Thus far, fantasy owners have not been hit hard with to many serious injuries. Yes, Victor Martinez's going down was bummer, and Jonathan Lucroy's following soon after put a damper onto many teams' drafts, but in the end neither were too significant to fantasy owners. Sadly, this trend ends today with the news of Kenley Jensen needing foot surgery to remove a growth on one of his toes.
Besides that injury sounding horribly painful for him, this hits fantasy owners just as hard since it takes the fourth best closer in the draft out of the game for almost the first month of the season and leaves owners scrambling to find a replacement. Today, we are going to take a look at the impact of Jensen’s injury to fantasy owners and also look at potential replacements.
Jensen has been a solid closer for the last three seasons, racking up both a good number of saves and having a high K/9 that made owners smile. Jensen’s impressive 14.02 K/9 made him valuable to owners even before he became a closer since he has not had a season with a K/9 under 13.00 in his entire career. What made him really valuable, though, is when he started to limit the walks, a problem he had in the minors and his early career, and started to improve his ERA, FIP, and WHIP.
Last season seemed like a very mixed bag for fantasy owners since Jensen’s ERA went up 0.50 points from his career ERA and his WHIP went up 0.20 points. However, he also set a career high in saves and had his second-best K/9 of his career.
The numbers actually tell us a different story and show us that Jensen actually had his best FIP as a closer last year at 1.91 compared to his ERA of 2.76. For those who do not know, FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching and basically gives us a better idea of what a pitchers' ERA would have been using stats that the pitcher has direct control over. Considering how different Jensen’s ERA and FIP are, it does seem like a good hint that the defense let him down quite a bit. In addition, Jensen had a BABIP of .350 compared to his career .281, so that is likely to come back down to earth in 2015.
With fantasy leagues having now their drafts every day, what does this injury mean to teams about to draft? There are going to be two different people here. 1) Owners that believed in Jensen before the injury and the injury does not change anything for them. 2) The owners that feel less strongly about him and will hold off until they think Jensen becomes a good buy.
Before the injury was announced, Jensen was roughly a seventh-round pick in a 10 team league, given his ranking, so if an owner is all in on him, that is likely the place owners will take him. Owners that want to be more cautious about him will likely want to hold off until the 10th round, putting him just in front of Trevor Rosenthal but still behind Mark Melancon. In the end, Jansen drops one spot in the rankings so owners should not worry about drafting him if the opportunity falls into their laps.
Many teams have already drafted, and many owners are stuck with Jensen on their teams. This is when owners need to know who is next in line for saves, and the first place owners should look is who is getting the saves in the mean time.
The Dodgers have a few options in the wing, and the first in-home option is likely to be J.P. Howell, who has 21 career saves to his name but has not been in a closing job in five years. Howell is a good temporary closer for the Dodgers -- but not the only one since the Dodgers did sign Joel Peralta this offseason. Peralta has 12 saves in his career. Juan Nicasio is the youngest of the three but has no closing experience. Most likely, the Dodgers will use a closer by committee situation and likely fantasy owners should avoid this unless desperate.
The other options the Dodgers have looked into are players such as Joba Chamberlain and Francisco Rodriguez. Rodriguez obviously has the more-experienced closing career, but last year's numbers were deceiving and, speaking from a non-fantasy perspective for a moment, is more expensive of a sign than Chamberlain will be. Chamberlain comes in with his own set of issues since last year was a decent year for him, but has been known to get a little wild at times.
If an owner is desperate for saves now that Jensen is going to miss time, they should go ahead and pick up Howell and Peralta. Getting both players is a good way to ensure that the team does not miss out on saves and neither player will hurt owners statistically if he is not the closer. If owners want to pick up one of the free agents, then Chamberlain is the likely person to get signed since the team is already in talks with him anyway.