10 Middle Relievers to Target (Fantasy Baseball)

In fantasy baseball, middle relievers are invisible men. Most owners in standard leagues don’t even know they exist, let alone think to roster them. This makes intuitive sense — relievers who don’t see their fair share of save chances simply don’t log enough innings to be treated as impact assets.

Yet these pitchers remain some of the most skilled in the game, and in most competitive rotisserie leagues you’ll find more excellent middle relievers on the waiver wire than you will remotely useful fifth starters. We call this a market inefficiency, and shrewd fantasy owners would be wise to take advantage. Reserving a spot or two for middle relievers with plus ratios and solid Ks (not to mention chances at vulturing wins and saves) is a more productive use of your roto roster than housing fringy, replacement-level starting pitchers.

These 10 relievers (some household names, at least in fantasy circles, other relative unknowns) all have the potential to be strong assets in standard leagues for the 2017 season, and most should come at a relative bargain on draft day.

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Andrew Miller (CLE)
Here is your gold chip middle relief arm. Early draft data shows that smart fantasy players are onto Miller as a top fantasy asset despite his sharing saves duties with Cody Allen. In fact, on average, Miller is being drafted nearly two rounds ahead of Allen which is no surprise given the skills gap between the two. Miller’s minuscule 1.18 xFIP led all MLB pitchers in 2016, as did his 41.4 percent strikeout minus walk rate. He’s arguably the most dominant reliever in the game, a near lock for 90-plus strikeouts on pristine ratios, and double-digit saves chipped in as he spells Allen. The helium on Miller is likely too strong to leave him as a pure bargain in most drafts, but he remains one of the cheapest difference-makers in fantasy.

Dellin Betances (NYY)
Betances is your bargain elite play, falling to around pick 161 on average in early drafts. His skills are not quite Miller-level atomic, but they’re very close. The young Yankee was top three in the majors in xFIP and strikeout minus walk rate. Walks per nine rates of 4.29 and 3.45 over the past two seasons make Betances less of a plus WHIP play than would be ideal, but he remains a punch-out machine, striking out no fewer than 13 per nine over his three extended campaigns with the Yankees, with a positively garish 15.53 mark last season. If you look past the minimal save chances he’ll get in the shadow of Aroldis Chapman, Betances could arguably be the cheapest truly elite player off the board in most fantasy drafts.

Kyle Barraclough (MIA)
Barraclough was dominant during his first full season in the bigs, punching out 14 batters per nine innings in 2016, a mark that tied him with Aroldis Chapman and Ken Giles for fifth best league-wide among qualified relievers. Last season the 26-year-old hurler added a change-up to complement his fastball/slider combo, and the fleshed out arsenal helped him generate significantly more weak contact. His groundball percentage jumped from 32 percent in 2015 to over 52 percent last year. Barraclough also chipped away at his problematic walk rate, which was down to 14.4 percent from his 18.4 percent mark during his short stint with the Marlins in 2015. He’ll need to keep improving that walk rate to stay viable in standard leagues — unless, of course, his gaudy strikeout rate helps him unseat a shaky A.J. Ramos from the closer’s seat. Grabbing Barraclough late seems like a smart way to get ahead of the curve.

Nate Jones (CWS)
He makes millions less, but Jones significantly outperformed White Sox closer David Robertson in 2016. The veteran righty posted a 2.99 xFIP that bested Robertson’s mark by a full run, no fluke considering that skills-wise Jones was flat out better across the board:

 
Even if Robertson rebounds this year, the middling White Sox could look to deal him at the deadline, so as with Barraclough, picking Jones for his quality innings also doubles as a saves speculation.

Koji Uehara (CHC)
Here is your unsexy veteran. The 41-year-old former Red Sox closer has only tallied 87 innings across his last two seasons, but when he’s been on the mound he’s been reliably excellent. Uehara has never been a hard thrower, perennially sitting in the high 80s with his four-seam fastball, low 80s with his cutter, and high 70s with his split-finger. What he’s great at is deception, generating well above average swing percentages with below average contact. He’s also limited his walk rate to six percent or below in each of the past two seasons, making him an excellent WHIP asset. This, of course, assumes he can stay healthy enough to register innings while also minimizing the multi-run blowups (his seven plus percent jump in hard contact last year might not bode well in this respect). Still, Uehara’s average ADP of 226 means that you’re potentially getting 60-plus innings of near-1.00 WHIP and 70-plus strikeouts for next to nothing. And if he gets hurt or flames out, he’s an easy drop.

