As you sneak away from your wife or your husband or your kids or your mom or your dad with a simple, "I'll be right there. Don't start without me," you sign-on to the PC and go to faketeams.com to see if Santa left you a wonderful fantasy baseball post to think about on this day of gifts and food and family.
Lo and behold! Santa has delivered!
Earlier, I listed the 2007 closers and their back-ups. (NL Closers and AL Closers.) Now you can read the pitchers who began 2006 as the closer and who finished 2006 as the closer.
Based on th year-end closers 6 of 14 AL closers changed jobs and 7 of 16 NL teams. In mixed leagues, this is more than enough turnover to ignore drafting more than a closer late in the draft. In AL- and NL-only leagues, there is enough turnover to ignore the closer completely, but you must be focused on scooping up the new closers ASAP. One the best ways to do that is to know which closers are on shaky grounds and watch who warms up late in the 8th/earlier in the 9th inning. Then pounce!
| Team | Opening | Then | Then | Ending |
| Yankees | Rivera | |||
| Red Sox | Foulke | Papelbon | ||
| Devil Rays | Micelli | Walker | Meadows | McClung |
| Orioles | Ray | |||
| Blue Jays | Ryan | |||
| Tigers | Jones | |||
| Twins | Nathan | |||
| White Sox | Jenks | |||
| Indians | Wickman | Carmona | Maestry | |
| Royals | Burgos | MacDougal | Nelson | |
| A's | Street | |||
| Angels | Rodriguez | |||
| Rangers | Cordero | Otsuka | ||
| Mariners | Guardado | Putz | ||
| Mets | Wagner | |||
| Phillies | Gordon | |||
| Marlins | Borowski | |||
| Braves | Reitsma | Ray | Wickman | |
| Nationals | Cordero | |||
| Cardinals | Isringhausen | Wainwright | ||
| Astros | Lidge | |||
| Brewers | Turnbow | Cordero | ||
| Reds | Weathers | Coffey | Guardado | Weathers |
| Pirates | Gonzalez | Torres | ||
| Cubs | Dempster | |||
| Padres | Hoffman | |||
| Dodgers | Gagne | Baez | Saito | |
| D'Backs | Valverde | Julio | Valverde | |
| Giants | Benitez | Worrell | Benitez | Stanton |
| Rockies | Fuentes | |||
X-mas tip: Have a pair of garden shears on hand to snip through all those ties that come on kids' toys nowadays. Trying to untwist them is a higher-order visual-spatial test that would baffle the members of MENSA!