Kevin's 2024 Rolaid's Relief Men of the Year
My hot takes on 2024's best reliever...
We’re officially less than 30 days into the season! Right around now, our podcast starts thinking about our 2024 predictions but that is proving tough to do with some pretty large unknown variables in the Boras Three that still remain unsigned. Thankfully, there is one thing that I can try to predict right now that doesn’t hinge too fully on a single additional signing, and that is the Reliever of the Year.
Yes, I know the award has been renamed the Mariano Rivera Award and the Trevor Hoffman Award, but I miss the days when Rolaid’s Relief Man of the Year just rolled off the tongue magically.
The Mariano Rivera Award – Pete Fairbanks
It would have been fitting for Clay Holmes, the Yankees closer, to take the Mo Award, and I almost did it. His game fits Yankee Stadium so well, with a groundball rate at 100th percentile and a Barrel % at 99th percentile (aka God Tier). My issue is that he’s not the strikeout guy that other closers are, and one could argue that there could be some regression on batting average against if the type of contact Holmes allows changes. And that would be on top of a good, but not stellar 2023 WHIP of 1.17.
My projected 2024 AL winner is Pete Fairbanks, closer of the Tampa Bay Rays. Fairbanks burst onto the scene in 2022 and was absolutely disgusting, albeit in a limited sample size due to a lat tear. In 24 innings, he posted a 1.13 ERA, a 0.67 WHIP, which was helped by a K% of 43.7% and a BB% of only 3.4%. He was the perfect reliever that season when he was on the field; someone who struck out a ton of guys, didn’t give up free passes, and induced very weak contact.
Last year, he also dealt with some health issues in the first half of the season, but managed to post-up in the second half of the season last year. While he did not qualify for leaderboards last year, take a look at his Baseball Savant page:
Call Taylor Swift, because loving this Statcast page was RED. This amounted to a 2.58 ERA and 1.01 WHIP in 45 innings pitched, with 68 strikeouts (that’s a 37% K% for those wondering). His BB% was above 10% this season, but anything approaching the 3.4% he achieved in 2022 would again, make him the perfect reliever.
I also think Tampa Bay will remain a competitive team this year. They also have a history of closer-by-committee, but I think they’ve realized that they have something special in Fairbanks. Of Fairbank’s 49 appearances last year, 37 of them were to close the game out, amounting to 25 saves. The opportunities will be there for Pete, and as long as he stays healthy, he should be poised for a big year.
The Trevor Hoffman Award – Ryan Helsley
It pains me not to pick my bois Edwin Diaz and Devin Williams here, but that would be too much of a chalky pick for my taste. Diaz is obviously coming of a major leg surgery, and any return to form here would net him a solid bid for Comeback Player of the Year (although, I have a juicy in-division pick for this one). And, of course, Devin Williams is the defending champion, with a statline of 36 saves, 1.53 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, and a Baseball Savant page that will burn your retinas with red.
Enough about the favorites; my pick this season is Ryan Helsley of the St. Louis Cardinals. Helsley unfortunately missed the first 3 months of the season with a forearm strain, that luckily, did not end up leading to further arm issues. Like Fairbanks, Helsley had a landmark 2022, albeit with a fuller body of work. He finished 2022 with a 1.25 ERA, a miniscule 0.74 WHIP, and a K% of 39.3%, good for top 1% in the league. When he was on the field in 2023, he continued to be dominant, with a 2.45 ERA and 1.06 WHIP:
So we have another non-qualifier for the 2023 Statcast leaderboards… Again, you can see that he would have sat well in the red for most of the key categories, namely xERA, Barrel %, and K%. One key difference between this 2023 sampling and his breakout 2022 season is the BB%. Helsley’s combination of nasty stuff and relatively good control helped him avoid baserunners, to the tune of a 0.74 WHIP. If he is able to get closer to the league-average walk-rate and maintain his K numbers, he has a chance to absolutely feast.
One final note: the Cardinals were T-7 in all of MLB in blown leads with 41, and T-4 in blown 9th inning leads with 7. We all know the Cardinals lineup has the propensity to “bang”, but the addition of a full-season of healthy Ryan Helsley should allow them to “hang” a little bit better onto the win. All that being said, the volume should be here to allow Helsley to rack up saves in 2024.
For the rest of my pre-season predictions, follow our podcast (latest episode below). And be sure to give us a like and follow on the Substack as well.
-KL
These guys have more red on their Statcast page than an Mississippi electoral map.