Top 40 Closers & Relief Pitchers - Rankings, Tiers and Projections

This tier is where the situations become a bit shady, and a bit more boring. There are many relievers from this group that I can see losing their jobs because: they are unproven, their age, injury or ineffectiveness or just their decline. Which is exactly why I created the fifth tier of save vultures and sleepers. There is only one reliever from this group that I can see keeping his job all season and that is Addison Reed. The rest of this group is very suspect and needs to be monitored during the entire season, spring included. Please stay tuned into most of these situations above because I’ll be the one to point you in the right direction.

4. Fourth Tier or Tier aka The Lindsay Lohan Tier

While this tier has some solid closers (Rodney, Henderson, Veras), and some potential breakouts (Jones, Brothers), the bigger theme here is the amount of busted, injury prone or overdone closers, hence the Lindsay Lohan tier.

Jim Henderson, Fernando Rodney, Tommy Hunter, Casey Janssen, Bobby Parnell, Nate Jones, Neftali Feliz, John Axford, Jose Veras, Huston Street, Rex Brothers

These group of pitchers are not bad they are just not established. There are some relievers in this tier that I like: Tommy Hunter, Neftali Feliz and Rex Brothers are the three main pitchers that I like from this list but no one here stands out and could easily be replaced.

5. Saves Vultures/Sleeper Tier aka The Miley Cyrus Tier

The name Miley Cyrus should say it all. Don't touch this tier with a 10 foot pole, at least not just yet.  These guys might be valuable, if a small miracle happens (sorta like Miley might be attractive with a small miracle), but for now they're not attractive in a 5x5 league:

Cody Allen, Joakim Soria, Daniel Webb, Danny Farquhar, Pedro Strop, Vic Black, Sergio Santos, Mark Melancon, Edward Mujica, Ryan Cook, Francisco Rodriguez, Carlos Marmol, Jason Motte, Brian Wilson, Josh Zeid, Joaquin Benoit, Fernando Salas

At some point during the season there will be a changing at guard, this happens every season and could happen more often than not this year. So if you are in a deep league or you may need saves during the season because you did not focus your draft on closers and why would you? I’m not saying to avoid drafting closers, I’m just stating that this year saves could be easily snagged off the waiver wire. Even if you’re not in this predicament and need trade bait, everyone will want to keep these names close and be ready to hit the add button before anyone does.

Rankings & Projections - Top 40 Relievers for 2014

Relievers 41 -100

Ryan Cook, Sergio Santos, Mark Melanconm Edward Mujica, J.J. Putz, Francisco Rodriguez, Heath Bell, Carlos Marmol, Phillippe Aumont, Kevin Siegrist, Sergio Casilla, Darren O'Day, Jason Motte, Luke Hochevar, Brian Wilson, Jarod Burton, Matt Lindstrom, Sean Doolittle, Bruce Rondon, LaTroy Hawkins, Brad Ziegler, David Carpenter, Sean Doolittle, Drew Storen, J.J. Hoover, Nick Vincent, Josh Zeid, Antonio Bastardo, Fernando Salas, Dane De La Rosa, Joe Smith, Preston Claiborne, Jake McGee, Michael Tonkin, Junichi Tazawa, Brandon Kintzler, Sean Marshall, A. J. Ramos, Tanner Scheppers, Kelvin Herrera, Al Alburquerque, Andrew Bailey, Carter Capps, Aaron Crow, Steve Delabar,  Josh Fields, Chia-Jen Lo, Luke Gregerson, Heath Hembree, Tom Wihelmsen, Bryan Morris, Carlos Torres, Chad Bettis, Chris Perez, Jordan Walden, Blake Parker, Bryan Shaw, Joel Hanrahan, Manny Parra, Ryan Madson.

The Fine Print...

Projections valid only at participating locations, which in this case means all locations. Not to be combined with other predictions or somehow cleverly duplicated. Limit one view per visit. Please present this voucher to the writer, but don’t be surprised when they keep it. Cash value 1/100th of one cent, which is pretty much nothing. This is the fine print, why are you still reading this? Really, this is getting silly, go drink. Love em’ or Hate em’, Ima do me and you do you. © 2014 Josh Bixler.