Closer Rankings: Stop getting hurt, guys

I'll start, as is often my wont, with a screenshot that will give me the opportunity to complain.

Stop getting hurt!

It's a saves+holds league (as all leagues should be — trust me, it's much better), which explains why Casey Janssen is floating around in there. Otherwise, those are all legitimate closers, legitimately on the DL. All four other names — Joe Nathan, Sean Doolittle, Kenley Jansen, Greg Holland — are legitimate closers.

On top of those guys, Jake McGee was a likely closer entering the season, and has been hurt. He might get the role back when he's healthy, or Brad Boxberger might hold onto it, but either way, he counts for this list. Jenrry Mejia was supposed to be the Mets' closer for at least a little while, and he's hurt (yes, and suspended) now as well.

It's often bandied about that every year, half of all starting pitchers will wind up on the disabled list. It's much more difficult to track such things among closers, as some players lose their jobs when they get hurt, and some guys aren't "closers" so much as "least bad relievers on the roster," and guys flame out fast at the position, and a whole host of other reasons. So the numbers I'm about to run aren't decisive, but they're interesting.

Exactly 50 pitches have saved at least 30 games in a season in at least one of the last five years. I'll take those 50 guys as my baseline for this, because even if they have lost their job since, at the least those 50 guys will be seen as borderline "proven closers" when healthy, so their injuries still matter.

So, 50 closers. According to baseballprospectus.com, those 50 guys accounted for 83 DL stints sometime 2010-14. More or less, that works out to one-third of all closers hitting the DL each season. This year, it's happening early. Maybe we have an outlier and we'll lose three-quarters of all closers at some point. More likely, the numbers will level off.

In the league I mentioned above, I still have Brad Boxberger, Adam Ottavino, Joel Peralta (active closers) and Sergio Romo (holds-getter) on my active roster. It is, as I said, a saves+holds league, so useful relievers are easier to come across. So let's look to another league, a 12-team mixed league with only saves as a category. In that league, I came into Sunday with no saves on the season. My three rostered relievers are Doolittle (hurt), McGee (hurt) and Joaquin Benoit (lost his job on opening day). Benoit got the save Sunday, but overall, I'm in bad shape. Last place in roto scoring.

I missed out on Ottavino and the like when they got their respective jobs. Theoretically, I could spend big, offer up the guy in first place in saves a big package for Boxberger or Trevor Rosenthal or something. I'm not doing that, though.

If you assume Doolittle and McGee get their jobs back when healthy (honestly, it's not a sure thing, and that could worry me), I'll get saves. It won't be my strong category (my starting pitching is crazy strong), but I'll get some closers and I'll be competitive.

It's April 20, and this holds true across all categories. But with so many closers hurt right now, it's the obvious place to make the point: Guys are going to get hurt. This is a 25-ish-week season, and we've gone through two. Any dramatic changes now are ill-advised. If you're bored, play FanDuel or something. Don't change dramatically because you're waiting on Kenley Jansen to get healthy.

That's also why I give two lists of rankings here — the Right-Now and the Rest-Of-Season rankings. For rankings right now, I wouldn't include Jansen at all, but of course he's relevant in fantasy. For the rest of the season, I'd barely touch Wade Davis, but he's one of the elites as long as Holland is on the shelf. So there's a pair of rankings here. And here they come:

Right-Now Rankings

Rest-Of-Season Rankings