Fantasy Baseball Saves + Holds League Draft Advice (2026)

On one of the first days in Economics 101, you learn about the Law of Supply and Demand. At its most basic, when the price increases, so does the supply. The demand will decrease, though, with the higher price. The Law of Supply and Demand can be applied to saves in a traditional fantasy baseball league. At any given time, there are, at most, 30 traditional closers. With more and more teams going to closer-by-committees, it’s typically even fewer than 30. That has caused the rise of saves + holds leagues.

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Fantasy Baseball Saves + Holds League Primer

Instead of just closers, all relievers are possible additions in saves + holds leagues. That vastly increases the supply of relievers who are viable for fantasy drafters. By doing that, fantasy managers don’t have to reach to acquire one early in their drafts. Now, they can be more nuanced in their approach to the reliever position. Learn about some of those nuances in this primer.

What’s the Value of Saves & Holds?

This one comes from a bit of personal experience. When saves + holds leagues first started gaining in popularity, the value of each was equal. Since fantasy baseball is always changing, that is now not necessarily the case.

As important as talented middle relievers are, a closer is still ultimately the one who finishes the game. That’s why they still typically make more money when reaching free agency. You can now boost the value of saves to reflect that in leagues that count both saves and holds.

This comes back to the most important tip for winning any fantasy league. Know the settings inside and out. I started playing in a league a few seasons ago that was described to me as a saves + holds league. Because of that, I waited in the draft and took the value on middle relievers while boosting my offense.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and I noticed that the saves + holds category standings had halves included. Having watched a lot of baseball, one thing I knew for certain was that there was no such thing as a half save or half hold. What was happening? It turns out that in that particular league, the value of a hold was only 0.5. So, while it increased the value of middle relievers, closers were still necessary to compete at the top.

Saves are King; Gap is Narrowing

Even in a league where saves and holds are each scored equally, if you want to compete to win the category, you are likely to need some closers. That’s simply because the top-tier closers will still accumulate more saves than the best middle relievers will get holds. If you think about it from a logical point of view, it makes sense. The elite closers are almost always given a save opportunity. Meanwhile, holds can be split up amongst six or seven relievers in the bullpen.

The table below shows the relievers who finished with at least 30 saves or holds.

Right at the very top, you can see why saves are still king. Three pitchers — Carlos Estevez, Robert Suarez and Andres Munoz — finished with more saves than the leader in holds. What is narrowing the gap is the number of holds options who are adding a handful of saves to boost their totals.

Abner Uribe actually led the league in saves + holds. An injury to Trevor Megill allowed Uribe to tack on seven saves to bring his total to 44 saves + holds. Tony Santillan and Hunter Gaddis also chipped in with seven and three saves, respectively. That allowed each of them to finish in the top 10 in saves + holds. Every other name in the top 10 is still a traditional closer.

Don’t Get Ratioed

Another advantage of saves + holds leagues is that it allows you to target the best relievers. That may seem obvious for any position. However, if you are playing with only saves, that isn’t necessarily the case. In those leagues, you are only looking for the 30 closers, regardless of their ratios.

Take advantage of the increased pool. Target relief pitchers with good ratios and strong K/9 marks. There were 57 qualified relievers last season with ERAs under 3.00. There were 51 qualified relievers who had a WHIP of 1.10 or better, and 77 relief pitchers had at least nine strikeouts/nine innings. Those are all marks to target.

The question becomes, who are the relief pitchers who hit all three of those marks? There were 27 of them:

While going into your fantasy baseball draft with a plan is always a good idea, don’t be afraid to pivot early in the season for the possibility of an emerging reliever. If you had been aggressive early last season on the waiver wire, you could have added names like Hunter Gaddis, Emilio Pagan and Tyler Rogers.

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