We’ve already spent some time with Tanner Roark’s breakout season and it’s mostly about that two-seamer and getting strike one if you ask him. Let’s focus on those things first.

The bad news first. First strike rate isn’t super sticky year-to-year. The correlation is .479 year-to-year, meaning that this year’s first strike rate describes 23% of the variance in next year’s first strike rate. That’s as weak as the year-to-year relationship of home runs per nine innings, or a little bit less than half as strongly correlated as strikeout rate.

Roark may have been above-average in that regard for two years, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily going to manage the feat again next year. If you throw 70% strikes on the first pitch, maybe batters start swinging more at the first pitch and then maybe you start throwing fewer first pitch strikes. However it works, this isn’t a skill we can bank on in a 200-inning sample.

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The 2014 season was a cruel one for Justin Verlander. To the fantasy baseball players who owned him for most of it and drafted, bought, kept, or traded for the formerly elite right-hander, the 2014 season felt approximately as cruel.

The pitcher surely expected more after a relatively – extra emphasis on relatively – disappointing 2013 effort that saw his walk rate jump above 8% and his average heat velocity dip below 94 mph for the first time since 2008 on his way to a 3.46 ERA and 1.31 WHIP. He and fantasy owners didn’t get it, though. The 4.54 ERA (117 ERA-, his worst mark in the category since his debut season), 1.40 WHIP, and 17.8% strikeout rate tell the tale of a mostly abysmal season, in fact.

Now what? The last time Verlander had fantasy owners this puzzled was, incidentally, after his 2008 campaign. The next year turned out to be pretty good. That hurler was 26, however, and his four-seam fastball averaged 95.6 mph. This guy will be 32, and … who knows?

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Any keeper league that allows offseason trading will have its share of rebuilding teams. The guy who drafted Chris Davis, Joey Votto, and Cliff Lee will need time to recover from those dreadful picks. If the standard of excellence is high enough in your league, a perfectly adequate roster might still qualify for a touch of rebuilding.

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In 2014, Jeff Samardzija had the best season of his career as a starter, finishing with an ERA under 3, a 3.06 SIERA and a miniscule 1.8 BB/9, all during a campaign in which he was traded between leagues.

That’s pretty good. Put another way, it’s so good that even though Samardzija finished 21st in Zach Sanders’ end of the season rankings for starting pitchers, it’s hard not to feel that he was still a bit cheated from fully realizing his fantasy potential.
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Adam Wainwright will be a bust for fantasy owners in 2015. And so we’re on the same page here, by bust, I mean that Wainwright will fail to earn his draft day cost by a meaningful margin. It does not necessarily mean that he will perform poorly and cost his owners value. Since it’s still far too early to get a sense of how fantasy owners will be valuing players next year, and specifically Wainwright, I will again reference the slow mock draft I’m currently participating in. He was selected as the 11th starting pitcher off the board. There’s serious downside at that price.

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• I am going to dissect the DL data since 2002 in any possible way. I already plan on examining team trends, position trends and how certain injuries affect production. Is there anything else you would like look at while I am going over the information?

• At MLB TradeRumors, I examined if the amount of career pitches makes a difference on a pitcher’s health and came to the following conclusion.

Boras continues to mention Scherzer’s pitching odometer as an advantage over Lester and Shields. However, the number of pitches thrown is not indicative of future injury. A high number shows the pitcher can hold up to the grind of being able to successfully throw for full seasons. The main issue between the three pitchers is age. Scherzer is four years younger than Shields. Scherzer’s body may still be able to hold up a bit better than the other pair, but they are still some of the healthiest pitchers in the league. The debate about the trio’s durability should begin and end with age.

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I had Garrett Richards on more than a few teams going into the season. I enjoyed his work. I liked him for the wrong reasons, though.

You see, I thought his changeup had promise. Among young pitchers that didn’t throw their changeup much (late 2013, 25 years old, <10% change usage), Richards’ change showed up as having a good velocity differential (8.6 mph). With an excellent breaker and all that velocity, and a good history of command, I thought the changeup would really tie the room together.

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A.J. Burnett was an absolute revelation with the Pirates in 2012 and 2013, as he followed up two lost seasons with two of the best years of his career. In 2012, a 35-year-old Burnett walked just 2.76 batters per nine innings, his best-ever mark in a career that dates back to 1999. The next season, he struck out more batters than ever before, punching out well over a batter an inning.

This year, the 37-year-old Burnett moved across Pennsylvania to Philly, and in many ways, reverted back to the guy he was in his last two years in New York. Suddenly, he was once again serving up more meatballs than the Olive Garden out by the mall, pitching to an unsightly 4.59 earned run average in his 34 starts.

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During the season, my Daily Grind column relied heavily upon what I called the Factor Grid. It’s a simple spreadsheet with a few of the most important park factors. With those in mind, fantasy owners and daily fantasy players can wisely select the hitters in the best offensive venues and vice versa. It’s a simple but effective strategy.

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It’s starting pitcher recap time, woohoo! So let’s kick things off by checking back with my preseason Pod’s Picks. I only included pitchers from my top 78 in the bullish section, while the bearish section lists only pitchers included in the RotoGraphs consensus (which excluded my ranking) top 78.

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