Fantasy Baseball 2026 – Top Closers and Relief Pitchers (Rankings & Commentary)
Last Update: December 14, 2025. Added Kenley Jansen and expanded to Top 13. For full update log, please scroll all the way tf down.
Elite closers are worth their draft price, in my opinion, for their reliability and dominance in shutting down the ninth inning and giving you a boatload of saves and 60+ innings of excellent ratios with 100 strikeouts. That’s practically half good a starting pitcher! These relief pitchers are also the only kind of baseball player that can score a save, creating this weird value system where their playing time is not proportionally equal to their value to your fantasy team. Provided they stay the closer while also staying healthy all year, guys like Jhoan Duran and Edwin Díaz and Mason Miller are worth 4th or 5th-round picks.
At least, that’s the case with my weird-ass league of 13 teams, where drafting three or four (or five or six!) solid closers can immediately put you among the save leaders. Pretty much any relief pitcher who is getting saves for their team — whether they’re the full-time named closer or part of a committee or temporarily taking over for a guy who is hurt — is of interest and value in our league. Saves are saves are saves, and only the toxic Colorado Rockies closers sit on the wire.
Here is where I’ll rank all the closers and other fantasy-relevant relief pitchers. This is a living and fluid list that I’ll be adding to and updating from now until Opening Day. Please stay tuned and bookmark and save this page and come back!
Tier 1. Closers: For-Sure Sure Thing Closers Right Now
These guys are the presumed — if not outright declared — the closers right now. I am less picky about double-digit walk rates (DDBB%) with relievers than I am with starters because relievers typically have much higher strikeout rates and don’t allow a lot of their walks to score. I love Mason Miller, and he may very well post a DDBB%, and that won’t stop me from going after him.
1. Mason Miller
I guess I’m a sucker for the best strikeout rate in baseball. Mason Miller struck out an astounding and astonishing 44.4% of the hitters he faced, easily the best in baseball of any pitcher with a minimum of 50 innings. In 160 career big-league innings, he’s racked up a crazy 246 strikeouts for an insane K/9 of 13.84. Mason Miller has had two consecutive seasons of 60+ IP and 100+ strikeouts. He’s like the most dominating pitcher in baseball right now.
2. Jhoan Duran
Jhoan Duran throws over 100mph, and does so often. Unlike other DDBB% arms that can call themselves elite closers, Duran has had a tidy 6.6% BB% in each of his last two seasons to go along with a strikeout an inning, and issued only a single walk in his 20.2 IP after getting traded to Philadelphia. With Griffin Jax no longer around him to vulture save opportunities, the Philadelphia Phillies will unleash Jhoan Duran onto the National League.
3. Edwin Díaz
Edwin Díaz enters the 2026 season as an elite closer with 253 saves in his career, and he won’t be 32 years old until March. That is actually tied with Raisel Iglesias, and they are both 38th all-time. He’ll rocket up that list now that he is a Los Angeles Dodger, and whatever signs there are of him slowing down, he’s been so dominant that his idea of regression still puts him in the top tier of closers. Draft with confidence.
4. Josh Hader
Josh Hader was shut down from throwing last August after some left shoulder strain trouble, and has been reportedly on schedule with his rehab and should be ready to go by spring training. This ranking presumes he’ll be the same elite Josh Hader who has made six All-Star teams. Josh Hader will be 32 in April, and his 227 career saves are 46th all-time. A typical Josh Hader season should push him in the top 40.
5. Aroldis Chapman
Aroldis Chapman will be 38 in February, and he’s signed on for one more year as the closer for the Boston Red Sox after saving 32 games for them last year with an elite K% of of 37.3%. Even at his age, he’s probably not slowing down and he’d still probably still be pretty good even if he lost a tick or two off his average fastball velocity of 98.8 mph. Chapman has 367 career saves, tied with Jeff Reardon 12th all-time. Another 30 saves would give him more than Hall-of-Famer Dennis Eckersley and put him 9th all time behind Billy Wagner, also a Hall-of-Famer.
6. David Bednar
David Bednar found another gear last year, and doubled down on that gear after his trade to the New York Yankees, dialing his K/9 up from 9.1 in 2024 to 12.8 in 24.2 IP with the Yankees last season. Now that Devin Williams is gone and he has the role clearly all to himself, expect a boatload of saves and strikeouts and maybe hopefully even a handful of vultured wins now that he pitches for a team that plans on winning.
