Each and ever season in fantasy baseball, I take on a search for that year's "Derrick Turnbow One-Year Closing Wonder" award. The one-year wonder sees more candidates among the closing pool than any other spot given the extreme volatility of the position and the arms that make that class of player up. Thus we get cases like Shawn Tolleson in 2015 or Turnbow himself back in his one-year sudden breakout with the Milwaukee Brewers who seemingly come out of nowhere to post All-Star closing numbers and then quickly go back into oblivion under a hail of blown chances the very next year. That brings me to this year's Turnbow award winner which goes to the Seattle Mariners' Edwin Diaz who was officially removed from the closer role on Tuesday after a four-walk slopfest where he got just one out and gave up two runs his last time out. This after Diaz seemed like a closing star in 2016 when he posted an insane plus-15.00 K/9 rate and whose power stuff was tailor-made for the gig. Well Diaz showed he was not cut out for it this season as his current 5.28 ERA and 1.37 WHIP could attest and so now we have a dreaded committee situation in Seattle which could include names like Tony Zych, Nick Vincent, and returning former All-Star stopper Steve Cishek. There has been a lot of talk about Zych getting the first save chance but I smell Nick Vincent who has the better closing stuff and whose fastball has been very potent as the second-toughest to hit in the majors this season. The M's say Diaz will get the gig back before too long though so this could be a short-term saves add.
No comments:
Post a Comment