IS Gagne's rank to high?

[G-Man]

great post flloyd, that is a very helpful perspective to show closer comparisons.

[Madison]

To answer the original question:

Yes, Smoltz and Gagne's ranking is too high. As good as they are, I wouldn't waste a top pick for one of them. 3rd round at the absolute earliest.

Yes, you should get more than Blalock for one of them.

[crazybob60]

wow, you have the best two relievers out there in smoltz and gagne. amazing, I am sure that you are eating up all those saves...

[G-Man]

Smoltz has been carrying him in the saves dept since Goggles has only had one save opp in the last 3 weeks.....

[jdh]

The other thing to remember is that if you have both Gagne and Smoltz, and people know that you are set for saves and need to trade one of them away for offense, of course they will lowball you, knowing that you have to trade one so why should they pay full price. Couple that to the fact that closers are overrated by Yahoo's ranking system and you have no hope of getting a top 10 player for Gagne. It's not going to happen, especially with the Dodgers not giving him many save opps the past month or two.

[great gretzky]

individually, yes the consensus is that they don;t help int he toher categories. BUT, if you are luck enough to get a number of good ones, it almost becomes liek ahving a top three pticher, their cumulative effect is that great. We have four RP spots and Five SP spots. one guy has rivera, smoltz, foulke and isringhausen, and let me tell you the effect they have is immense. I have six relievers like that, as Baez and Kim can also play at SP, and still elave room for my rotations. On a whim I compared my six closers against my starters and basically, kim, gordon, baez, beck, mears and donnelly pitched comprable innings to my number one tandem of zito and schilling. similar IP but the stats across the board ranged from similar to superior. so if you can get a bevy of them, I say it can have a profound effect. but if it means having a gagne paired witha mesa, williams and dejean, I would forgo that. But given my six, adn looking to move up in the rankings, I can say it is paying dividends.

[jdh]

The only reason your 6 closers have a similar number of innings pitched as Zito and Schilling is because Schilling missed half the year with an injury. Otherwise, it wouldn't be close. A save is a save, and if you didn't draft expensive closers and paid attention early this year, you could have likely scooped up Worrell, Borowski, Biddle, off waivers, and that's 60+ saves right there, plus none of those guys have ERAs over 4.00. Last year, Guardado and Gagne were likely waiver pickups. It's good to always draft at least one top 10 closer, but you can definitely find bargains off waivers if you use your draft picks on top hitters and stud starting pitchers.

[great gretzky]

i forgot to add one proviso -- it was the last month, not the whole year. both schillign and zito have pitched about 70 some odd inings, as have had my closers/relievers

[great gretzky]

i doa gree with the bargain hunting though. i drafted isringhausen and relied on paying attention and scooping off of waivers for the rest. Also traded for kim.

[wrveres]

So having Gagne versus Mesa in my league would have moved you up potentially 8-12 points quite easily. Making him very valuable in my mind.

that was the best explanation I have seen on this site .. and it is all true. I knew there was a reason I had drafted Smoltz very early on every team.

It always nice to have saves all locked up by the break and then you can set the price. I usually like to try and send that closer, not to the team it is going to help ... but just below the team I need to knock down.