Me And Jorge Julio Down By The Schoolyard

This is a rehash of something I posted to the message board of a fantasy league I'm in, but there are no refunds if you already read this and want your money back.

One of the things I hate most about fantasy baseball is the inflated value given to counting stats, in particular saves, wins, steals, and RBI. Yesterday, there was some speculation that Jorge Julio would take over save situations for the Diamondbacks, and fantasy players (myself included, sad to say) reacted like it was the IPO of Google. Just mention the word "closer" and almost anyone will start looking good:

David Weathers
Jorge Julio
Tyler Walker
J.J. Putz
Chris Reitsma
Ryan Dempster
Joe Borowski
Ken Ray

But it's not just a fantasy ball thing, because real-life managers and executives and players also vastly overrate the role of closer. Because, you know, it takes a special kind of pitcher to get those last three outs. That line of crap makes players happy, because it feeds the myth that successful baseball players are better all-around people than the rest of use. And it makes managers happy, because it relieves them of the burden of actually having to think in the late innings; all they need to do is to fall back on a preselected bullpen pecking order.

I'm not really sure why management likes it, since it inflates the salaries of a selected few players in excess of their actual worth. My guess is that they are afraid of the media backlash if they try something different and it fails, as it did for the Red Sox in 2003.

Some year, we'll finally have the right stats available for many fantasy leagues to be able to ditch "saves" as a category. And "wins" is next. Followed by "rbi" and "stolen bases." A man can dream, a man can dream.