New York Yankees

Every Roto player enters the draft beleiving they are the only ones looking at sleeper closing candidates, and they tend to look at teams where the present closer has a tenuous grasp or doesn't deserve it based on his ratios. This year those teams will be Toronto, Colorado, Oakland (all of which I've discussed here and here and here), Milwaukee, Seattle, Chicago NL, and Arizona.

When there are obvious places to look, the practice of detemining the bulpens with opportunities necessarily leads Roto teams to label the others as the opposite, "without opportunities", and move on.

It is here where the smart Roto owner spends some time, and why this post is titled "New York Yankees".

Mariano Rivera has been great, Hall-of-Fame great. He is in no risk, we are talking US government bond no risk, of losing his job. But what leads me here is the presence of Tom Gordon, a reliever who was superb last season and is better than most AL starting pitchers.

Most Roto teams would see Big Mo' and move on, although the smart ones know Gordon is better for a Roto team than the back end of most AL rotations.

What people should remember is Yankees manager Joe Torre falls in love with certain pitchers and rides then into the ground. He did it with Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson, Ramiro Mendoza, briefly with Steve Karsay (man was that a stupid signing!) and last season with Paul Quantril.

It seems like Mo' should be next, and if this is the year (after all, Yankee brass did sign Gordon for two years when he could have closed elsewhere), then having Tom Gordon means you have a sub-$10 ready to become one of the elite AL closers.

And all because other teams become fixated on the Juan Cruzs, Huston Streets, Brandon Leagues, and JJ Putzs of the world.