Collette Calls: The Changing Saves Market

Aaron Gleeman from The Athletic posted an article the other day looking into how his beloved Twins would utilize the back end of their rebuilt bullpen using words from Rocco Baldelli. He opened the piece with a Baldelli quote that is a gutpunch to fantasy owners:

"We haven't named a closer at any point in the last couple years and we're not going to do that going forward."

Baldelli has been the manager for two seasons in Minnesota, and the team has in fact had 10 pitchers accumulate at least one save the last two seasons:

Taylor Rogers has been the primary beneficiary of the saves garnering 58 percent of the saves in the Baldelli era, and the departure of Blake Parker, Sergio Romo and Trevor May this offseason removed all over holdovers who had more than a single save in that time. The Twins then replaced those names with Alex Colome and his 138 career saves along with Hansel Robles and his 27 career saves. Each pitcher has held the primary closer role for a club the last two seasons, and both righties now give Baldelli more options should he choose to leverage the lefty Rogers in the eighth inning if the situation dictactes it. 

Welcome to the new norm.

The last five seasons, we have seen six clubs use 10 or more pitchers to cover saves in a season:

• 2020 Tampa Bay: 12
• 2019 Atlanta: 11
• 2019 Tampa Bay: 11
• 2017 Washington: 11
• 2019 Arizona: 10
• 2018 Chicago White Sox: 10

We can take it a bit further and find 28 clubs who utilized eight or more pitchers to cover saves in the same span and 87 who had five or more pitchers earn saves throughout a season. Since 2015, the only pitcher who earned 100 percent of his team's saves in a season was Kenley Jansen in 2016. 

This is not just an isolated influence by a handful of managers given we have seen the frequency of relievers earning 20 or more saves decline by 31 percent in the last decade while the number of relievers earning 30 or more saves has declined by 48 percent in just the last five full seasons:

If we took the pace 2020 closers were on and extrapolated that to the full season, the following pitchers would have earned at least 30 saves:

• Brad Hand: 42
• Liam Hendriks: 37
• Josh Hader: 34
• Alex Colome: 31
• Brandon Kintzler: 31
• Ryan Pressly: 31

Those six would have been just half the total of pitchers who saved 30 or more games in 2019, and the final two on that list were not even the projected closers for Miami or Houston on Opening Day. 

If we look at the individual managers, we see a broad spectrum of tendencies both from new managers as well as rather established ones:

It is not a shock to see Cash atop the list, but even some of the older managers are dispersed all around the list. The table above can at least help you figure where you can speculate for saves when throwing late-round darts given some managers keep their options open more than others. This matters because as the amount of primary closers decreases, we are seeing an increased amount of saves being left off active rosters — and it has become prevalent in the high-profile analyst leagues of LABR and Tout Wars.

The definition of rostered for the table above is actively rostered saves, so where once we saw approximately 20 percent of saves not take place on an active roster, that figure has increased significantly the last two seasons in particular. Even if we eliminate the 2020 craziness, the two mixed league auctions of LABR and Tout Wars have seen a noticeable chunk of saves "wasted." When I adjusted the pool to the AL or NL-only formats in LABR and Tout Wars, the percentage has declined from the low 90s to the low 80s in recent years. There is not as much waste in single-league formats simply due to the lack of depth in the talent pool, but nearly one of every five saves the last two seasons in NL and AL-only Analyst leagues happened off an active roster. 

Todd Zola's recent piece outlining how Tout Wars is now going to experiment with Solds as a category in one league as Tout Wars continues to lead the industry in experimenting with fantasy baseball gospel. I would like to say we coordinated our pieces here; we did not yet they complement one another nicely even if I am only focused on the changing market of saves distribution in baseball. It might be too late to change your league rules for 2021, but if these trends continue this season, your league should have a serious discussion about adjusting your scoring categories so that fantasy baseball can continue to resemble actual baseball. While you're at it, look into expanding your rostering rules because the 23-man roster is long overdue for an overhaul.