Always Be Closing: Craig Kimbrel

As part of this year's ongoing blog series on closers, let's do some more stat-crunching and talk about Craig Kimbrel. Statistically, he's the best closer in baseball right now.

Kimbrel has 324 career saves, which means he's the active leader, beating the next highest, Fernando Rodney, by 2 saves...and 10 years. He's never notched less than 30 saves in a season, his highest being 50 in 2013. He also happens to be the closer for the best team in baseball, the Boston Red Sox. This is a team that shouldn't NEED a closer, but not every game's a blowout, and if they're gonna use someone to save the day, it might as well be Kimbrel. Ever since his come-up with the Braves, he's been phenomenal, and one of the most dominant relievers in the game.

This season so far, he's gotten 33 saves on 36 attempts (which is not bad), and it's the second-most saves in all of baseball this year, behind only Edwin Diaz. Keep in mind- Edwin Diaz has Alex Colome on his bullpen, and apparently doesn't need him to close games for him.

Kimbrel, as a closer, is also a strikeout artist, passing 100 K's in three of his seasons thus far. Some pitchers get saves by stymieing and confusing batters, but Kimbrel just speeds past them at any waking moment. I've seen the guy pitch live, and he's just an all force kind of guy. Unfortunately, he also gave up a home run when I saw him close a game, which...to be fair, is kinda rare for him, but it can happen when you're throwing that hard.

Kimbrel is also a kind of guy who can do well in the postseason, but sadly hasn't seen too much October time, which is a damn shame. Seeing as the Red Sox have been unstoppable this season, even if, as I write this post (IN ADVANCE! PLOT TWIST!) they are losing to the Yankees, there is a NICE chance that he'll get to save some crucial games this postseason. And I can only imagine how electric he'll be then.

Coming Tonight: I'm gonna roll off some hashtags, but after Trusting the Process, Philly has decided to Be Bold, and have had trouble finding a corner performer quite Like Maik.