Collette Calls: Who Needs Experience?

Fantasy managers are always on the hunt for saves throughout the season. It is one of the original four scoring categories for pitchers and fantasy managers are forced into valuing closers more than some actual major league baseball teams do in order to stay competitive within the category. There are some fantasy managers who will aggressively take two top tier closers in the first five rounds, while there are some who wait and speculate on relievers late in drafts while prioritizing excellent starting pitching and offense. That type of approach requires hitting several late darts, but this appears to be a season where employing such a strategy is working out well. 

As play begins on August 18th, the top five closers by total saves are Bryan Baker, Cade Smith, Riley O'Brien, Mason Miller and Louis Varland. That quintet of relievers has amassed 153 saves on the season yet came into 2026 with a combined 44 saves. A further look down the list finds both Jacob Latz and Yoendrys Gomez, who was designated for assignment once this season, on the leaderboard despite the lack of experience in the role:

Neither Baker nor Gomez were taken in any of the 240 RotoWire Online Championships this past draft season, while Baker went in just six of the 60 Main Event drafts as some of the other options in the Tampa Bay pen started to fade away in mid to late March. Furthermore, Varland went in exactly one of the 60 and was taken as someone's 30th-round selection. Mike Gianella from BaseballProspectus had this observation on Bluesky:

I present all this to say that there are immediate and future lessons to be applied here. Anyone playing fantasy baseball for long enough knows just how powerful recency bias can be in making lineup moves or roster acquisitions in season. We can apply this current inexperience in a few situations right now that are playing out in some unsettled bullpens. 

For example, Baltimore has Andrew Kittredge and his gray hairs in the bullpen, who has 27 career saves. Kittredge has been in the league since 2017 and has always filled in for saves here and there in his time with Tampa Bay, St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore while never being the primary option. Baltimore has gone to him for saves twice in the last week, and he's gone one for two in those efforts thanks to some unfortunate batted ball luck costing him a save on Saturday evening. Meanwhile, Cam Sanders has all of 22.1 innings of major-league experience between espresso shots with Pittsburgh and Baltimore but has now earned consecutive saves in the first two games of the series against Tampa Bay. Managers in deeper leagues can look to either option for saves the rest of the way as Baltimore continues to remain in the hunt for the final wild-card spot with improving pitching and hitting in recent weeks.

The New York Mets have likely lost Devin Williams for the season and had no closer experience in their pen, yet they may have found a way to extract some value out of Kodai Senga in that role, who has picked up his first three career saves this week. Senga is throwing harder out of the pen than he did in the rotation since he only has to worry about getting through the one inning and could help deliver a non-trivial amount of saves down the stretch for managers looking for help in what is typically a very compact scoring category in the middle this time of year. 

The Angels have something interesting going on in that they are clearly trying to give Ben Joyce another push as a closer while also understanding he is not quite ready to pitch in consecutive games. Samy Natera Jr. has picked up two saves in the last two weeks to fill in when Joyce cannot take the ball. The Angels are still not winning too many games, but Natera is making the most of his opportunitiies and could make a difference in your deeper leagues. In AL Tout Wars, the top four teams in saves are separated by just four saves while the next tier is separated by just three, so there is room for significant movement by one team or another in that league and likely in other mono leagues around the fantasyverse.

I am curious to see how this plays out as 2027 draft season begins here in short order since recency bias is so prevalent in this space. After all, many fantasy managers are going to be coming off zero running back strategies from fantasy football and might be doubly emboldened after seeing one-third of the likely final top leaderboard for saves coming from the clearance section of the free agent bin. Three of the top five closers in standard 12-team mixed leagues were taken 360th or later, or not at all:

That data point will come into play this winter as fantasy managers look to identify the 2027 versions of Latz, Varland and Baker so they don't have to pay a serious acquisition cost for the certainty of a closer as the pool of such types continues to shrink by season.