Who Can Replace Joe Nathan?
Nobody can replace Joe Nathan. Absolutely nobody. That being said, somebody has to fill that role. The issue of who can be the next closer has most fans split on who that should be. The Twins new closer should have a low ERA. He should have a low WHIP. A closer should strike out a good number of his batters. He should be able to make it through 3 outs with a low number of pitches, so he can be ready for the next game, and he should have had a similar workload as Nathan in the past. There are a few options. I will rank them in order of which I think is most likely, but first I will give Nathan’s values in these statistics. For those who may not know, Out/GR is the number of outs recorded per games in relief, and P/GR is the number of pitches per game in relief. ERA+ is ERA adjusted to incorporate the pitcher’s ballpark and the league average ERA. 100 is the league average. Anything above 100 is higher than average, anything below it is lower than average.
