As of this date and time in major league baseball there are only 24 players with 20 or more saves. In contrast, there are 39 with 20 or more saves+holds. There are 31 players with 10 or more saves. There are 74 with 10 or more saves+holds.

The top 10 in saves+holds is reassuringly competent:

37 Heath Bell (37 saves)
35 Rafael Soriano (35 saves)
35 Joakim Soria (35 saves)
35 Brian Wilson (35 saves)
34 Francisco Cordero (33 saves, 1 hold)
33 Neftali Feliz (30 saves, 3 holds)
32 Luke Gregerson (1 save, 31 holds)
31 Matt Capps (32 saves)
30 Jonathan Papelbon (30 saves)
30 Billy Wagner (30 saves)

Time to consider a change.

George was The Boss, make no mistake. He built the Yankees into champions and that’s something nobody can ever deny. He was a very generous, caring, passionate man. George and I had our differences, but who didn’t? We became great friends over the last decade and I will miss him very much.

Line

Comparisons of braid versus nylon mono summarize to three main points:

• Braid’s minimal stretch means greater sensitivity, but with an increased risk of line break.
• Braid’s greater strength at smaller diameters means you can cast farther and have more line on a reel.
• Braid can cut up your fingers if you’re not careful.

I also ran across suggestions that braid may not work well with some reels. One commenter in a Hull Truth Boating forum specifically mentions the Daiwa Black Gold as unsuitable for braid, but a Google search on the topic turned up plenty of fishers who use the two together.

At StripersOnline, Tim Surgent writes that braid must be retrieved under some tension to wrap back on the spool properly. Use it for fast retrieve situations. Even so, slack braid at the end of a cast can “come across the spool instead of going around the spool.” The solution:

When you cast and close the spool, make sure the braid is not crossing the top of the spool. You can do this by looking, or by running your finger around the edge of the spool before you reel any line up…or, as I just learned to do with my new Mitchell Neptune, which is bigger than all my other spinning reels, I close the bail, then I pull the line hard enough to make the drag slips just an inch or two…that way, if the line was crossing the spool, it’s not anymore but is now right on the spool.

One factoid related to braid comes from “The Ultimate Line Experiment,” a great article in the May 2010 issue of Field and Stream (not online at this point, as far as I can tell). According to author John Merwin, if you wish to use lines of similar diameters for spooling or leaders, 30-pound Berkley FireLine Braid is roughly the same diameter as 10-pound Big Game mono.

“The Ultimate Line Experiment” also provides laboratory test results (diameter and strength) of 10-pound-test mono, which is worth checking out. Personally I would appreciate tests of 20- and 30-pound-test mono for surf-fishing, but in the absence of that, the article at least highlights some brands that did well, including P-Line Xtra Strong, Gamma Ultra Clear, Maxima, Sufix Elite, and Silver Line. Sufix Elite and Silver Line stand out as the strongest 10-pound-test lines not over 0.012″ in diameter.

As far as braid goes, PowerPro, FireLine, and SpiderWire all have their advocates in the forums. Fishingmag.co.nz offers a strong endorsement for Sufix Performance Braid in surfcasting conditions, especially in contrast to FireLine.

Spooling

Because braid will slip if attached directly to a spool you need to spool with a run of mono before splicing it in. The most concise advice I found on this topic is on a Stripers247 forum:

JakeF writes:

It is very important to use a mono backing under the braid, simply because without it the braid will slip on the spool rendering your reel useless when you have a fish on. I put just enough mono on the reel so that you can still fit at least 200-300 yards or so of braid on top of it, filling the spool to within an 1/8” or so from the lip. The amount of mono will vary depending on the size of your reel, but you don’t need much to provide the spool grip it’s intended for, anything more than that is just to save you money by partially filling the spool with a cheaper line than braid.

I use an Albright knot to join the mono backing and the braided line. The Albright knot is pretty easy to tie once you learn it and is great for joining two lines of different diameter.

Above that, Roccus recommends wet-packing the braid:

I put about 10 yds of mono on my spool (via an allbright knot 21 turns) then I wet pack the braid, to do this, I half fill a 5 gallon bucket with water, I then put my spool of braid into it, I have a steel dowel that is the width of the bucket that I put through the spool, and drop the spool into the bucket, now I can pinch the braid between my fingers and fill my spool, the line packs tightly and is less likely to dig into itself.

Good enough. This leaves open the general question on spooling techniques. Spooling is covered ably in the “How to Spool New Fishing Line Onto a Reel” article on wikihow. One additional technique, mentioned in a Bass Fishing forum, is to walk out the line. Tpayneful writes:

But you are going to have some line twist based on the fact that you are taking a big curl from one spool and turning it into a small curl on the reel.  After I spool up the reel, I connect a snap swivel to the line, connect the snap to something outside and walk until all the line has come off the reel.  Then I reel all the line in under pressure as I walk back.  The swivel allows the twist to twist out of the line.

Knots

The connection to the spool, the mono to braid splice, and the braid to terminal tackle define three targets for specific types of knots.

Since the spooling is done with mono, a standard Centauri or Arbor knot applies. The Centauri knot diagram below is from Fintalk (I’ve edited it a bit for appearance):

The mono to braid splice can use the Albright knot or the J-Knot developed by Dave Justice.

