What They Say: Closer Edition | Baseball prospectus

Translated by Carlos Marcano

Welcome to relievers week here What they say! We have a lot of interesting quotes to deconstruct, and the spring training games are just starting!

Let’s start in Arizona, where you can choose from a trio of potential closers even if you’re a manager Torey Lovullo is working to make a decision for the Diamondbacks.

“I mean, it’s probably as simple a math problem as you can think of,” Lovullo said this on Tuesday.. “I’m going to go a little blind here, but… Paul Sewald, Kevin Ginkel, Ryan Thompsonall those kids who have had that experience in great moments… they all want to do it.”

Lovullo then gave us some additional clues on how this will be resolved. He said he prefers to have a single closer who gets the majority of reps in the ninth inning — words that bring joy to fantasy players — and added about what he needs from that pitcher.

“I want to have that closer in the last stretch where I know full well it can come in, not flinch and attack the zone with throws,” Lovullo said. “If they beat you, they beat you, but I don’t want balls being thrown in areas where there are walks. That drives me crazy. Put the ball on the plate, don’t be afraid of contact and let your defense do the work for you. Believe in yourself.”

I can’t tell you how much these pitchers believe in themselves, but we can look at their walk rates and some red flags immediately appear. In his lost 2025, Ginkel’s walk rate was 4.6 per nine innings, and PECOTA expects him to remain above three per nine innings even in the 50th percentile. Sewald, despite taking center stage for the most exciting stretch in Diamondbacks history since Luis González hit lob singles in 2023, walked more than five batters for Arizona in that time. Still, PECOTA believes both he and Thompson will have significantly greater command than Ginkel. It’s hard to declare any of them the clear favorite here, but it does mean we’re in a rare example of spring training where performance matters: not shutout innings, but rather what mastery of the three looks like during spring games. I’ll be keeping a close eye on which reliever can best advance in the count, as that’s clearly Lovullo’s most important indicator.

From a fantasy draft perspective, if no one is signed at the time of your pick, you might just want to take a chance on multiple Arizona options here, both for whoever gets the job first and a potential backup in case of injury. None of these will cost you much tap capital. Ginkel checks in at a 608 ADP in the 15-team draft championship leagues, with Sewald and Thompson falling somewhere in the mid-700s.

I’m amused to see that across different leagues there are clear indications that each of the three has its defenders. Sewald has a max of 344, Ginkel 355, Thompson 451. I don’t see any indication that any of these are currently a reasonable place to pick any of the three closer options. But I’ll keep a close eye on it to see when that changes.

I am convinced that there is a value game Jeff Hoffmanand the manager of the Blue Jays, Johannes Schneiderreinforced this idea last week, telling Ben Nicholson-Smith that he is “100 percent confident he will close out most games.”

It never made sense to think Toronto would go in a different direction at the closest spot, but they certainly haven’t made any moves that would put pressure on Hoffman. Yimi Garcia and Tyler Rogers are excellent options to prepare for Hoffman, but neither will provide an improvement over Hoffman’s likely performance.

About that performance, by the way: The ERA rose from 2.17 with the Phillies in 2024 to 4.37 with Toronto in 2025. But the strikeout rate remained very high, and the walk rate registered just below his career marks. The only downside was his home run percentage, which resembled the levels of his early career when he pitched in middle relief for the Colorado Rockies.

The thing is, his flyball rate was actually lower in 2025 than it was in 2024. It reads like an absolute fluke: 10 of his 15 home runs allowed came against his four-seam fastball, which also continued to miss bats at a high rate, with hitters averaging just a .222 against it.

PECOTA expects him to regain virtually all of his 2020-level skills to keep the ball in the park. Assuming this is the case, and with no significant internal challengers, Hoffman appears to be one of the best chances to provide reliability at the position in 2026. Him being selected at ADP 108, behind closers like Ryan Helsley j Devin Williamsdoes not, in my opinion, stand up to scrutiny.