We're closing out our position preview series with today's newsletter about the relief pitcher position, and, spoiler alert: You don't need to spend as much time thinking about this position as the other ones. In a Roto league, you do need to get between 70 and 90 saves to compete for the top spots in the category, so you don't want to completely ignore it, but in H2H leagues ... you kind of can! 

So, before we get to the meat of today's newsletter, the RP preview, make sure you check out the latest content from the CBS Fantasy team. In case you missed it, we did our "Players We Love" podcast earlier this week, and you can catch up with who we're infatuated with here. I also wrote a couple of other columns this week: One focusing on whether top prospects are worth investing in for drafts (Spoiler: Yes), and one looking for 2024's version of 2023's superlative players, like Ronald Acuña, Spencer Strrider, and more. 

Make sure you check both of those out, along with Scott White's breakdown of every team's most pivotal player for 2024. 

And now, let's see what you need to know about the RP position this season: 

• Position Strategies: C | 1B |  2B |  3B | SS | OF |  SP |  RP
• Position Previews: C | 1B |  2B | 3B | SS |  OF |  SP | RP
• Position Tiers: C |  1B | 2B | 3B |  SS |  OF | SP | RP

"When a trend persists over several years, the expectation is that it will always be, particularly when it aligns with higher-order thinking and is backed up by data.

The trend at relief pitcher was toward closer committees. More accurately, it was toward deploying a team's best reliever in the highest-leverage spot, be it the ninth inning or otherwise, but the effect was the same for Fantasy Baseball-fewer reliable save sources. So every year, the few that remained would move further up draft boards, turning this single but essential resource into an extravagance, and it so bothered some people that there were calls to convert the saves category into saves plus holds in traditional 5x5 leagues.

I wonder what those people are saying now.

What happened last year I don't claim to understand. It's like the league collectively confessed to its exhaustion with the whole committee approach, wanting to simplify in-game decision-making. The sentiment wasn't universal -- the Dodgers' Dave Roberts, for instance, still dabbled -- but it was widespread. Even the Rays' Kevin Cash and the Twins' Rocco Baldelli, the two managers most known for their abandonment of traditional bullpen roles, seemed newly committed to the idea.

So where does that put us in 2024? Well, in the simplest terms, we've gone from most major-league teams not having a definite closer to most teams having one. Moreover, the vast majority of these definite closers are genuinely their team's best choice for the role, having claimed it by merit rather than happenstance. I see no reason, then, why it should change (other than that I don't know why it started in the first place).

I'd like to say the escalating prices for closers have normalized as a result, but I'm not completely convinced of that. You rarely see one go in Round 3 anymore, but Round 4 is still common for the best, and by the end of Round 8, adjusting ADP for a 12-team league, a full 10 have been drafted. I specify the number of teams because the deeper the league, the more likely that surplus becomes a scarcity again and the higher the closer premium overall. But in a typical league of 10 or 12 teams, I think there are more than enough closers to go around now -- and potentially of a higher quality than in the heyday of bullpen roles.

It's also once again feasible to come out of a Rotisserie draft with three quality closers instead of just two, and that's always my preference -- quality over quantity, particularly when the quality is high anyway. And in Head-to-Head leagues where each team has just two relief pitcher spots to fill, there's no reason to pay up for a closer at all. You can just take the best of what's left at the end (or very late, anyway)."

--From Scott White's 'Relief Pitcher Strategies' column

• Josh Hader signed a five-year deal with the Astros
• Craig Kimbrel signed a one-year deal with the Orioles
• Robert Stephenson signed a three-year deal with the Angels
• Woo-Suk Go signed a two-year deal with the Padres
• Yuki Matsui signed a five-year deal with the Padres
• Hector Neris signed a one-year deal with the Cubs
• Reynaldo Lopez signed a three-year deal with the Braves
• Jordan Hicks signed a four-year deal with the Giants

Of these players, only two seem assured to open the season as their team's closers: Hader and Kimbrel. Hader is an elite closer, so we don't need to talk about him, but Kimbrel is fascinating. He's joining an Orioles team with expectations of winning 95 games, which is great. But Kimbrel has been pretty shaky in recent years, failing to hold down the ninth-inning role consistently, so I'm not sure you can draft him and feel confident you're getting 35 saves. But the Orioles don't necessarily have a ton of great options behind him, so it seems like he would really have to falter to lose his job. He very well may, but I think if all goes according to plan for the Orioles, he's going to be the guy in the ninth.

Stephenson and seems to have a pretty good chance to end the Angels closer and is worth late-round dart throws if you're drafting now. He'll either be a top-200 pick by the end of Spring Training, or he'll go undrafted in a lot of leagues depending on how the spring goes. But Stephenson turned himself into an elite reliever last season with that new cutter, and if he can sustain that level of play, he could be a good Fantasy option -- though unlikely to be a great one on a pretty bad Angels roster. The biggest hurdle is the fact that, to this point, the Angels public comments seem to indicate they're still leaning toward incumbent Carlos Estevez, despite his shakiness last season. 