Netknots.com offers this diagram of the Albright (click through for an animated version):

Here is J Knot:

At the terminal end, the strongest knot for braid is the Palomar, as verified by “The Ultimate Line Experiment.” The easiest approach is to tie a Palomar knot to a swivel — a barrel swivel for an opposite leader or a snap swivel to connect to a lure. For a direct connection to a lure, a Berkley Braid knot offers an alternative that doesn’t require looping around a rig.

Here is the Netknots.com diagram of the Palomar knot:

Finally, the Berkley Braid knot:

Someday, when I have time, I’ll draw my own diagrams.

I found this link in a post at Another Cubs Blog. Author mb21 cuts to the chase:

There’s no such thing as a closer of the future.

In Moneyball Michael Lewis noted Billy Beane’s success in keeping closers on a budget. He avoided paying for the successful and generally (barring injuries and Octavio Dotel) had few problems bringing up new ones.

A corollary, I suspect, is that there’s no special value in college closers.

Last night Tim Wakefield passed Roger Clemens to become the all-time innings pitched leader for the Boston Red Sox. He tops an impressive list:

1. Tim Wakefield

2. Roger Clemens

3. Cy Young

4. Luis Tiant

Next up, the all-time Red Sox wins record. Clemens and Young both have 192. Wake has 177. 15 plus 1 to go.

First, head-to-head is not rotisserie. ERA and WHIP are incredibly volatile on a week-to-week basis. Far more predictable are strikeouts, saves, and wins (see my Wins by Category analysis). Saves are a special category of their own (see below). But any fantasy manager can prioritize strikeouts. And any manager can examine the depth chart of run-scoring teams to find decent, if not great, pitchers that get some strikeouts and compete for wins. By this standard, Tim Hudson is wildly over-rated for head-to-head play. His prospective run support is good, but not great, and despite his sterling ERA and WHIP, he has only 27 Ks in 64.1 innings pitched. I’d rather gamble on Ian Kennedy.

Second, most leagues, rotisserie and head-to-head, use some kind of start or inning limits. In leagues with deeper rosters this often leaves room for quality non-closing relievers such as Daniel Bard or Luke Gregerson, neither of whom makes ESPN’s top 300. Both of these pitchers have more strikeouts than Tim Hudson in half the innings pitched. They help push down ERA and WHIP. Most importantly, these guys are generally available to fill out a 23- or 24-man roster. They cost little to nothing and in leagues that use a start limit, they add strikeouts, quality innings, and vulture wins and saves while subtracting no starts.

Finally, let’s consider closers. I believe that most analysts undervalue closers. In head-to-head, this problem is magnified.

The disdain for closers arises from the all-or-nothing nature of the save stat. If a high-priced closer gets injured or replaced you lose almost all of your investment. Even coupling a closer with his backup doesn’t necessarily protect you. The backup is simply not likely to have the talent or the job security of the original closer. (I know this well. I owned Eric Gagne and Yhency Brazoban in 2005.)

However, the flip side of this risk is high reward. The limited number of closers makes saves the single most predictable stat category in head-to-head. While a team of middling hitters can often take a few hitting categories from a superior hitting team, and a team of middling starting pitchers can easily make a run at the ERA and WHIP points,  the team with three or four closers will almost always take the saves point. If you go into a single elimination playoff game against an opponent with more closers, you are likely down a point before the match even starts.

High-risk goes with high-reward. The former fact should not obscure the latter.

After the top 50 players or so — the ones desired in any format in any matchup — the game being played makes all the difference. Here are three examples that focus on hitting. I’ll write about pitching in another post.

First, player strengths in head-to-head formats are different than in rotisserie formats. When stats zero out every week against a new opponent, batting average or OBP are far less important than runs, home runs, RBIs and steals (see my Wins by Category analysis). Hitters must have power or speed or both to make a significant difference in head-to-head.

Second, roster depth matters. If a league offers deep enough rosters for a manager to platoon, David Ortiz, for one, is much more attractive. Even as his terrible April has turned into a very good May, he is most potent and most likely to get at bats against right handed pitchers. A platoon of Ortiz and any comparable hitter will give you just as much value as a single slugger ranked twice as high — one, it is important to remember, that you would not be platooning.

Finally, the rankings are based on projected player performance for the rest of the season. This is the nature of the exercise. The results tell you who to own, not who to play. But most leagues allow a substantial number of transactions, making who to play right now a decisive question. If you can play a great player for a month, then get an adequate substitute off the waiver wire, you need to do it.

This is the case among catchers. There are a handful of great hitting catchers and all the rest are interchangeable. So it is bizarre to see Mike Napoli ranked so low. Since starting catcher Jeff Mathis went on the DL, Napoli has not only hit extremely well, with a 1.106 OPS in May, but has played almost every day. Angels Manager Mike Sciosa went from hating the guy to running him into the ground, and Napoli has done nothing but hit. The rub against Napoli is that he will get bumped into a backup roll again with Mathis’ return. This may be true. But it shouldn’t obfuscate the fact that at this given moment Napoli is one of the top fantasy catchers in the game. He’s up there with Joe Mauer. In head-to-head leagues where batting average or OBP is less important (see above) he is, quite simply, the best.

Because nothing says “Spring Training” like Boof Bonser’s tattoos.

Man, this makes me happy.

A report for this blog is here.