Closer Report, August 6

5 bullpens have no clear owner of the ninth. Where the saves are actually gettable.

Saves are the category most often decided by a role rather than a skill, so this is the standing read on all 30 bullpens rather than a reaction to any one blown save. CCS is the closer-confidence score: save share over the last 30 and 14 days, leverage, role history, skills and usage. The number that matters is not any single arm's score but the GAP between the top two.

Committees: this is where saves are gettable

No arm has separated. These are the bullpens worth speculating in, because the cost of the second-best arm is near zero and the payoff if he takes the job is a full closer.

Leaning: he has it, but not by much

A clear leader with a live arm behind him. Rosterable, but the handcuff is worth more here than anywhere else.

Locked down

Wide separation at the top. Pay for the closer, ignore the handcuff.

What this means

Start with Yoendrys Gómez, because he is the only arm in the "leaning" tier priced like a locked closer. A confidence score of 69 is not a settled job, but 19.5 projected saves is more than Kenley Jansen (13.9), more than Devin Williams (11.7), more than Jordan Romano (16.0) and within shouting distance of Cade Smith at 19.2. Two things have to be true at once for that: Minnesota has to be handing out a normal number of save chances, and nobody behind Gómez has to be close. Jack Anderson at 29 and 1.8 saves says the second part clearly. There is no succession plan here, just a gap. If Gómez is available, he is the single best claim on this board.

The Williams line is the one I would argue about. Confidence of 79 puts him with Pete Fairbanks and above David Bednar, and yet the projection gives him 11.7 saves, roughly half of what Bryan Baker (29.7) or Trevor Megill (25.9) are getting. Nothing behind him takes anything: Daniel Duarte projects at zero. So the number is not about the job. It is about how often the Mets are expected to hand him a lead in the ninth, and that is a team-quality read, not a bullpen read. The case against me is simple and decent: a closer with an unchallenged grip on the role is exactly the kind of asset whose value spikes if the offense turns over, and 11.7 is a floor built on a pessimistic team forecast. Fine. But you are paying closer prices for setup-man counting stats, and I would rather roster Riley O'Brien at 18.7 and 81 confidence out of St. Louis, where the same logic somehow produces seven more saves.

Mitch Farris is the outlier that proves the point. Seventy-four confidence, 2.3 projected saves. That combination cannot mean what it looks like it means. He owns the Angels' ninth inning as cleanly as Emilio Pagán owns Cincinnati's, and Pagán projects at 18.4. Either the model expects Farris to hold the role for a very short stretch, or it expects almost no save chances to exist. The driver is not visible in this table, and I am not going to invent one. Do not claim him on the strength of the confidence number.

Of the five committees, Kansas City and Pittsburgh are the ones actually resolving. Alex Lange at 59 has a fourteen-point separation on Steven Cruz and nearly double the saves, 11.1 to 6.0, with Lucas Erceg already fallen out at 22 and a flat zero. Gregory Soto's 53 over Mason Montgomery's 42 is the same shape. Both look like leads that have started to open rather than true splits. The White Sox are the opposite: Bryan Hudson 46, Grant Taylor 44, seven saves against 5.9. That is a coin flip dressed as a depth chart, and Baltimore is nearly as bad with Andrew Kittredge, Rico Garcia and Yennier Cano all inside twelve points. The Cubs are worst of all, three arms between 29 and 34.

So: claim Gómez first, Lange second, Soto third. On the committees, the observable is consecutive save chances, not one clean inning. If Lange takes two ninths in a week while Cruz works the seventh, the job is his and the 11.1 becomes conservative. If Hudson and Taylor keep splitting them, drop both. The cost of chasing a Chicago share is a roster spot for six or seven saves; the cost of missing on Gómez is twenty.

How to read this

The cutoffs are calibrated to the league, not picked: across the 30 bullpens the top arm's CCS runs from 34 to 82 with a median of 74, so a leader in the 70s with 25-plus points of daylight is a real closer, while a leader in the 40s and 50s with company right behind him is a committee whatever the depth chart says.

Proj SV is the engine's expected saves for the rest of the season, which is the number to trade on, season saves are already banked and tell you about the past. A committee arm with meaningful projected saves is the cheapest source of the scarcest category in the game.

_Confidence scores generated August 4, 2026._

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