Fantasy Baseball 2017 Positional Preview: Relief Pitcher

Check out my top 250:
Fantasy Baseball 2017 Top 250

We are at the finale of our positional previews. It is fitting we end this series with closers. In addition to giving you the top players to draft at the position, I’ll offer up breakout players, sleepers, busts, and an overall strategy of how to go about drafting the position.

*PR stands for 'Player Rater' which is a measure of how good a player was in a standard 5x5 roto league

Breakout players – Edwin Diaz, Ken Giles
Sleepers – Addison Reed, Cam Bedrosian
Busts – Craig Kimbrel, Jeurys Familia, David Robertson

Position Overview

Relief pitchers are one of my favorite positions for fantasy coverage this season. Trying to nail down who will close for teams and who is next in line is what makes being a fantasy writer so fun. Most owners play in leagues where the format includes saves and that stat alone has a huge impact on a reliever’s value.

For new readers, I run a column on this site called “Pure Reliever Rankings”. In this, I look at relievers without saves or wins to see who the best “Pure Relievers” are. Expect to see this return in 2017.

In terms of closers, there are 11 closers with top 5 upside. I include Andrew Miller, the #1 Pure Reliever of 2016, because of his strikeouts, innings, and incredible ratios. Barring injury, these closers are pretty safe to keep their job all season. My strategy is to draft at least one and possible two of this group. I do not want to miss out on this group completely. The next group of Kimbrel, Familia, and Robertson (aka my busts) just aren’t very good relievers. Throw in A.J. Ramos and Francisco Rodriguez and you have my dark side of the closer position. This group might get around 30 saves each, but aside from that, their value is extremely poor and potentially negative. For those looking past saves for relief pitcher help, look no further than Addison Reed, Kyle Barraclough, and Tyler Thornburg. Even Chris Devenski at RP #39 offers great ratios and plenty of innings. Believe it or not, he was actually a top 120 overall player for fantasy in 2016!

That concludes the positional preview series. I hope these help you to winning some fantasy baseball leagues this season. Thanks for the read and best of luck in your drafts.

Stay tuned for our 2017 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit coming out soon!

Other positional previews:
Catchers
First Base
Second Base
Shortstop
Third Base
Outfield
Starting Pitcher