Closer Report, August 10

7 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

Devin Williams is the number to argue about. A closer confidence of 77 puts him in the locked tier alongside Iglesias and Hader, yet his projected saves finish at 10.7, less than half of what Baker gets in Tampa and behind Jacob Webb, who is running a Cubs committee at 44 confidence. Those two numbers are measuring different things, and the gap tells you which. Williams owns the ninth; the engine simply does not think many ninths are coming. That is a team-context read, not a role read, and no amount of dominance fixes it. The strongest case against: save opportunities are the noisiest thing in this exercise, and a bullpen that gets a run of one-run wins can bury a projection like that in a month. If Williams banks eight saves in the next three weeks while the confidence number holds, the forecast was wrong about the team, not the pitcher. I would still not pay a top claim for him. You are buying ratios and a role, with the volume as a lottery ticket.

The cleanest place to actually spend a claim is Bryan Baker. Twenty-nine projected saves is the largest number on this page, more than Duran at 24.0 and Megill at 25.4, and it comes with 79 confidence and a next man in line, Tyler Wells, sitting at 2.3. There is no ambiguity to price in. If Baker is rostered, Clayton Beeter and Yoendrys Gómez are the same argument in cheaper clothes: both at 72 confidence with 21.8 saves apiece, and neither has a second arm above 26. Those are locked jobs on teams nobody is watching. That is exactly where saves get left on waivers.

Among the committees, Baltimore is the one closest to resolving. Kittredge at 50 with 12.5 saves has more than a three to one lead in expected volume over Rico Garcia at 3.2, and Yennier Cano is down at 29 confidence. The separation already exists in the workload even though the confidence number has not caught up. Compare that with Arizona, where Sewald at 56 and Brandyn Garcia at 48 are eight points apart with 8.6 and 5.9 saves between them. That is a genuine split, and claiming either one is buying half a job. Detroit and Pittsburgh look the same: Jansen at 54 and Holton at 45, Soto at 52 and Montgomery at 45. Skip all three unless you are streaming for a single week.

Los Angeles deserves its own sentence because the names are loud and the projection is not. Tanner Scott leads at 52 confidence and 11.7 saves, with Edwin Díaz at 39 and 5.6 and Jack Dreyer only three points behind Díaz. Three arms splitting a good team's ninth is the worst structure in fantasy, and the market will price Díaz on reputation rather than on 5.6. If you own him, that is the trade to make now, while the name still carries more than the role does.

What settles Baltimore is simple: two clean save chances converted by Kittredge without Garcia appearing in the ninth, and the committee is over. What settles the Dodgers is the reverse, a Díaz save in a tied-late spot, which would mean the split is by matchup rather than by hierarchy and no one there is startable.

So: claim Beeter or Gómez if they are free, claim Kittredge as the committee most likely to end in your favor, and let Arizona, Detroit and Pittsburgh go to someone else. The cost of being wrong on Kittredge is a roster spot for two weeks. The cost of chasing Díaz is a real one.

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 9, 2026._

All articles · Redraft rankings · Dynasty rankings