2025 Position Previews: Relief Pitchers
My 2025 position preview series begins with an in-depth look at closers.
Links
It is position preview time! I’m going backward this year, starting with relievers and working my way the whole way back to catcher.
There will be a podcast (or two or three) for each position, and I’ll be going pretty deep into it.
To start with an admission, relievers are my worst position. I don’t pay a ton of attention to them, and the small sample of innings they give us makes the data a lot less reliable. I think I have enough of a grasp on it to get this done pretty well.
If you’d rather hear than read, there’s a podcast episode covering the full story! Just search “MLB Data Warehouse” on Spotify or Apple.
Strategy
The most important thing to know is that league context is so important here. If you’re in a smaller league with in-season waivers, you will be able to find saves on the waiver wire, so you don’t have to go as crazy in the draft to ensure you’re grabbing saves.
Things also change a ton if you’re in a saves+holds league. I’m not going to be covering that kind of league, but I will say that it’s a lot easier. The player pool opens up a ton when a hold is as good as a save, so it’s hard to recommend any of the top closers in those situations. If you’re in such a league, I would just tell you to focus on the best relievers no good teams. Target high K% guys who are on teams projected for 90+ wins. If you do that, you should be able to find a ton of great value and be competitive in that category without having to spend much on the draft.
For now, let’s dive into my closer rankings and tiers.
Tier One
Emmanuel Clase
Josh Hader
Edwin Diaz
Devin Williams
The boxes we’re looking to check in order to find an elite closer.
✓ Multiple years of dominance
✓ Established in the closer role
✓ Playing on a winning team
These four guys check all of the boxes. Since I didn’t write up relievers in the team previews, I’ll go into detail on each guy here.
#1 Emmanuel Clase
I could see the Guardians coming out with a mediocre season. Maybe they win 75-80 games, and Clase comes up short of the league leaders in saves, but the reliability and job security are close to unmatched. He’s given up six homers over the last two seasons with a 57% GB%, a 14.9% SwStr%, and a 30% Ball%. The cutter is so just ridiculous.
Clase is the clear #1 this year, and high-stakes drafters agree. He’s ten full picks ahead of Hader in ADP.
#2 Josh Hader
He’s still just 30 years old and now has five straight (non-2020) seasons with 30+ saves. His unwillingness to make any concessions in his role as a traditional closer has made him a very easy guy to rank for us, and he’s right there near the top of the list again this year.
The one knock on him, maybe, is that he gave up a dozen homers last year, and that ballooned the ERA up to 3.80.
There are two reasons that this doesn’t bother me.
It was probably pretty random
Closer ratios don’t matter all that much to your fantasy team
Hader will throw a very small percentage of your fantasy team’s innings, so even another bad ERA will only have a small impact.
#3 Edwin Diaz
He returned nicely from the missed 2023 season. Okay, so he couldn’t repeat a 50% K%, but 39% is nothing to complain about. The guy is insanely good, and this is the best Mets team we’ll have seen in a few years.
#4 Devin Williams
He’s a little bit different than these other guys because he does not feature a dominant fastball. I mean, his fastball is perfectly fine, but the main attraction is the changeup. Over the last two years, that changeup has given up just a .247 xwOBA and three homers.
Now, he goes to the Yankees, who are once again looking like an 85+ win team. Maybe that’s overly optimistic after Juan Soto's departure, but I’m sticking to it! The Yanks have won at least 90 games in six of the last seven (full) seasons, and I don’t see any real threat to his job after the Yankees went out of their way to trade for him. You can pencil Williams in for 35 saves, as far as I’m concerned, and I’d be happy to have him this year.
Tier Two
Raisel Iglesias
Ryan Helsley
Raisel Iglesias
Mason Miller
Felix Bautista
Andres Munoz
All of these arms are worthy of being mentioned as the best in the league. The thing that led me to draw a tier separator here is the team context. None of these four teams are looking all that great for 2025, and you can’t save a game if your team doesn’t win it.
#5 Raisel Iglesias
I forgot about him in the first draft of this because of a technical issue. I will try to do better double-checking from here on!
#6 Ryan Helsley
Things couldn’t have gone much better for Helsley last year. He led the league in saves with 49 while posting a 2.03 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP. Only Emmanuel Clase rivaled those numbers.
However, the Cardinals are on the decline and aren’t looking like an 80+ win team to me. The one thing I’m not worried about is the performance. He has a 100mph four-seamer that pairs with a slider, which was frankly unhittable last season.
#7 Mason Miller
Pitch-for-pitch, there might be a better arm in the league than Miller. He posted a 42% K% last year with a 2.49 ERA, a 0.86 WHIP, and recorded 28 saves last year. As long as he’s healthy, he’s getting nearly 100% of the saves for the Athletics. While that team has improved significantly this off-season, it’s still not a team you’d expect to have a winning record, and you do have to still be at least a little bit worried about Miller’s history of arm injuries.
#8 Felix Bautista
We did not see Felix last year, and that alone makes him feel a little bit more risky. But please don’t forget about what he did in 2023:
61 IP, 46% K%, 11% BB%, 1.48 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 33 saves
That’s a 35% K-BB%. I didn’t even know that was possible. The best bet is on a return to at least 90% of what he had before the injury, and that is more than enough to make him one of the top closers in the game. He falls short of the top tier just because we haven’t seen him in so long, and the Orioles aren’t looking all that great overall.
#9 Andres Munoz
The Mariners could be pretty bad if a couple of injuries affect their starting rotation. I suppose that’s true of every team, but their offense is really rough, which lowers the floor.
Munoz saved just 22 games last year despite being the top guy. The numbers are great (33.2% K%, 11.2% BB%, 2.12 ERA, 0.94 WHIP), so I don’t think there’s any threat of him losing the job, but it could prove to just not be all that valuable of a job as far as piling up saves go.
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