2025 Relief Pitcher Preview
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2025
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR wrap up their 2025 position preview series with relievers, focusing specifically on leagues that use saves as a category. How early should you consider choosing a top option? Which second, third and fourth-tier relievers offer the most value, and which unsettled situations offer viable late dart-throws that could turn into a valuable sources of saves?
Rundown
0:59 What Is the Earliest Pick You're Spending on a Closer?
5:05 ADP Tier 1 (Top 75 Overall Picks) -- Emmanuel Clase, Devin Williams, Josh Hader, Mason Miller, Edwin Dìaz, Ryan Helsley & Raisel Iglesias
29:20 ADP Tier 2 (Pick 75-125 Range) -- Félix Bautista, Andres Muñoz, Jhoan Duran, Robert Suarez, Ryan Walker
45:00 ADP Tier 3 (Pick 125-200 Range) -- Lucas Erceg, Trevor Megill, Jeff Hoffman, Kirby Yates, Tanner Scott, Alexis Díaz, David Bednar, Ben Joyce, Pete Fairbanks
59:47 ADP Tier 4 (Pick 200-250 Range) -- Jordan Romano, Justin Martinez, Carlos Estévez, Kenley Jansen (FA), Ryan Pressly
1:11:22 ADP Tier 5 (Beyond Pick 250) -- Unsettled Situations & Late Considerations
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe
Share your Positional Rankings in the HiveMind Ranks for Relief Pitchers: https://forms.gle/Z1Nw13vBS3XyZgmw7
Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels
Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
Producer: Brian Smith
Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rades and barrels, Tuesday, February 4th, Derek the Riper, Inoceros, here with you. |
| 0:17.1 | It is position preview season finale. It is the reliever preview for 2025, the last |
| 0:25.2 | in our long series of position previews. If you're watching us on YouTube, smash the like |
| 0:31.4 | button or click it and tell everybody else you smashed it. That's probably the other way to go about |
| 0:34.8 | it. Leave us a nice rating review on a podcast. Don't break your keyboard. I'm not liable for any broken keyboards out there. Drop us a nice review if you're listening on Spotify or any other place that lets you leave us a rating and review. And if you'd like to participate in our hive mind rankings for 2025, you can do that in our Discord. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description. Look for the Hyde Mine Rankings channel once you're inside and grab the form, |
| 0:59.0 | get the relievers ranked, get all the other positions ranked we've covered so far. We'll turn those |
| 1:02.8 | rankings around here in a couple of weeks and share those to the listener rankings. So a lot of |
| 1:07.4 | fun to see where everybody listening to this show is at on this group of players here as we ended the 2025 season. |
| 1:14.8 | You know, these episodes have been a blast. |
| 1:17.0 | They have been running long. |
| 1:18.1 | So we will skip the pleasantries and go right into the first tier of relievers. |
| 1:23.6 | And I made this a large tier because I think you have a main question that you have to answer |
| 1:29.6 | when it comes to attacking saves as a category in a rotisserie league. |
| 1:34.2 | You have to decide just what point in the draft are you comfortable drafting a closer? |
| 1:39.1 | How early are you actually willing to go into this bucket? |
| 1:43.0 | And it's a group that includes Emmanuel Class A, Devin |
| 1:46.2 | Williams, Josh Hater, Mason Miller, Edwin Diaz, Ryan Helsley, and Rysel Iglesias. And even within |
| 1:54.5 | that group, I think people listening are saying, wait a way to wait a minute, there's at least one or |
| 1:57.9 | two guys in that group that aren't quite like the others in terms of strikeout rate. |
| 2:02.3 | They probably don't belong in the conversation. |
| 2:04.3 | The reason they're all lumped together by ADP last two weeks, they're all inside the top 75 overall. |
| 2:10.1 | So if you think about it in terms of a 15 team league, that's in the first five rounds that you're taking a closer. |
... |
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