The Struggles of MLB’s Elite Closers: A Deep Dive into Their Early Season Woes
As the 2025 MLB season kicked off, fans and analysts alike were eager to see how the league’s top relievers would perform. However, the first month has been unexpectedly challenging for some of baseball’s elite closers. Let’s take a closer look at what’s been happening on the mound and explore whether these pitchers can turn things around.
On Opening Day, Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase faced a rough start, blowing a save in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Kansas City Royals. He allowed three hits and the tying run. A week later, he surrendered a couple of runs, including a homer, in a non-save situation. The rest of April followed a similar pattern: Clase gave up 23 hits and 10 earned runs over 13⅓ innings in 14 games, resulting in a 6.75 ERA.
Despite these early struggles, Clase seems to be finding his groove again. In his past five appearances, he has picked up a win and four saves while allowing just one earned run. But what exactly went wrong in March and April?
This isn’t the same Clase who had one of the greatest closer seasons of all time in 2024. That year, he went 4-2 with 47 saves in 50 chances and a 0.61 ERA, allowing just 10 runs all season, with five of those unearned. Batters hit a mere .154 off him, and he yielded just two home runs. However, his postseason performance was a different story, as he allowed eight runs in 14 innings, served up three home runs, and blew one save while losing two other games.
Clase isn’t alone in his struggles this season. Two-time All-Star Devin Williams was traded from the Milwaukee Brewers to the New York Yankees in the offseason and has posted a 9.24 ERA, losing his job. The Chicago Cubs acquired Ryan Pressly from the Houston Astros to fill their ninth-inning role, and he just had a historic meltdown, allowing nine runs in one inning without retiring a batter. Atlanta Braves closer Raisel Iglesias has already served up five home runs in just 14 innings — one more than he allowed in all of 2024. New York Mets closer Edwin Diaz hasn’t blown a save but has looked shaky at times, surrendering seven runs — two fewer than during his lights-out campaign of 2022.
As the Guardians prepare to host the Philadelphia Phillies for “Sunday Night Baseball” on ESPN, let’s delve into these pitchers’ struggles and explore what they can do to recover.
Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland Guardians
After those early bad outings in mid-April, Clase told reporters, “A couple of days ago I was thinking, ‘Hey, I am human.’ I can make mistakes.” At the time, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said he wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with his closer: “It’s too early to tell. … Emmanuel just needs to get his confidence back.”
That seemed to be the initial assessment, that perhaps Clase was scarred by his postseason struggles. His velocity has been fine — he’s averaging 99 mph on his cutter, which he throws 71% of the time. Indeed, his swing-and-miss rate on the cutter and slider are up a couple of percentage points from last season, and he’s actually getting slightly more movement overall on both pitches compared with 2024. Still, he has allowed 25 hits in 16⅓ innings after allowing just 39 in 74⅓ innings in 2024.
Looking back at video for all 25 of those hits, two main things are clear: As Vogt mentioned, Clase was leaving some pitches over the middle, and some of those were cutters without much movement. (And as you might expect, there was also some bad luck mixed in.)
Take the blown save against the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 20, when Clase allowed four hits and three runs. Tommy Pham started the rally with a well-struck double over the center fielder’s head, but the next three hits had exit velocities of 76.1 mph, 79.1 mph, and 80.4 mph, respectively. Two of those were grounders to the opposite field, and one was a one-hopper off Clase’s leg (it doesn’t help that he’s one of the worst-fielding pitchers in the majors). Among the other 21 hits, there were two infield choppers Jose Ramirez had no play on, one that clanked off the glove of right fielder Angel Martinez, and another infield hit off Clase’s glove.
But there were some hard-hit balls, too. Los Angeles Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe took a 99 mph cutter at the top of the zone and hit it over the center-field fence. His teammate Jo Adell hit a good slider below the knees for a ringing double in the gap. Overall, 12 of the 25 hits Clase has allowed were hard-hit balls, those with an exit velocity of 95-plus mph. Last year, he allowed just 18 hits all season on hard-hit balls.
Overall, Clase should be fine. He did go through a similar season in 2023, when he went 3-9 with a 3.22 ERA and allowed 68 hits in 72⅔ innings. Those losses were mostly a matter of bad luck — a lot of soft ground balls in extra innings that went through the infield and allowed ghost runners to score. This year, the issue has been more about location. The stuff is still there, so look for Clase to be fine the rest of the way.
Devin Williams, New York Yankees
Like Clase, Williams had his own postseason meltdown. In Game 3 of the Brewers’ wild-card series against the Mets, he entered with a 2-0 lead in the ninth and walked Francisco Lindor in an eight-pitch battle, gave up a single to Brandon Nimmo on an 0-2 pitch, and served up Pete Alonso‘s go-ahead three-run home run (and then allowed a fourth run). It was a stunning turn of events off a reliever who sported a 1.70 ERA since 2020.
