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Uncle Leo analyzes Seranthony Dominguez for fantasy baseball saves, as the potential new closer for the Philadelphia Phillies after nailing down his first save chance today.
BALLER MOVE: Add in Deeper Saves Leagues
OWNED IN: 4% of leagues
ANALYSIS: The Phillies turned to rookie flamethrower Seranthony Dominguez to nail down the save today against the Cardinals, and he delivered. Dominguez was initially brought in the eighth inning, but came back out for the ninth again. He finished with two scoreless innings, zero hits or walks, two strikeouts, and the save. Those speculating for saves should add him immediately and see how this situation plays out - the talent is real here. Let's take a look.
Dominguez has been dominant since being promoted to the big leagues on May 7th of this year. Since that time, he's thrown 6 2/3 innings pitched - zero runs, zero hits, zero walks and seven strikeouts. It's clearly a small sample size, but that's still a 0.00 ERA and 0.00 WHIP. Quite a good way to make a first impression.
Dominguez currently has an average pitch speed of 97.63 MPH on his four-seam fastball, so the arm is very real. Prior to getting called up, Dominguez was dominating in the minors as well. In 16 2/3 innings pitched between Double-A and Triple-A, he racked up an impressive 1.62 ERA, 0.66 WHIP and 21:3 K:BB ratio. How's this for a fun fact:
Seranthony Dominguez is the only reliever in the majors since 1908 to begin his career with 5 straight appearances allowing no runs, hits or walks and recording at least two outs, per @baseball_ref.
— Corey Seidman (@CSeidmanNBCS) May 18, 2018
(It's actually six straight appearances after today).
It should be noted that both Hector Neris and Edubray Ramos have been acting as the team's closers thus far, but neither pitched in today's game. In fact, Neris has only thrown 1/3 of an inning since May 12th. Ramos pitched in two of the last three games, but only for a total of 27 pitches. Based on usage it seems that Neris is the least trusted option right now, and the momentum is moving towards Dominguez.
This is certainly a volatile situation, and there's risk involved with any of the above-mentioned relievers, but if you're speculating for saves then you should add Dominguez and see how this shakes out. If he can maintain this level of performance and ratios, while continuing to rack up saves on a much-improved Phillies team, then you may have just stumbled onto fantasy gold.
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