Which Team in the AL East Has the Best Closer for 2025?
Few divisions in baseball have bullpen depth quite like the 2025 American League East. Let's assess the closers and rank them.
Despite the fact that only two of the five teams in the American League East won 90 or more games last year, the division is entering the 2025 campaign with some new life.
The New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles remain the top top dogs in the division, but a super-active offseason from the Boston Red Sox has shot them up league-wide power rankings lists. They are going to be a force this year.
While the Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays are likely to finish fourth and fifth in the AL East in 2025, they both have rosters that could surprise many around the industry. The Rays in particular are always a team with low projected win totals but they have a funny way of clawing their way to contention by year’s end.
Looking strictly at the bullpens of the five AL East teams, this groups is more stacked than it’s been in years. That’s really saying something since this is the same division that Mariano Rivera called home for so long.
As part of a series of posts here at Just Baseball, we’re looking around the league at the top closers in each division. For years, Rivera would’ve taken this spot, but the amount of raw talent in this division makes the race much closer than it had been in the not-so-distant past.
Let’s get into it.
5. Pete Fairbanks, Tampa Bay Rays
2024 Stats
| G | SV/BS | BAA | ERA | FIP | K/9 | BB/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 46 | 23/4 | .214 | 3.57 | 3.50 | 8.74 | 3.38 |
Pete Fairbanks is a textbook example of the Rays pulling off some of their devil magic in trades. He came to Tampa Bay in a very minor, under-the-radar move and has since blossomed into their primary closer. He’s got the role locked down heading into 2025.
Upon joining the Rays, the organization’s ability to turn pitchers with decent stuff into borderline relief aces immediately became apparent with this right-hander. Between 2020 and 2023, he punched out no less than 11.8 batters per nine innings while sporting miniscule H/9 and HR/9 marks to go along with the wild strikeout numbers.
Last year, he remained a steady presence at the back-end of a lethal bullpen, but his hit-rate went up and his strikeouts dipped significantly. It remains to be seen how much of a concern this will be in the coming season, but he’s given little-to-no reason to doubt his abilities as the Rays’ closer.
Looking around the league, the fact that Fairbanks is the “worst” closer in the AL East says a lot about how stacked this division is.
What makes the Rays and their bullpen so dangerous is the fact that Fairbanks may not even be their best reliever. Last season, a quirky right-hander by the name of Edwin Uceta came seemingly out of nowhere and completely shut down the opposition in nearly all of his outings.
Uceta, who had played for a different team in each year dating back to 2021, made 30 appearances for the Rays last year and finished his season with a sparkling 1.51 ERA and equally-impressive 1.70 FIP. He struck out over 12 batters per nine, kept his BB/9 under 2.0 and was one of the best in the business at keeping the bases empty any way he can.
With Fairbanks scheduled to hit free agency at the end of the 2025 campaign (he does have a 2026 club option), it’s entirely possible that Uceta is the Rays’ representative on this list next season.
4. Aroldis Chapman, Boston Red Sox
2024 Stats
| G | SV/BS | BAA | ERA | FIP | K/9 | BB/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68 | 14/5 | .196 | 3.79 | 3.04 | 14.30 | 5.69 |
Over the past decade, few relief pitchers have been dominant quite like Chapman has been. He’s near the top of the leaderboards in games, saves, innings, and fWAR across the past 10 years and it’s wild to consider just how impressive it is that he’s still going at this high of a level.
Chapman broke into the league in 2010 as a flamethrowing pitcher like few we had seen before. 15 years later, having just celebrated his 37th birthday, he’s remained a high-heat-wielding, high-strikeout slinger of flames and is going to get the first shot at saves for the Red Sox in 2025.
Now that he’s away from Pittsburgh, where the save opportunities weren’t exactly plentiful last year, Chapman’s going to get a shot to rack up quite a few more in Boston. Barring any early injuries, Chapman should rather easily fly past the 800-game (four away) and 350-save (15 away) marks in the coming campaign.
If, for whatever reason, Chapman can’t handle being the Red Sox full-time closer, the club has compiled an embarrassment of riches of back-end relief talent. Liam Hendriks, another hurler with some familiarity with dominance, is back in action after missing the vast majority of the past two seasons.
Justin Slaten, a highly successful Rule 5 pick from last year’s draft, has “future closer” written all over him and is coming off of a great rookie season. He walked just nine batters through 44 appearances and 55.1 innings last season and has high-leverage potential. Having him to go alongside Chapman and Hendriks makes the tail end of this Red Sox bullpen unfair.
