Closer Rankings: The meaning of rest days

The week ahead is an interesting one, as far as schedules go. For whatever reason — and I'm not sure exactly what that reason is — there are no off days next week. Most weeks, every team plays on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but there are several teams off Monday and/or Thursday.

This week, though, every team plays seven games (weather permitting, of course). As a result, we're going to see a lot of relievers working multiple days in a row. For example, the White Sox close the week with three games against Texas. Chicago's three starters in that series are slated to be Chris Sale, Carlos Rodon and Jose Quintana. That's three lefties, against a Texas lineup with Prince Fielder, Shin-Soo Choo, Mitch Moreland, Joey Gallo and Leonys Martin. All lefties. Heck, the Rangers just called back up Rougned Odor, which is nice, but bringing the kid back up after his early struggles just to face those lefties (plus Clayton Kershaw and Brett Anderson this week) is just brutal. The point of that, though, is that there's every reason to think the White Sox could sweep the Rangers this weekend, and if so, there's every reason to think David Robertson could see a lot of work this week.

That in mind, I started wondering about reliever usage. We always hear about guys doing better on a day or two of rest, but needing to get them work if they've been off too long. We wonder about three or four days in a row. All that stuff.

Well, I checked it with the relievers we care about. Using the top 30 relievers on ESPN's Player Rater so far this season (correcting for starters who still qualify as relievers), I checked how the guys fared on different amounts of rest.

Interestingly, the top 30 according to ESPN include some names you absolutely wouldn't have thought of. Here:

Top 30 Relievers, ESPN Player Rater

Sure, the top of the list makes sense. But Michael Blazek? Will Harris? Brandon Maurer? I get that Greg Holland, to name a name, has spent some time on the DL, and other guys don't have the typical save numbers, but you'd have expected the top 30 relievers to be names that, you know, are actually owned in fantasy.

Anyway, I used only those top 30 relievers in my study (because, for fantasy purposes, no one really gives a crap how many days of rest worked into Kevin Gregg's 10.13 ERA), and I ran their numbers by days of rest. Here's what I found:

Ultimately, of course, good pitchers are good pitchers. When the worst you can find out of these guys includes a 2.59 ERA and more than a strikeout an inning, you're doing well. But, while I'm not surprised that five-plus days of rest yields great results from the top pitchers, I did find it interesting, if not particularly meaningful, that the overall results seemed to yo-yo. They were good on zero days of rest, better on one, worse on two, better on three, worse on four. You get the idea.

The takeaway, of course, is that different pitchers have different results, and not all "days of rest" are the same. Sometimes, a guy has a day off because the team doesn't play, and he spends his entire off day napping and watching Netflix. On another, he might get up to warm up in four straight innings, only to never get in the game. The "rest" is very different in those situations.

Anyway, there isn't a whole lot that can be done for fantasy because of this. We don't decide when these guys get used. (Though I like to imagine Joe Maddon reads every last piece of baseball analysis on the internet and figures out how to use each thing. Or at least he laughs at those of us trying to know things.) It is interesting, though, and worth knowing.

On to the rankings:

Right-Now Rankings

Rest-Of-Season Rankings