Karl de Vries is a reporter and web producer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ. He’s a lifelong Mets fan and fantasy fanatic who operates RotoDiamond, a fantasy baseball blog. If you’ve never heard of RotoDiamond, we highly suggest adding it to your fantasy repertoire. Due to the high quality of Karl’s work, we’ve asked him to contribute posts to Baseball Professor. It took some begging and pleading (kidding!) but Karl agreed to share his wisdom with us. You can email him at karl.rotodiamond@gmail.com with questions, comments or lewd pictures, though we wouldn’t recommend the latter.
Name a MLB relief pitcher in recent memory who’s been more pop-culturally prominent than Brian Wilson.
Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman don’t count; they’ll forever be regarded as longtime titans in the game, but otherwise low-profile personalities who, so far as I can tell, were never national pitchmen for a video game.
Sure, Dennis Eckersley revolutionized the closer’s role, but who among us would argue his facial hair achieved an iconic mystique that extended beyond baseball’s consciousness?
No, Wilson and his whiskers achieved unique fame after the Giants’ 2010 World Series run, especially after the closer completed a flat-out dominating season. But in the hold-em-and-fold-em nature of fantasy relief pitchers, Wilson’s injury-plagued 2011, coupled with some disturbing control issues, might be enough to dislodge him from the company of elite closers this season.
Let’s start with the obvious: a player who hugs the disabled list can’t help fantasy owners. Last year, Wilson missed the season’s first week with an oblique injury and was then limited to just two appearances during the final six weeks of the season due to a strained right elbow.
This week, the closer attended the Giants’ conditioning minicamp in Scottsdale, Ariz., to get a head start on his throwing program, which is a promising sign. But it’s worth keeping in mind Wilson, who turns 30 in March, underwent Tommy John surgery on the same elbow in 2003, so it’s a concern worth keeping tabs on in the spring.
Perhaps these injuries affected Wilson even when he was on the mound, which might account for several disturbing stats. Entering the 2011 season, Wilson had compiled a career 3.7 BB/9 rate, but walked nearly a batter and half more last year. Much of that can be attributed to a 60 percent strike rate, his lowest since his rookie year, and a first-pitch strike percentage that dropped off from the year before. The percentage of 3-0 counts Wilson worked was his highest since his rookie year.
Was he nibbling a bit more last year? Four-seam fastballs accounted for only 53 percent of Wilson’s pitches last year, another career low, as he instead relied more on his cutter. His fastball velocity lost more than a mile and a half from 2010, which might explain why hitters’ contact rate against him rose more than 4.0 percent.
These trends, predictably enough, were also greeted with dropping strikeout numbers, as his 8.8 K/9 rate was Wilson’s lowest since 2007.
Only Wilson knows how much of an impact last year’s injuries had on his overall performance, so I’m not going to speculate. But even if we see a healthy Wilson in spring training, there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to replicate the dominance of 2010, which deserves to be remembered among the best closers’ seasons of the past two decades.
Does Wilson remain a solid closer option? Of course he does. It’s going to take more than one down year to completely erase his past dominance from owners’ minds.
But if the cardinal rule of fantasy baseball is to never overspend for saves, passing on Wilson’s brand name in the interest of securing a less flashy but more stable option — Joel Hanrahan, Joakim Soria come to mind — feels like a no-brainer come draft day.