3. Jeff Hoffman, Toronto Blue Jays
2024 Stats
| G | SV/BS | BAA | ERA | FIP | K/9 | BB/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68 | 10/3 | .195 | 2.17 | 2.52 | 12.08 | 2.17 |
Sure, it’s a little bit unorthodox to have a pitcher with 12 career saves in the three spot here, but Hoffman looked so solid last year that it’s hard to bet against him. The right-hander began his career as a starter, moved to middle-relief and eventually became a high-leverage option for the Phillies over the past two years. For a stretch last year, they gave him a shot at closing games. He finished with 10 saves.
Now Hoffman is back where his professional career began on the Blue Jays. He was traded before he debuted with Toronto way back when, but his second time around in this organization is going to come with some sky-high expectations.
Blue Jays fans had come to love Jordan Romano, a hometown kid who previously had been their club’s closer for the past few years. Now, Romano and Hoffman have switched places and Hoffman is going to get the first crack at saves for the 2025 Blue Jays.
It’s easy to see why Toronto is intrigued by Hoffman’s ability to hold down the role for a full year. His tenure on the Phillies helped him uncover the best version of his pitch mix and he’s reaped the benefits ten times over. He’s gone from a pitcher who relied primarily on groundballs to a strikeout machine who rarely allows the longball and has brought his H/9 rate way down from where it had been in the past.
The Blue Jays brought back Chad Green and Yimi Garcia this past offseason, both of whom have experience closing games. Erik Swanson is also on hand, so there are plenty of fallback pieces there if the club ends up needing some backup.
2. Devin Williams, New York Yankees
2024 Stats
| G | SV/BS | BAA | ERA | FIP | K/9 | BB/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | 14/1 | .133 | 1.25 | 2.06 | 15.78 | 4.57 |
The proud owner of one of the nastiest pitches you’ll ever see, Devin Williams went from the Brewers to the Yankees this past offseason and immediately finds himself near the top of this ranking. He’s been utterly ridiculous for years now and has more than established himself as one of the game’s top closers.
Williams, 30, worked through an injury-shortened campaign last year, but still managed to post a miniscule 1.25 ERA across 22 games. He also struck out 15.8 batters per nine innings, which is … pretty solid.
ERA is not the all-encompassing stat it used to be view as, but the fact that Williams has had an ERA beginning with 1 in each year since 2021 says all you need to know about this relief ace. In 2023, his changeup (affectionately known as “The Airbender”) saw batters go just 13-for-134 (.097) with a 43% Whiff rate. It truly is one of the nastiest pitches in baseball right now, and the Yankees are the perfect team to lean on that over the course of a full season.
They’ll need him in the back end of their bullpen to held fend off the Orioles and Red Sox in the standings.
Like basically every other team in the division, the Yankees have some high-end backup on hand just in case Williams either needs a day off or takes another trip to the injured list. Last year, Luke Weaver randomly emerged as a high-end option, with batters hitting just .078 against him in high-leverage situations during the regular season.
What made Weaver’s ascent even more impressive was how he fared in the postseason. The six-year veteran entered this past year’s playoffs without a single inning of experience on the game’s biggest stages. He promptly made 12 relief appearances in the postseason, striking out 16 and walking just two across 15.1 innings. His ERA was 1.76 and he earned four saves across three series.
Being able to perform in meaningful October games isn’t something all good players can do. It seems the Yankees have uncovered something in Weaver, so he should pair beautifully with Williams at the back end of this Yankees ‘pen.
1. Felix Bautista, Baltimore Orioles
2024 Stats: DNP
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Felix Bautista on a big-league mound, but his 2023 showing left us all needing more. The 6-foot-8 behemoth of a man struck out 110 batters in just 61 innings (16.2 K/9), notching 33 saves, making the All-Star Game and easily bringing home AL Reliever of the Year Award honors.
What’s wild about Bautista’s performance that year is that his last outing came on Aug. 25. If he had a whole additional month of games on his stat line, there’s no telling just how mind-boggling his numbers would have been.
A late-2023 Tommy John surgery wiped out the entirety of the 2024 season for Bautista, but he should be ready to reclaim his throne as not only the best reliever on the Orioles, but the best in the entire division. Sure, he wasn’t around last year, but what evidence has he given us to prove that he belongs anywhere other than the top?
The Orioles are yet another team that has multiple closing options in their ‘pen, but their staff is probably the deepest in the division. Seranthony Dominguez, Yennier Cano, and Gregory Soto all have experience closing games and are all more than capable of filling in as their services are needed.
Assuming (praying, really) Bautista can stay healthy for the entire 2025 season, there won’t be much of a need for any other closing options on this staff. That means that Dominguez, Cano, Soto, and Keegan Akin will form one of the best multi-inning bridges to the closer on any staff in the game today.
Written by
Eric Treuden (troy-din) has covered baseball for years for multiple different outlets including FanSided, Yardbarker, and Wisconsin Sports Heroics. He recently was the editor for Jays…