Fantasy baseball managers in ESPN standard mixed leagues generally ignored Oakland Athletics RHP Yusmeiro Petit in drafts this season, mainly because he is 36 years old and seemed unlikely to earn many saves. Alas, it is now June and Petit has one save. That lone effort came more than a month ago, and there is little expectation of more.
Winning games, however, is something Petit appears to be good at doing. No, laughably, winning games is hardly a skill. Still, Petit won his seventh game of the young season last week, and he is rostered in a bloated 16.5% of leagues, which is presumably due to those seven wins -- and it's a lot more than he deserves. He may win seven more the rest of the season or, well really, he may not win another.
After all, good luck predicting wins for starting pitchers, yet alone relief options. If we were going to guess which relievers would win games, we would naturally point toward durable ones on the better teams, those with the potential to register more than three outs per outing, and those trusted in important later-game situations such as tied and close games. Petit, in his fourth season for Oakland, fits these categories. He also won seven games during the 2018 season.
A winning formula?
Give Petit credit and, yes, a fantasy manager could do worse on the reliability scale, even in a mixed league. Petit has 21 wins since the start of the 2018 season, which may not seem awesome, but it is still only nine fewer than two-time Cy Young award winner Jacob deGrom has in that span. The only pure relief pitcher with more is San Diego Padres RHP Craig Stammen, a reasonable NL facsimile version, really. You know, a durable right-hander with a California contender, the manager relies on him, and I think you get the idea.
You need to be fortunate in order to win games, but you also have to be good. Petit is good -- and safe for both ERA and WHIP, even though his strikeout rate this season has been quite disappointing. Still, he has more wins since 2018 than Madison Bumgarner, Andrew Heaney and quite a few others with 70-plus starts.
Wins matter in standard roto leagues even though, if we're being honest, they really shouldn't anymore. Losing a fantasy league by one win -- something that will happen to millions of people this season -- stinks, and there is often little other statistical correlation at the top of the leaderboard. After all, 27 pitchers have more wins than deGrom since 2018 began, but nobody has been better. J.A. Happ, Mike Fiers and Rick Porcello have more wins than deGrom in that span. That is just ridiculous.
Relief for your struggling fantasy fortunes
For our purposes, if you are in a roto league and you want to replace a bad starting pitcher with an available middle reliever who could help your team in wins (a move which frankly does not come recommended here, but people do it anyway), Petit and Stammen (3-1 this season) are a good place to start. Here are a few others.
Brent Suter, Milwaukee Brewers: The affable, dancing left-hander is 6-2 out of the bullpen in 21 appearances, most of which have gone more than one inning. The soft tossing but command-oriented Suter is also adept at handling hitters from both sides of the plate. The Brewers, buoyed on the back end of the bullpen by Josh Hader and Devin Williams, are clearly good -- and better in fantasy -- but Suter is trusted and it all makes sense. Still, as with Petit, one will not get a ton of strikeouts here.
Jonathan Loaisiga, New York Yankees: A swingman until this season, the right-hander fills an important role in the Bronx, even as he has no more than one strikeout in any outing since April. Still, on this team, with this potential offense and its penchant for turning late-game deficits into leads, legitimately hoping for double-digit wins makes sense.
Collin McHugh, Tampa Bay Rays: OK, it is a bit too easy to look at the reliever wins leaderboard and see Rays hurlers Andrew Kittredge, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Thompson there. McHugh may be next and perhaps still out there in your AL-only format. The former Houston Astros starter is earning a key bullpen role and missing ample bats. The Rays are good. Roster any Tampa Bay pitcher and one seemingly cannot go wrong.
Victor Gonzalez, Los Angeles Dodgers: Does anyone else believe the defending champions are about to run roughshod over the NL and win like 40 of the next 60 games? Yeah, me too. Rays (23 wins) and Padres (22) relievers are piling on the wins, and no other team has more than 15. Dodger relievers have only eight wins, just one ahead of the league low (Twins). That seems like an anomaly. Expect Dodgers relievers to start winning games, with Gonzalez being a good choice to earn some.
Austin Adams, San Diego Padres: Stammen remains reliable and is on his way to eclipsing 70 relief innings for the seventh time since 2012 -- an incredible feat. In fact, he is already more than 50% to that goal. Adams, though, is a bit more electric, relying on a slick slider, and has recorded two wins over the past two weeks. Expect more to come.