7. Andrés Muńoz
I mean I don’t love Andrés Muñoz’s DDBB% but it’s not like anybody he walks ever scores when he’s striking out 32.7% of the hitters he’s facing (96th percentile) with his average fastball velocity of 98.2mph (also 96th percentile). Don’t hesitate to draft Muñoz as your ace closer.
8. Devin Williams
How very Mets-like to sign Devin Williams, whose Airbender changeup is so pretty that it deserves its own stage in New York City. Devin himself his has said his 2026 season — one that ended up with him losing the closer role with the Yankees — was rocky. “It wasn’t necessarily like I was bad in every game. It’s just when I had a bad game, it was terrible.” And going through his game log, they weren’t that terrible, just bad. In April and May, Devin had four outings where he gave up three or four runs in just 2.1 innings. He also had a 4-run blowout in just two outs of work against Houston in September, and five more appearances where he gave up two runs. The bloated 12+% DDBB% that he often posts are not pretty, but his swing-and-miss stuff is still elite, so watch the saves and strikeouts pile up.
9. Emilio Pagán
Guys like Emilio Pagán are super solid closers who give you 25 or 30 or maybe even 40 saves, depending how kind the baseball gods are to him, with at least one strikeout per inning. The Cincinnati Reds signed the 35 year-old for another two years, presumably to be the full-time closer, and a team like the Reds don’t give a relief pitcher $20 million unless they plan on giving him all the saves. Emilio Pagán has got the gas and the bag and the closer’s job and if he’s your second closer, you’re sitting pretty fucking pretty.
10. Kenley Jansen
Entering his Age 38 season with 476 career saves, Kenley Jansen is just three away from passing 3rd-place Lee Smith on the all-time leaderboard, and he’ll be in a Detroit Tigers uniform when he does. After saving 29 games in 30 chances with an opponent batting average of .173 and a 0.95 WHIP for the Los Angeles Angels last year, Kenley is still able to get it done in spite of a declining exit velocity that was among the worst in baseball last year. He may not pile up the strikeouts like he used to, but saves are saves are saves are saves, and Kenley will help you compete in saves.
11. Ryan Helsley
Ryan Helsley still has that gas, and the second-best Stuff+ among relievers according to The Athletic’s Eno Sarris, but Helsley got hit hard when he was caught tipping his pitches and has been working readjusting his mechanics to fix this. The Orioles are taking that chance the adjustments will pay off, which would move him a few spots higher on this list. In the meantime, he will likely have a pretty long leash in Baltimore so he could still help your team with a bunch of ugly saves if he stinks up the joint.
12. Carlos Estévez
Carlos Estévez enters his Age 33 season more or less firmly entrenched as the closer in Kansas City, and he’s probably the least exciting full-time closer in the game right now. His K/9 has been less than one per inning in four of his last five seasons and his xFIP was 4.95 last year, so you won’t get elite strikeout ratios, but he’ll get his fair share of saves for you.
13. Raisel Iglesias
Raisel Iglesias enters 2026 with 253 career saves — 38th all-time, and that’s actually tied with Edwin Díaz — and he will return to the Atlanta Braves for his Age 36 season, the team he’s been with since August 2022 and has racked up 97 saves since. He’s nearly elite, with a BB% several points lower than some of the DDBB% arms above him, an xERA that hasn’t been lower than 3.14 since before the pandemic, and he strikes out a man per inning. The Braves gave him $16 million to run it back another year, but they also gave Robert Suarez a big fat bag to be the backup closer, making Raisel the least secure for-sure closer going into Draft Day.
The Rest of the Relief Pitchers!
This list will eventually expanded to include names like Jeff Hoffman and Robert Suarez and Pete Fairbanks, and the rest of their friends.
Where are the rest of your Fantasy Baseball 2026 rankings by position?
Stay tuned! I’ll be adding all the positions and updating them throughout the winter. Don’t forget to bookmark this page and stay tuned for updates throughout the offseason until Opening Day!
UPDATE LOG
- December 5, 2025: Published.
- December 14, 2025: Added Kenley Jansen.
Cover Image Credit: public domain via Wikimedia Commons
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