The Bullpen Tracker: AL
A weekly article looking for saves and holds across the league
The Bullpen Tracker is a weekly article that checks out one league’s worth of back-end bullpen guys. We’re looking for potential changes to a team’s closer, and giving you recommendations on the best adds for holds leagues along the way.
NEW RESOURCE ALERT
Paid subs have access to this big Google sheet that has a ton of different tabs:
I added a SaveOpps tab to it yesterday. The goal was to find pitchers entering the game in save opportunities, and to see how they’ve performed in those opportunities.
There are problems here. Because it’s tricky to nail down exactly the right criteria for when we want to call it a true save opportunity and when we don’t. A pitcher can come into the game with one out in the eighth holding onto a two-run lead. And that’s a save opportunity, technically because if he were to finish the game, it’s a save. But most often, that guy is just in there for two outs to get to the guy who will truly say to get the save.
You also have those cases where the game goes to extra innings and the team’s main relievers have already been used. So someone new might grab a save, but that shouldn’t be a situation we care about for fantasy, because he clearly wasn’t the first option in that case.
But I’ve done my best, and I think it will be helpful.
The best way to use it, I think, would be to filter to a team. You can also filter to “Last Two Weeks” if you just want the recent usage. Here’s the Orioles:
So we’ve identified seven save opportunities. Helsley has four of them, and he’s converted all four into saves with a 37%K %, a 16% BB%, a 2.25 ERA, and a 1.50 WHIP in those four appearances.
Nunez, Garcia, and Cano have also been used in technical save opportunities. But those were just cases of it being the eighth inning or extra innings.
So this resource alone won’t be the best, but it gives you a quick idea of who the teams are going to and how the performance has been when the pitcher has been most under the microscope.
Let’s get to the article now. Thanks once again to the great “Rob”, our weekly bullpen guy!
April 8 – April 21
Back with the American League edition of the Bullpen Tracker—highlighting closers and the relievers that matter most in SV+HLD formats.
As always, we’re focused on roles, trends, and leverage, not just box score noise.
Baltimore Orioles
Closer: Ryan Helsley
A little shaky to start, but nothing changes—he’s still firmly the guy.
Holds Targets: Rico Garcia, Grant Wolfram
Garcia has come out of nowhere with elite underlying numbers (K-BB + ground balls). He’s firmly on the radar now. Wolfram has the holds, but the underlying data is… rough.