RADIO
Let's go digging for some relievers who don't have the ninth inning to themselves, but still have various degrees of intrigue to them heading into 2016.
Carter Capps is wide awake at this point, no sleep to his stock. Will Smith and Jeremy Jeffress have been named as the candidates to get the closing opportunities for Milwaukee (more on that team in a bit). There are still plenty of other relievers that hold value and do have a decent shot at closing somewhere in 2016. Here are five of them.
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Bargain Bin Relievers
A familiar name to get us going, but the reasons that you may have loved Romo in years past are the same reasons you should love him moving forward. That one bad stretch of giving up a ton of homers pushed Santiago Casilla ahead of him in 2014, and Casilla has done well enough to hold onto the job since. Romo is better than Casilla though, and quite frankly Hunter Strickland is better than Casilla too.
Romo’s rates not only stabilized in 2015, but they improved to levels we haven’t seen since his amazing 2011. His nice 2.98 ERA actually has bad luck baked into it (.331 BABIP and a 72.7% strand rate, he hasn’t been that unlucky since 2009), as his 1.91 FIP, 2.42 xFIP, and 2.17 SIERA point to an even better year. He threw his first pitch for a strike 70.4% of the time and posted a very strong 16.7% swinging strike rate on the heels of that devastating slider that he threw 59.2% of the time. In 2012 that slider earned an 11.5 pitch value, in 2013 that was 11.7, 2014 it dropped to 3.6, and last year it came back up to 11.7. Buy into the talent.
Jones is entrenched in the setup role for the White Sox despite having barely pitched in the past two years. Jones shouldn’t cost you a thing on draft day since he’s been MIA for a while, and if he stays healthy the returns could be fantastic. He struck out 37.5% of batters faced in 19 IP last year. That pique your attention?
He throws a fiery 97-98 MPH fastball about half the time which he pairs with a beautiful 89 MPH slider. It’s hard to dig too much into 19 innings from last year, but in relievers with at least 10 innings under their belt in 2015, that 37.5 K% is good for seventh in the league. I’m a sucker for that.
He probably can’t hold that crazy rate, but in 2013 he still posted a 28.3 K% with peripherals in the twos. Last year his SIERA was 2.03. He’s got talent. If Robertson gets hurt or hits a wall, Jones is the heir apparent to the ninth inning. Don’t forget about him.
Knebel worked his fastball and curveball in very well together in his first real year in the majors (he logged 8.2 innings in 2014) as he pitched 50.1 innings out of the bullpen with 58 Ks, a 3.22 ERA, and 1.21 WHIP.
He was snake-bitten by an ugly 1.43 HR/9 which points to his FIP being 4.03, but the regression police want to see that normalize with an xFIP of 3.16 and his SIERA was a stellar 2.85. Now a guy who throws his 94 MPH fastball 68.4% of the time can struggle at times with homers, but that power curve helps the cause and he should improve on this metric in 2016.
As we’ve seen, Knebel not only has strike out stuff, but has already made it work for him at the major league level as he struck out over a batter per inning last year. He probably won’t get a crack at the ninth this year, as Milwaukee should want the aforementioned Will Smith and Jeremy Jeffress to get the value out of the saves to see if they can get anything for them (or just downplay Knebel’s arbitration power).
This guy earns that name, standing 6’4” and weighing in at 315 pounds. Diaz is going to be 32 this year, and has kicked around in the minors since 2006 until he came up for the Reds in 2014. He has strikeout stuff thanks to a lively 97 MPH fastball. He also works in a slider and splitter, but threw that fastball 72.7% of the time last year.
So yes, Diaz struck out 70 batters last year in 60.1 IP, but this did come along with a 4.18 ERA that will drive most owners away when you combine that with the fact that he pitches on the Reds. His peripherals speak to a better pitcher though, as he had a 3.80 FIP, 3.20 xFIP, and 2.84 SIERA (eerily similar to Corey Knebel’s numbers). He grew last year by upping his strikeouts, swinging strike rate, first-strike rate, lowering the walk rate, upping the ground ball and soft contact rate, yet the HR/9 pumped up from 0.78 to 1.34. All of this is reflected in those peripherals.
The issues with home runs do present a hurdle, as he does pitch in Great American Ballpark and relies on a fastball, but if he can keep the ball low in the zone and take a step forward against lefties (he walks them twice as much and strikes them out at roughly half the number he does righties) then he stands to make quite the jump. Even if he doesn’t make any progression with these things, he is still better than J.J. Hoover whose peripherals peg him as a 4.50 ERA pitcher with much poorer control (4.34 BB/9 last year).
Smith was traded from the Mariners, where he was in the mix for saves last year, to the Red Sox, where he is behind Craig Kimbrel and probably Koji Uehara. If you just want relievers for the sake of saves, Smith might not be someone to watch all that closely. If you want a guy who can deliver great stats while still sniffing at the ninth inning though, well let’s chat a little.
Last year, Smith had the fifth best FIP and xFIP out of all qualified relief pitchers, nestled nicely between names like Aroldis Chapman, Zach Britton, Ken Giles, and Kenley Jansen. So, yeah. He also struck out 92 in 70 innings last year, so it isn’t like he rides out grounders and can’t provide a ton of Ks. He limits walks enough to not get into serious trouble with them, and just generally dominates with a 93 MPH fastball and 85 MPH slider (while also sparingly mixing in a changeup). If you need cheap ratio help and like tallying up Ks without paying for a guy like Betances, Smith is a solid option.
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