Now with the football season over and the MLB offseason well underway, it’s time to start looking toward 2025. It being early in the offseason still and there being only about 12-15 locked-in “closers” at the moment, ranking relievers for SV+HLD’s leagues is a little bit easier than ranking strictly closers. The reliever position is the most volatile in the game and creates more turnover on a year-to-year basis than any other position. That and a fluid (and very deep) free agent/trade market will lead to these rankings still being very different come April as we are yet to know how roles will shake out in most bullpens and who we can trust for save and hold opportunities. For now, I’d stress that you look more at each tier rather than the actual number rankings as the deeper down the list you get, you’ll see a much wider variety of potential outcomes per player.
As far as draft strategy goes, I prefer to take one strong, foundational reliever early (someone “safe”) before taking fliers on high upside targets later on…but then again, is there even such a thing as a “safe” reliever anymore? I think in the past two seasons we’ve seen the closer role stabilize and provide steady value throughout the year more so than any season or seasons in recent memory (maybe since 2015?). We saw 21 relievers finish the season with 21 or more saves in 2024 which is down from the 23 we had in 2023, but still up from just 14 in 2022 and 18 in 2021. As far as holds go, we saw 23 relievers with 21 or more holds which was down from 27 back in 2023, but still up from 19 in 2022 and just 17 in 2021. What does it all mean? Probably nothing, but perhaps reliever reliability can continue to trend in the upward direction moving forward.
Notes
- Sean Reynolds is a name to keep an eye on, despite being in a very deep San Diego bullpen. We only saw 11 MLB innings from Reynolds last year but they were very impressive as he posted 42.9% strikeout and 34.2% CSW rates while carrying a 2.03 SIERA. Reynolds is a 6’8″ righty with a 97 MPH fastball and slider that finished with a 19.4% swinging-strike rate so you can see the appeal here. The biggest concern I have is that Reynolds has never really succeeded at the minor league level, even last year holding a 6.17 ERA and 1.69 WHIP at AAA with just a 13.5% strikeout-minus-walk rate over 54 innings pitched.
- Jorge López obviously had a tumultuous experience with the Mets last year but he was a completely different pitcher with the Cubs, finishing with 34.8% strikeout and 36.7% CSW rates plus a 2.47 xFIP over his final 22 innings of the season. He kind of fits into that Leclerc category where he’s still a free agent and a pitching-savvy team could get a bargain here.
Tier 8
- It would be awesome to see a full season of a healthy Brock Stewart who looked good again in 2024 (30% strikeout, 44.7% Z-O rates) despite only getting through 15.2 innings pitched.
- If there’s anyone to take a chance on in Colorado, it has to be Seth Halvorsen right? Halvorsen had really good numbers in just 12.1 IP last year (2.75 SIERA, 23.9% strikeout-minus-walk, and 5.42 PLV) and likely has the best repertoire to succeed in Coors.
- It will be interesting to see who winds up closing out games in Detroit, as this bullpen could really use someone with bat-missing ability. The good news for them is there remain plenty of talented free-agent relievers, and I’d ultimately expect their closer to come from that group.
- I think we can finally move on from Kyle Finnegan everywhere as despite the 66 saves over the past two seasons (3.90 SIERA, 13.4% strikeout-minus walk rate, 10.9% swinging-strike rate, 26.2% CSW, 104 Stuff+), he shouldn’t be closing out games this year.
