Baseball: Closer Tiers

I know you want the best players at every position, but I just don’t see the point in using early or even mid-round picks on closers. This is the least consistent position from year to year and the one that projections are the most wrong about. Of course I would rather have Craig Kimbrel or Trevor Rosenthal but not at the expense of filling any one of my starting lineup or rotation roster spots. I would rather have a better bench player than one closer over another. I am not saying I won’t grab a closer from time to time before the end of the draft, but I am quite content filling these roster spots at the end of the draft. I consider this to the same strategy to filling my kicker position in fantasy football, everyone has to have them, but that doesn’t mean I need to use a pick that has any value.

As far as the tiers, I still get that not everyone agrees with me, so I have still put together tiers and listed them by team. Where there is competition for the closer position or just a team that is likely to make changes with who is closing, I have listed more than one option, in the order that I would put them in.

Tiers

When looking at each position, I will divide the players into tiers. In theory, each tier should be filled with similar players. The ultimate goal would be to get the last player in each tier as that would mean you waited the perfect amount of time to draft that position and didn’t have to reach in the draft. Of course even within a tier we can have our favorites and preferences which are hard to ignore. Sometimes I have to force myself to take a player I don’t like or usually want on my team when they are the last player in a tier and they are clearly the best pick.

When doing your own tiers you should always ask yourself if you would be good with the next player, if not, that player goes into the next tier. Keep in mind that when deciding between players from different positions, if you set your tiers up correctly, you should not have any Super-Stars left to draft before going on to the All-Star tier, no more All-Star tier players before moving on to the Solid players, etc., etc. Within each tier names are listed in alphabetical order with their 2016 projected point totals from the CCO leagues on ESPN.

Previous Tiers

Super-Star

None

All-Star

Cleveland Indians – Cody Allen (410)
Kansas City Royals – Wade Davis (414)
Houston Astros – Ken Giles (411)
Los Angeles Dodgers – Kenley Jansen (447)
Boston Red Sox – Craig Kimbrel (420)
St. Louis Cardinals – Trevor Rosenthal (424)

I would love to have anyone of these guys on my team. The thing is I have had Cody Allen, Wade Davis, Ken Giles and Kenley Jansen on my teams in the past, when I added them before they were well known and cost a high draft pick and received great value by doing so. Not like now when I would have to use a pick in the first 100 picks or so. Please take these guys and let me keep adding better starting pitchers or position players.

Solid

Baltimore Orioles – Zach Britton (387)
Chicago Cubs – Hector Rondon (378)
Chicago White Sox – David Robertson (391)
New York Mets – Jeurys Familia (389)
New York Yankees – Aroldis Chapman–Andrew Miller–Dellin Betances (351)
Pittsburgh Pirates – Mark Melancon (399)

If you do want a top closer, I would suggest at least waiting until this tier as you still get a guy who could lead the closers in points, but at least you got to wait a little while before adding a closer.

OK

Colorado Rockies – Jake McGee (365)
Detroit Tigers – Francisco Rodriquez (364)
Los Angeles Angels – Huston Street (336)
Miami Marlins – A.J. Ramos–Carter Capps (373)
Seattle Mariners – Steve Cishek (315)
Tampa Bay Rays – Brad Boxberger (346)
Texas Rangers – Shawn Tolleson (358)
Toronto Blue Jays – Drew Storen–Roberto Osuna (325)
Washington Nationals – Jonathan Papelbon (352)

This is truly the group that I start to consider for my closer. In the league on CBS I play in and took Clayton Kershaw with the first pick of the draft, I ended up with A.J. Ramos and Shawn Tolleson from this group with my last two picks of the draft.

If You Wait

Arizona Diamondbacks – Brad Ziegler (312) Tyler Clippard (171)
Atlanta Braves – Jason Grilli (209) Arodys Vizcaino (230)
Cincinnati Reds – J.J. Hoover (214) Jumbo Diaz (233)
Milwaukee Brewers – Will Smith (264) Jeremy Jeffress (251)
Minnesota Twins – Glen Perkins (247) Kevin Jepsen (265)
Oakland A’s – Sean Doolittle (296) John Axford (273) Ryan Madson (169)
Philadelphia Phillies – David Hernandez (188) Luis Garcia (145)
San Diego Padres – Fernando Rodney (180) Kevin Quackenbush (218)
San Francisco Giants – Santiago Casilla (294) Sergio Romo (153) Hunter Strickland (176)

This group is where you can find some low cost closers. The key is teams picking one guy and going with him. Closer by committee is not a good thing for fantasy baseball but, sometimes some of the best closers start out as the set-up guy and then become the closer. The key is to keep an eye on these teams throughout the season and see if they make a change. The other part is these type of teams have fewer wins, but almost every win is a save opportunity.

Summary

I get the fantasy players that look at different positions that are weaker and want the best player at that position to have an “advantage” at that position. The trade-off is weakening your rotation or your lineup and I just can’t see doing that with a closer.

Next up is Starting Pitchers!

CCO Leagues

CCO fantasy baseball leagues are on ESPN and we will fill up to 20 teams in each league. This year we will have two different styles of leagues.

Weekly H2H with daily lineups, rules on pitching.
Weekly H2H with daily lineups, rules on pitching, auction draft and keepers.

If you are interested in playing in one of these leagues, please send your email information to Neil at this link and he will forward it to me. Also include which league you are interested in playing. We have three leagues right now. The style we used the last two years is option one and we have two different leagues that are full but I will take more names for a waiting list or even to create another league. Option 2 is the auction/keeper league and it is almost full.