Fantasy Baseball Bullpen Report: Stars align for Orion Kerkering while Dylan Lee gains foothold for Braves

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One reason you may have clicked here is that Kenley Jansen was removed from his save chance Monday after throwing just four pitches, all of which were missing about 3 mph of velocity.

Jansen said after the game that he was dealing with cramping in his neck and pectoral area and would be available to pitch as early as Tuesday, so it sounds like no major crisis. But since he’s 37 years old and not exactly a stranger to injuries, this scare makes for a good time to speculate about his replacement. The answer is more obvious than you think:

Yes, Reid Detmers, once a perennial Fantasy tease as a starting pitcher, is teasing us as a reliever as well. His numbers over the past six weeks are truly something to behold (see above) and have made him the Angels‘ go-to option in the eighth inning. It’s not like a Jansen injury is the only way he could step into the closer role, either. The Angels are likely to be sellers at the trade deadline, and Jansen would be one of their easiest players to sell.

For now, though, the Angels’ closer situation appears to be stagnant. Which are the 10 most in flux?

Note: “Pecking order” refers to rosterability in Fantasy and not necessarily who’s first in line for saves (though it’s usually one and the same).

Jordan Romano got his second chance in the closer role and blew it again. Two failures in the span of three months is likely the nail in the coffin, so where do the Phillies turn next? Left-hander Matt Strahm got a save chance on June 14, but he’s also been shaky of late. Two days later, right-hander Orion Kerkering notched his first career save, with Strahm working the eighth.

Each has gotten another save chance since then, and you might say the two are neck-and-neck right now, with matchups determining which one works the eighth and which one works the ninth. But in such a scenario, the safe money is on the right-hander pulling away. Whenever a left-handed hitter comes up in a big spot, a manager will want his lefty to face him, whether or not it’s in the ninth. Plus, Kerkering has been billed as a closer-in-waiting since he first came up in 2023 and has put together a 0.47 ERA over his past 21 appearances. If you have to bet on one Phillies reliever, he’s the one.

It looked like things were trending back in Raisel Iglesias‘ direction after a brief digression to Pierce Johnson and then Dylan Lee. After all, Iglesias had allowed just one baserunner in his four appearances in lower-leverage spots, striking out four over 3 1/3 innings, and Lee’s previous two appearances had come prior to the ninth inning. Because the Braves, as a team, hadn’t recorded a save since May 16 (a franchise record 31-game drought), it was impossible to say with great confidence what exactly manager Brian Snitker was thinking.

Turns out that with a one-run lead against the rival Mets Monday, Snitker turned to Iglesias in the eighth, and then after the right-hander put two runners on, he turned to Lee for the final four outs of the game. My suspicion is that he wanted Lee, a left-hander, face Juan Soto regardless of the inning, and since it looked like Soto wouldn’t be up until the ninth, that meant saving Lee for the ninth. The extra traffic led to him coming in an inning early.

But doesn’t coming through in that spot tip the scales in Lee’s favor? Well, maybe. He’s not a bad choice for the role, having put together a 1.77 ERA, 0.81 WHIP, and 9.3 K/9 this season, and Iglesias’ performance in the eighth inning Monday didn’t inspire much confidence. I still think Snitker is going to want to try Iglesias again, though, if he gives him half a reason to. The Braves’ best lefty apart from Lee is Aaron Bummer, and Snitker seems reluctant to use him in high-leverage situations.

While Luke Weaver was given a 4-to-6-week timetable for his strained hamstring, he ended up needing less than three weeks, returning to the mound Friday with a shaky two-thirds of an inning. So was that enough time for Devin Williams to lay claim to the closer role? Not officially.

“On some nights, [Weaver] will be [the closer]. I kind of look at him and Devin like we have two elite guys,” manager Aaron Boone said prior to Weaver’s Friday appearance. “On the nights where they are both available and we are in the eighth inning in a save situation, I will probably match it up to how I think they line up best with who is coming up in that situation.”

So that’s the official line, but as for my own feeling … yeah, I think Williams is the closer again. That’s what the Yankees acquired him to do, and he had been one of the best at it since first stepping into the role in 2022. He only lost it because of his uncharacteristic struggles in April, but over his past 18 appearances, about half of which were spent back in the closer role, he has a 1.62 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, and 13.0 K/9. Another couple weeks without Weaver might have crystallized it further, but I don’t honestly foresee Boone departing from Williams much at this point.

Jeff Hoffman blew his fourth save Sunday, renewing concerns that were finally beginning to subside. He’s settled down for the most part in June, putting together a 2.57 ERA across nine appearances, but that’s of little consolation when his season ERA still sits at 5.29. And so the question had to be asked: Are the Blue Jays considering a change at closer?

“We trust the [expletive] out of Jeff Hoffman,” manager John Schneider said. “I do. It’s easy to point blame at him, but he’s been on the other side of us winning a whole lot of games.”

From a purely analytical standpoint, Schneider’s stance is reasonable. The Blue Jays signed Hoffman to a big contract to be their closer, and he’s been every bit the bat-misser he was with the Phillies last year. But from an emotional standpoint, it’s deflating to see a hard-fought effort to go to waste. One complication is that the Blue Jays don’t have a viable alternative for Hoffman, but with Yimi Garcia (shoulder impingement) beginning a rehab assignment, that could change in short order. My guess is that if Hoffman’s struggles continue beyond Garcia’s return, Schneider might give him a break to clear his head. Hoffman could still put all of this to rest between now and then, though.

