Daily Blurb
If there is ever another Austin Powers movie sequel, I suspect Mariano Rivera’s comment about how much he “loves to do shagging” is going to work its way into that movie script.

Closing is a fickle position, especially in roto baseball. If you need to accumulate saves as a scoring category, there are a very limited number of pitchers who are likely to get them. And in the case of an injury or crappy performance, those roles can be shift at the blink of an eye – which makes spending a high draft pick for a closer very tenuous. Having been burned this way before, in this year’s RIBC draft I decided not to chase after top tier closers. In fact, I only ended up with one opening day closer on my roster - Grant Balfour, in round 12 – and that was somewhat serendipitous, because he was not announced as the opening day closer until just before that pick was made.

I did, however, take David Robertson in round 18, and may have struck paydirt, due to Rivera’s misfortune. I also drafted Kenley Jansen, who seems to be the closer-in-waiting in L.A. (and perhaps not waiting for long). So it’s possible I could suddenly find myself with three closers. Then again, it’s not clear that Balfour will be able to hold the job in Oakland, after two failed outings. Who knows?

My draft strategy didn’t exactly work out as well as I made it seem, however. Instead of paying up for a closer in round 5 (as I would likely have done in past years), I drafted Yovanni Gallardo, who currently sports a 5.79 ERA and a 1.65 WHIP. I guess I should have just taken another hitter in round 5.