Barracuda Sports Current Top 20 Closers:

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The injury to Joe Nathan has clearly shaken the top of our rankings. With likley Twins closer Jon Rouch still outside our top 20 rankings here are some other closers that are heading into the season as likely options for your fantasy teams to pick up saves include: Billy Wagner, Brad Lidge, Kerry Wood, Chad Qualls, Octavio Dotel, Brandon Lyon, Leo Nunez, Mike Gonzalez, Matt Capps, and Jason Frasor. You can feel free to take a chance on any of these players, but you should be very worried about them either losing their job outright or struggling so much that they would tank your other pitching stats and likely make you physically ill when you watch Sports Center each night.

Moving on with my thoughts about closers…I hate Closers!  No, you don’t get it…I really do, they are like swine flu to me, I’ll do anything I can to avoid talking about them for fear that they infect the rest of my fantasy team. I don’t think it is ever worth drafting the top five closers and think those who spend an early draft pick on those guys are wasting a valuable pick that could be spend improving your hitting. However, I will say it is awful nice when you can have two of the top listed above. It just makes your fantasy season seem so much less stressful when you have those guys and you can sit back, watch the saves pile up, all the while not worrying about your ERA, WHIP, and K contributions that they are giving. So as much as I like to say that you shouldn’t waste an early pick on any one of the top five closers, I do think that once the top five are off the board and you sense a run coming in your league that you need to act and make sure you rid yourself of the head ache that closers below the top 15 or 20 will surely bring you. Some guys I really love to have on my team that I think should bring great value this season include: Soria, he’s lovely to have and shouldn’t cost a fortune on draft day, Aardsma is flying under the radar right now and should be very very good, and finally, Frank Francisco who because of injury is always drafted later than he should be and if he can put together a healthy season has the ability to post big numbers. So there you have it, I just spent an entire page ranking and talking about closers…I need to go disinfect my computer now!