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2) Kirby Yates
One of the league’s best closers in 2024 is finishing off wins for the Texas Rangers. He went to the defending champions after missing all of 2021 due to injury, pitching only 7 innings in 2022, and putting together a solid year from the Braves bullpen in 2023. He was 7-2 with a 3.28 ERA in 60.1 innings of work for Atlanta last season.
This year in Texas, things have gone even better. Yates is 3-1 with a microscopic 1.05 ERA in 34.1 innings of work. He has saved 16 games and has yet to give up a home run (jinx).
Yates, at 37, may also be nearing the end of his career. Signed to just a one-year deal this past offseason, the righty is doing everything he can to help the Rangers get back to the playoffs. Unfortunately, they seem more like sellers than buyers even with a stacked roster of players having successful seasons.
Yates might be better than some of the other options out there for the bullpen in part because he has spent most of his better big league seasons not closing games. His league-leading 41 saves in 2019 came right before an injury that derailed the rise of a late-blooming star. He was already 30 by the time he landed on the San Diego Padres in 2017 after bouncing around with several teams and never quite catching on anywhere.
The asking price for Yates shouldn’t be extremely high. Something in the same neighborhood as what the Mets landed last year for his teammate, David Robertson. Robertson, by the way, wouldn’t be such a bad addition for the Mets either if the Rangers end up as sellers.