The Rangers‘ bullpen may be the hardest of all to figure out right now, in part because manager Bruce Bochy has been so tight-lipped on the matter. Their latest save chance Saturday went to Chris Martin, who remains their best reliever and most logical choice to close, but that was true at the start of the year as well. For whatever reason, Bochy hasn’t bought in. What made Martin’s usage Saturday so notable, though, is that Luke Jackson, the Rangers’ saves leader with nine, was well rested, having sat out the previous two days. Might it suggest that Martin has overtaken him in the pecking order? That’s my presumption here, though I’m still giving the edge to the left-handed Robert Garcia, who likely was unavailable for that Saturday contest after pitching both Thursday and Friday. It may just be a matter of time, though, before Martin overtakes him as well.

Aroldis Chapman has been money as the Red Sox’s closer this year, putting together a 1.41 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, and 12.7 K/9. He’s been so good, in fact, that manager Alex Cora has decided it’s unfair to the rest of the bullpen, thus allowing others to join in the saves mix of late. By “others,” I mainly mean right-hander Greg Weissert, who has recorded three of the Red Sox’s past seven saves. On only one of those occasions — the most recent one, incidentally — did Chapman work ahead of him in the eighth inning. Otherwise, Weissert’s windfall has coincided with Chapman needing a day off, a noble cause indeed. Still, we can now identify Weissert as the next-in-line behind Chapman, and that one time Chapman worked the eighth inning shows that Cora isn’t beyond implementing him that way when the matchups warrant it.

This one-time headache now seems as simple as Tanner Scott being the closer again. You can never be too sure with Dave Roberts in charge, but there’s no escaping the fact that the left-hander has handled five of the team’s seven save chances in June. Furthermore, his 15 saves are tied for 11th in all the majors, which raises the question of whether we ever had reason to worry.

The Dodgers, juggernauts that they are, offer enough save chances to sustain a top closer and then some. Sure, it’s annoying when Robert brings in Scott prior to the ninth inning — which has happened three times this month, two of which resulted in a save for someone else — but it doesn’t happen with enough frequency to doubt whether he’s the top dog. So who’s No. 2? That’s harder to say. The Dodgers’ other saves in June have gone to Alex Vesia, another left-hander, and Kirby Yates, a right-hander. Yates was himself an All-Star closer last year, and his right-handedness makes him less redundant. 

Do the White Sox finally have a worthy front-runner for saves? Should we care? I’ll answer the second question first: possibly. They’re still terrible, but they’re not rewrite-the-record-books terrible and are actually within shouting distance of the Pirates for the third-worst record in baseball. The Pirates’ closer scenario has certainly mattered for Fantasy, so in theory, the White Sox’s could as well. For there to be any chance, though, they’ll have to settle on one guy, and they’ve shown no inkling of doing that since Liam Hendriks was still a part of things in 2022.

Grant Taylor hasn’t been an option for much of that time, though. He only joined the club in early June, and it took just five appearances for the White Sox to entrust him with a save chance Sunday. The team’s second-round pick in 2023 barely spent any time in the minors, splitting it between starting and relief, but his stuff has been deemed better suited for this role. The fastball, in particular, is a sight to behold, and the consensus belief is that it’ll make Taylor a force late in games. Are the White Sox ready to commit to it? That remains to be seen, but Sunday’s outing was a necessary first step.

For as bad as the Marlins are, their closer may well matter for Fantasy if they could just commit to one guy. Unfortunately, rookie manager Clayton McCullough, with no playoff spot to aim for, has instead committed himself to trolling Fantasy Baseballers. He recently turned to Calvin Faucher for five consecutive save chances, raising our hopes that he had finally settled on him as the ninth-inning option, but the Marlins’ last two saves have gone to someone else — two someones. Freddy Tarnok’s on June 15 may have simply been a matter of Faucher needing a day off after working the previous two, but Ronny Henriquez’s Sunday came on a day when Faucher was clearly available, given that he had worked the eighth inning. So the mind games continue. Faucher is probably the front-runner — probably — but since Henriquez is the best bat-misser in the Marlins bullpen, it wouldn’t surprise me if McCullough gravitated toward him at some point.

I recently quipped on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast that even if Seth Halvorsen was emerging as the Rockies closer, it would only mean that he’d get a save every month or so. Turns out he just wrapped up a three-save week, bringing him up to four saves for the month of June. The Rockies are still competing for the all-time worst record, a mark set by the White Sox just last year, so the sentiment behind my quip still applies even if it’s technically proven to be false. This unexpected run of success, though, has indeed confirmed that Halvorsen is the Rockies’ guy, at least until he blows it. His numbers aren’t so special that you can assume he won’t.

Curiously, Jacob Bird has some of the best numbers that we’ve seen from a Rockies reliever in quite some time — entering this week with a 2.06 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 11.5 K/9 — but he tends to be used more in the middle of games than at the end.

This news was originally published on this post .

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