The "Closer War" and the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

There is a debate in the fantasy community about various closer strategies, and two of the prime combatants are two of the experts in the Fantasy Baseball Search Expert League, Todd Farino and Lenny Melnick. Both are friends of this site of course, so I wanted to put my $0.02 in. Both have valid points.

This is an interesting debate going on, though the strategies are not new or novel in any way. I do not think there has really been enough cogent analysis of the two closer “positions.” The “Melnick” position is that one should never draft closers in early rounds, and often times one should be willing to eschew drafting any closers at all, choosing instead to scrounge in the waiver wire.

The “Farino” position is that the risk associated with the lesser closers as compared to the Papelbons and Riveras is so great that they best guys are worth the early selections. He also thinks that the Melnick position ignores the fact that save accumulation is not the only goal of drafting a closer, and the best guys help in ERA and WHIP so much as compared to the Todd Joneses and Joe Borowskis that the earlier pick is worth it.



You can view the entire article here.