Brad Hand (SDP)
Hand was a workhorse for the Padres in 2016, logging 89.1 frames, the most of any reliever in baseball. That his team relied on him so much is no surprise given his excellent work in high-leverage situations. His 2.39 high leverage xFIP was fifth across the majors behind only Andrew Miller, Edwin Diaz, Aroldis Chapman, and Zach Britton. Hand finds himself in the rarefied air of relief pitching excellence thanks to a ground ball rate that’s been no lower than 46.2 percent over any of his last three seasons. The 26-year-old lefty abandoned his change for a mid-80s slider that garnered a 55 percent strike rate in 2016, helping Hand nearly double his strikeout-per-nine rate last year. His newfound reliance on the slider might spell trouble for his long term durability, but as long as the Padres are leaning on him, fantasy owners looking for cheap quality innings with solid Ks should do the same.

Mychal Givens (BAL)
Givens understandably took a back seat to the historically great 2016 posted by teammate Zach Britton, but the young sidearmer still posted a quietly effective campaign of his own. The converted shortstop forced hitters to a 26.7 percent soft contact rate in 2016, a top 10 mark among qualified relievers, with his wicked fastball/slider combo particularly devastating against righties, to whom he allowed a measly .242 slugging percentage while tallying a strong 34.4 percent strike rate. Givens’ modest 3.13 ERA wasn’t exactly ideal for a pitcher with his strikeout stuff (he punched out over 11.5 per nine), but the fact that his homer-to-fly rate nearly doubled between 2015 and 2016 while his hard contact and line drive rate notably declined suggests that he could have been the victim of some unlucky bloops and dribblers. That said, the walks are the real issue with Givens. His 4.24 walks per nine last season made him a borderline WHIP liability. Still, if his heavy usage with the Orioles holds and he can keep his walks under control, Givens could provide fantasy owners with 70 quality innings and close to 100 very cheap strikeouts.

Mauricio Cabrera (ATL)
Thus far, the young Braves flamethrower has been all promise, minimal results. Cabrera averaged 100.1 mph on his heater last year, enough to have Braves fans and saves speculators alike clamoring for the young righty to unseat no frills veteran Jim Johnson as Atlanta’s niinth-inning man. But Johnson was terrific down the stretch for the Braves while Cabrera sputtered. The young hurler’s shaky control got the best of him in the final two months of 2016, with Cabrera walking almost 5.5 per nine as Johnson grabbed the reigns. Cabrera is clearly his own worst enemy (he tallied a below-average 56.8 first pitch strike percentage), but his electric stuff lets him get away with it — his 4.61 xFIP added almost two full runs to his respectable 2.89 ERA. But if Cabrera can learn to sacrifice a little heat for a bit more control while edging closer to the double-digit strikeout rate that he flashed in the minors, he could be an impact arm with a potential for saves down the line, should the Braves cash out on Johnson at the trade deadline. He’s going largely untouched in most early standard league drafts, so the risk is negligible.

Carl Edwards Jr. (CHC)
The former top prospect was a low-key difference maker once he joined the Cubs for the 2016 stretch run. His elite four-seam spin rate helped generate a stout 37.7 percent strike rate across his 36 innings of work, and while his final ERA line of 3.75 might not seem inspiring, Edwards was clearly vexed by an abnormal sub-60 percent left on base rate. Indeed, his tidy 2.40 xFIP was a top six mark among qualifying relievers, suggesting Edwards and his mid-90s heater were rather unlucky to not reap the benefits of the excellent Cubs’ defense. Edwards needs to throw his fastball for strikes more consistently than the 47.1 percent rate that he maintained in 2016, but his overall 3.5 walks-per nine rate was the lowest he’d tallied since A-ball, so there’s a chance Edwards is in fact honing his craft without sacrificing dominance. So long as a step backward in control doesn’t make him a WHIP liability, Edwards could be a nice strikeout and ERA asset for fantasy owners.

Brett Cecil (STL)
Cecil’s four-year, $31 million contract with the Cardinals raised some eyebrows in the offseason, but no one who witnessed his second half surge with the Blue Jays should be all that surprised. The 30-year-old lefty maintained a stingy 2.15 xFIP from July on, averaging a stellar seven strikeout-to-walk rate over that span. In fact, Cecil has cut down his walk rate in each of the past two seasons while maintaining 11-plus strikeouts per nine, and his career-high 20 percent homer-to-fly rate last year suggests the Cards were wise to look past his uninspiring 3.93 final ERA line. A converted starter, Cecil is the rare reliever with a legit four-pitch arsenal, the headliner being a mid-80s cutter that he has ridden to 142 punch-outs over the last three seasons. Grabbing Cecil at the end of drafts won’t earn fantasy owners any high fives, but 60 sub-3.00 ERA innings are nothing to sneeze at.

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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @drillguitar.