FANTASY FOCUS:Closers can help save day

It’s a staple of any good fantasy baseball team, even if it’s an area that might often get overlooked.

Sure, you might have plenty of sluggers, or a couple of ace starting pitchers.

But if you don’t have an elite closer, it will hurt your team. The closer, a guy who throws an inning or two once every couple of days, can be just as vital as anyone to your team’s success.

Gone are my days of snatching up Dodgers closer Eric Gagné in the early rounds, although Gagné is still making his mark in Texas. But the reasons you need a good closer are relatively simple.

First, there’s the obvious one: saves. Saves are a category in every head-to-head league I’ve ever played in, and good closers get them. If it’s an average closer on a good team (see: Todd Jones on Detroit), even better, because you can get them for cheap but their production will be good.

Good closers also help your team’s earned run average, as well as WHIP [walks plus hits, divided by innings pitched). Assuming they can pitch a one-two-three ninth inning a few times per week, that can help your team just enough to earn you a close win in those pitching categories.

Some people try a strategy called “punting” saves. This means they feel they can’t win the category, so they ignore it and don’t draft any closers at all, or bad ones. I don’t advise you to do that, however, the same way you wouldn’t try to punt home runs or batting average. Every category in fantasy is important, even the less glamorous ones.

That being said, here are some good closers, or closers-to-be, that might be flying under your fantasy league’s radar.

If you drafted Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, he struck out the side against the Red Sox on Wednesday. Maybe that will be a jump start for arguably the greatest closer of all time, who currently sports a 6.32 ERA and just three saves.

You have to start somewhere, right?

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or [email protected].