How good is John Axford??

This is going numbers heavy, if you dislike numbers abandon ship immediately.

Disregard opening day, seriously you should forget that ever game ever happened. There are a lot of outstanding closers and John Axford has quietly put himself near the top. Monday's save put him 1 behind Craig Kimbrel and tied with Brian Wilson and Jose Valverde. That's the big number, let's see exactly how well our mustachioed hero stacks up against the other closers.

All stats via fangraphs after Sunday's games.

	WAR	saves	blown saves	scoring position avg	high leverage avg	BB/9	K/9	pLI	WPA
Craig Kimbrel	2.7	36	5	.200	.238	3.53	14.11	1.83	2.25
Jose Valverde	0.4	35	0	.191	.162	4.64	8.43	1.72	2.97
Brian Wilson	0.7	35	4	.182	.235	4.92	8.66	2.26	2.06
John Axford	1.5	34	2	.164	.143	3.36	10.86	2.06	3.58
Heath Bell	0.8	32	3	.235	.188	3.21	6.80	2.18	1.40
Leo Nunez	0.3	32	4	.216	.167	2.52	8.39	1.96	1.98
Drew Storen	0.4	31	4	.143	.146	2.18	7.49	1.77	2.75
Joel Hanrahan	1.8	30	2	.170	.148	1.38	7.91	1.66	3.70
Mariano Rivera	1.5	30	5	.333	.276	1.00	7.80	2.17	1.68
Brandon League	1.0	29	4	.325	.290	1.71	6.46	1.79	-0.07
J. J. Putz	0.9	29	4	.180	.192	2.08	8.10	2.17	2.43
Huston Street	0.3	29	3	.231	.222	1.41	8.65	1.79	1.65
Carlos Marmol	1.1	28	7	.197	.205	5.53	11.53	2.14	0.95
Jonathan Papelbon	1.9	27	1	.240	.185	1.45	11.78	1.51	3.17
Jordan Walden	1.6	26	8	.164	.206	3.64	9.57	2.73	0.95

These are the top 15 in the Majors in saves. Is there one in this group you would trade John Axford for straight up right now??

Me?? no.

Fear the stache!!

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