Joe Nathan

Nathan was 1-2 with a 1.33 ERA and 39 saves last season. He has averaged 39.8 saves over the past five years

Joe Nathan will skip the World Baseball Classic because of soreness in his pitching shoulder the past five days.

"I think we backed off it early enough to where it won't be an issue," said Nathan, who aggravated the AC joint, which connects the collarbone and clavicle at the top of the shoulder.

And so the two weeks draws to a close, appropriately, with a look at the Top 10 Closers. A volatile position at the best of times, 2008 seemed to be the craziest season ever in terms of the amount of closers losing their jobs through injury or bad performance.

Closers may be the most intriguing breed of baseball players. They are highly debated, analyzed, ridiculed, and speculated on. Their biggest contribution to a fantasy lineup (Saves), they have little control over. They warm up, get ready to pitch, and when their offense scores a run to put their team up 4, they sit down and go back to spitting seeds while a guy, possibly just as capable, making a fraction of what the closer makes, trots out for the 9th inning. If you tried to describe fully, the modern MLB closer to somebody who had never heard of the concept, they'd look at you like you were crazy.