Williams’ first month with the Yankees has been an extended debacle, however: He has allowed 15 runs in 12⅔ innings, giving up 13 hits and 11 walks and hitting two batters. He lost his closer role after allowing seven runs over two outings. He had three good performances after the demotion but then gave up three runs against the San Diego Padres on Monday. Pressed into service in the 10th inning Wednesday, he walked a batter and hit another but got out of the jam with three strikeouts and picked up the win.
Can one outing turn things around?
“I feel like I’m back to where I need to be mentally and physically,” Williams said after the win. “I’m just competing.”
Compared with Clase, the reasons for Williams’ struggles are more obvious. From 2020 to 2024, Williams — also a two-pitch pitcher, with his four-seamer and an otherworldly changeup nicknamed the “Airbender” — induced a whiff rate of nearly 48% on his changeup and 41% on his fastball. In 2025, those figures are down to 35% and 27%, respectively. He has always walked a lot of batters, averaging 4.5 walks per nine innings the previous four seasons, but that’s up to 7.8 in 2025.
“Stuff’s there,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after Monday’s struggles. “Stuff’s fine, and I do believe he’ll get on a roll and be lights-out and dominant. But the command part of it, whether the walks or getting behind in certain situations, have hurt him a little bit.”
The solution seems simple, but the execution hasn’t been. For now, Williams will need a string of good outings before it’s possible to completely believe that Alonso didn’t break his confidence.
Ryan Pressly, Chicago Cubs
The Cubs’ bullpen ranked 25th in win probability added in 2024, so adding more depth and settling on a closer was an offseason goal. Pressly had been the Astros’ closer from 2020 to 2023 before taking a setup role to Josh Hader last season. But in Pressly, the Cubs acquired a pitcher who, while still effective, was also in decline in terms of stuff and results.
His four-seam velocity peaked in 2021 at 95.7 mph but was down to 93.8 in 2024 and is sitting at 93.3 mph in 2025. His strikeout rate had sat well over 30% from 2018 to 2022 but was down to 23.8% in 2024. This season? A minuscule 8.1%. That’s second lowest out of 370 pitchers with at least 10 innings pitched.
The culmination of all of this was on display in Tuesday’s game, when Pressly entered in the top of the 11th inning. He faced eight batters, threw 26 pitches, and gave up a double, single, fielder’s choice/sacrifice bunt, hit batter, single, single, and another single before manager Craig Counsell finally removed him. Three of the five hits were classified as hard-hit balls, and the other two were line drives. Pressly induced no swings-and-misses and became just the eighth reliever in MLB history to face at least eight batters without getting an out.
The Cubs say he will remain in a high-leverage role. He’s also been fighting a balky knee that was drained April 22 to relieve discomfort. Tuesday’s game was just his third appearance since then — and he had delivered seven consecutive scoreless appearances before that.
Still, the lack of strikeouts and swing-and-misses is alarming. The rest of the Chicago bullpen hasn’t exactly been locking it down either, as it ranks 28th in win probability — but, at this point, it’s hard to envision Pressly remaining the closer unless he can improve his strikeout rate.
Raisel Iglesias, Atlanta Braves
Iglesias has five 30-save seasons, including the past two with the Braves. The 2024 season was his best yet: 6-2, 1.95 ERA, 34 saves in 38 chances, and a .160 average allowed. Heck, take away one five-run blowup in September, and the numbers look even better.
Iglesias has always been more of a fly ball pitcher — and was homer-prone earlier in his career — but this season, his fly ball rate is higher than ever, with 77% of his pitches in play going in the air compared with 55% last season. That has led to six home runs already. On April 2, Shohei Ohtani beat him on a pretty good changeup away, giving the Dodgers a 6-5 victory with his blast. Four of the other five home runs were off sliders, three of which were hangers in the middle of the plate. Eugenio Suarez took a 97 mph fastball up and away and crushed it to left field.
Outside of that, everything else looks OK: Iglesias’ strikeout rate is up a tick from last year, and his walk rate is down. His fastball velocity is down 1 mph, but it’s the slider that’s been the early problem — he has thrown 43 of them, and batters are 5-for-9 with the four home runs. He had a 42% whiff rate on the slider last year, allowing just one home run, so it was a key asset alongside his fastball, sinker, and changeup.
While Iglesias should be fine, it’s worth noting that he was probably lucky last year. He allowed just a 4.8% home run rate on fly balls compared with his career mark of 9.0%. The luck appears to be evening out on the wrong side this year.
Originally Written by: David Schoenfield
