Fantasy Fallout: Huston Street Goes Down
By Brad Kelly
Championship week is finally here. The 20+ week fantasy season, has all come down to this final week, where owners will forever have players that become heroes or zeros.
One player that fantasy owners have had to be pleased with is the great season that Huston Street has been able to carry out this year. Before Sunday, Street had posted 40 SV/3.18 ERA/57 K line, making him one of the best closers in the bigs.
Street has had a pretty solid career, he has 315 career saves, but he has always been bothered by nagging injuries. One part of his success this season was that he was able to stay relatively healthy. But, before he could finish the regular season, the injury bug got him again.
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This time it was the result of a grade 1 groin strain suffered during Saturday’s game. This will cause him to miss the rest of the regular season, and more than likely further into the playoffs if the Angels make it that far.
Our initial reaction would be to target Angels set-up man to potentially to snag some cheap saves for this upcoming week. But, Joe Smith, is banged up as well and it seems as though he will be sidelined for the season as well.
Clearly this situation is muddied because outside of Smith, they have no real solid alternative. On Sunday, Mike Morin got the first chance to close and he got the save in pretty easy fashion. Morin is in his second year so he does have some clout with Mike Scioscia.
Morin had a solid 2014, 2.90 ERA in 60 games played, but 2015 has been a little rougher as he a 5.45 ERA in only 42 games. The ERA is ugly no doubt, but he does have a 2.94 FIP so there has been some definite bad luck as well.
I am not sold on Morin being the de facto closer to finish the season, but it seems as though Scioscia has some sort of confidence in him to get strolling him out there, especially today in a must win game.
Morin has also been used in the 9th inning of games where the score may be 8-4, or basically just out of reach of a save. Once again speaking to the confidence being pretty solid in Morin to get those vital outs.
Owners should look forward to who they are matched up against next week, in order to see if they desperately need a closer to combat their opponent’s team. Morin would clearly be a perspective and admittedly a risky buy, but these types of moves have to be at times in order to close out the season and secure a championship.