There are also a couple of names you are probably unfamiliar with there: Go and Matsui. They both signed with the Padres this offseason after being closers overseas; Go in Korea, Matsui in Japan. Go has a 3.18 ERA for his career in the KBO, with some up and down seasons in the ERA category, but he was also a huge strikeout pitcher. His 32.3% strikeout rate over the past two seasons is even more impressive when you realize the league-wide rate in that span is 18.2%. For his part, Matsui had a 32.4% strikeout rate in a league with a 19.2% mark, though the fact that he is left-handed could make it tougher for the Padres to commit to him. Both are decent late-round dart throws in Roto leagues, though Robert Suarez represents some competition as well. At least in drafts, it's not a situation you need to invest much in, really. 

Oh, and then you've got Lopez and Hicks, who will both at least try to re-establish themselves as starters this spring. Lopez hasn't started in the majors since 2021, and has never really been a good starter, but he took a big step forward as a reliever last season, and if he can sustain the velocity gains, it's an intriguing profile, worth a dart throw in 15-team leagues. Hicks tried to start in 2022, got through seven starts where he walked 18 batters in 24.2 innings, and suffered a flexor strain that caused him to miss a month and a half. The Giants are going to give him the opportunity to start, but expectations should be pretty low here. 

For breakdowns of each of the top 12 and more, head here. 

1. Devin Williams, Brewers
2. Edwin Diaz, Mets
3. Josh Hader, Astros ( The Elite Tier)  
4. Emmanuel Clase, Guardians
5. Jhoan Duran, Twins
6. Camilo Doval, Giants
7. Raisel Iglesias, Braves
8. Cole Ragans, Royals (The No. 1 SPaRP)
9. David Bednar, Pirates 
10. Jordan Romano, Blue Jays (The Near-Elite Tier)  
11. Alexis Diaz, Reds
12. Paul Sewald, Diamondbacks  (The Next-Best ThingsTier)  

Michael King, Padres

King put up a 1.88 ERA, 2.47 FIP, and 31.3% strikeout rate as a starter last season. Now he's just gotta do it for more than 38.1 innings. King has been a very, very good pitcher in the majors, though almost exclusively as a reliever, but he had failed pretty hard when asked to start before last year's season-ending, eight-start stretch of dominance. King hasn't shown he can sustain that level of success while throwing 90-plus pitches consistently, and personally, I'm quite skeptical that he'll be able to pull it off. But he wouldn't be the first pitcher to transition to the rotation mid-career and find success, so I don't want to write him off entirely - especially with a four-pitch arsenal that should play as a starter multiple times through the lineup. King is definitely a risk-reward proposition, and I don't love him as a top-150 pick, even if I can definitely see the appeal.

Nick Pivetta, Red Sox

Stuff has never been an issue for Pivetta, who has been a popular sleeper/breakout candidate multiple times in his career. We know there will be plenty of strikeouts and swinging strikes here, because that's always been the primary appeal here. The problem is, Pivetta has always gotten hit really hard, leading to a 4.86 career ERA compared to a 4.04 xFIP. Boston is a tough park to pitch in, and Pivetta seems likely to have an inflated ERA even if he continues to post elite strikeout rates. There's some upside here, certainly, but I've gone down the Pivetta road too many times to allow myself to truly buy in.

Ryan Pepiot, Rays

Pepiot has always done a lot well as a pitching prospect. His minor-league track record has tons of strikeouts on the ledger, and the highest batting average he's allowed in a minor-league season is .222. The problem has always been command, but he showed signs of fixing that issue last season, as he walked just 3.9% of opposing hitters between Triple-A and the Majors last season. There weren't really any significant changes in his pitch mix to get there, so it's hard to say how much of it was legit - he did throw his slider a bit harder, pushing it closer to cutter territory without sacrificing any swing-and-miss, which could help the whole profile play up. We're dealing with small sample sizes or those improvements, just around 66 innings between both levels, but he thrived in what was effectively a starter's role down the stretch for the Dodgers, sporting a 1.85 ERA across 42 innings from mid-August on. The Rays have a tendency to get the most out of their starters, even more so than the Dodgers, and Pepiot could be the next beneficiary. I'm surprised he isn't even more expensive in Fantasy drafts.

Frankie Montas, Reds

We saw Montas for exactly 26 pitches last season, and it wasn't exactly encouraging. Coming back from more than a year of shoulder injuries that culminated with surgery last offseason, Montas averaged just 93.9 mph with his fastball in that relief appearance at the end of the season for the Yankees , down from 95.6 in 2022 and 96.2 mph in 2021. Montas hasn't really pitched at a Fantasy-relevant level since July of 2022, but the Reds were at least willing to give him a $14-million contract this offseason to see if he can rediscover some of his pre-injury upside. It's a long-shot gamble for the Reds and for Fantasy, but if it works out, that RP eligibility could make him very valuable.

Chris Paddack, Twins

Paddack is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum from Montas, as his brief return at the end of 2023 came with a marked improvement in both fastball velocity and shape. It was only five innings, but Paddack is also coming back from Tommy John surgery, a much more routine issue than Montas' recurring shoulder woes. Of course, Paddack also hasn't really been a must-start Fantasy option since 2019, so there's a lot less to go on here. But as a late-round dart throw, he showed me enough late last season to justify drafting.