Fantasy baseball analysts look for a couple things in a four-seam fastball: how fast is it, and where is it located? Generally speaking, we want to answer the the first question to be “pretty darned fast.” Our view of the second question has changed in recent years. With the emergence of pitchers like Collin McHugh and Sean Doolittle, we’ve learned that locating in the top of the strike zone can be an excellent pathway to strikeouts and hence good results.

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When the Cubs inked Jon Lester, it put a cap—at least until the team acquires another front-line starter—on a series of pitcher moves that will likely underwhelm the majority of Red Sox fans and fantasy players. Among Rick Porcello, Wade Miley, and Justin Masterson, Porcello is the closest to obvious fantasy relevance. Last season, he led the bunch with a 3.43 ERA and 1.8 walks per nine, but the three wins of real-world value are a more difficult fantasy sell for a pitcher who reached 200 innings pitched but failed to reach 130 strikeouts.

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Nathan Eovaldi’s fastball velocity ranked fourth among qualified starters this year. However, it hasn’t actually translated into strikeouts. In fact, the 10 pitchers with the highest velocity this year averaged a 22% strikeout rate. Eovaldi’s 16.6% mark was second worst in the group. Seven of the 10 pitchers sported strikeout rate marks above 20%. So it’s unusual to find a pitcher with such strong velocity to be unable to punch out batters at even a league average clip.

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Bud Norris had kind of a reputation as a hard-throwing but hittable right hander who could rack up some decent strikeouts, but had problems with his control and serious problems getting left handed batters out. The latter was an increasing issue as teams continued to stack their lineups with left-handed heavy approaches, and in fact in 2013, Norris gave up more hits to innings pitched than he had in his entire career.

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I recently signed on as an editor with a great up-and-coming site. One of my first assignments is to compile rankings for the 2015 season. As an editor whose compensation is tied to site activity, rankings are my best friends. The denizens of readerland LOVE rankings. As somebody who’s trying to build a new fantasy brand, well-done rankings are an excellent vehicle. As a fantasy player, I have serious reservations about the whole process.

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Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Chris Archer lived up to expectations in 2014. While Archer’s performance during his rookie season was strong, there were still some questions about his ability moving forward. His 3.22 ERA was strong, but his 4.07 FIP indicated things weren’t as rosy as they appeared. On top of that, there were questions about Archer’s ability to retain a manageable walk rate. There was also the issue of Archer relying on mostly two pitches, which led to some unfavorable numbers against left-handers.

Archer put most of those concerns to bed in 2014. There was no regression due to luck. In fact, Archer’s ERA and FIP nearly matched. While his walk rate did jump slightly, it remained at an acceptable level. And lefties, well, they were hardly an issue the second time around.

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Heading into his second full season, Wily Peralta got some sleeper love and it was easy to see why. A high octane fastball that averaged 94.8 mph last year, ranking fourth in velocity among qualified starters, will always get fantasy owners excited. And although his 2013 strikeout rate was an uninspiring 16.1%, he posted much better marks throughout his minor league career, suggesting potential for upside if he could translate his stuff into results. For those who looked past the inflated ERA and below average control and imagined what could be, you were duly rewarded with a 3.53 ERA and 17 wins.

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Episode 183

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix talk about, among other players in the news, Matt Kemp, Melky Cabrera, Dee Gordon, Yoenis Cespedes, Rick Porcello, Mat Latos, Andrew Heaney, Jed Lowrie, and Ervin Santana. Eno also segues us into an answer to a listener’s question about the potentially exciting future of Brandon Finnegan.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.

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Like, not that he’s throwing his curveball with his changeup, at the same time, although that’d be a cool trick (and probably the toughest pitch to hit in baseball). Like, maybe Gio Gonzalez wants to throw his changeup more often, and that has thrown the Washington Nationals, his outcomes, and/or fantasy baseball players for a bit of a loop.

Gonzalez’s overall numbers (a 3.57 ERA, 24.8 K%, 8.6 BB%, and 1.20 WHIP) weren’t too shabby. His ERA was notably worse than his FIP for the first time since 2009, though. You might even look at the career-worst BABIP against him in a season of at least 100 innings (.294) and LOB% (71.0) and say, Oh, that’s just a little bad luck, sign me up next time!

That’ll probably work out, but I hope to find a little more of the why. I’ve started to wonder if Gonzalez didn’t also have a bit of a transition/growth period in 2014 as he began to prepare himself for his 30s. Maybe he’ll be better and a little more dependable.

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You’ve heard me yammering about pitch-type peripherals for two years now, and we’ve made some advancements along the way. We established some good pitch-type peripheral benchmarks, and we took a first look at properly weighting each pitch. We’ve started to get a sense of how these things interact when it comes to the shape and speed of pitches. We’re making progress.

It’s worth stepping back and figuring out what the aim is at this point. Because we aren’t trying to rank the best starting pitchers overall, really. We’re trying to find undervalued pitchers before the market realizes that they’re good. So we have to move in the smallest possible samples. And we want to have a list of great pitchers that has some weird names on it as well. Those names, we hope, will soon start to make sense.

So, to that end, I’ve taken each pitch type and looked at only those pitchers that have thrown 100+ in each of those types. I’ve summed the ground-ball and swinging strike rates for each pitch, and then found the standard deviations. I’ve given each pitcher a z-score for his ground-ball rate and swinging strike rate on each pitch type. Then I’ve summed the z-scores for each pitch type, and then for each pitcher.

What we should be looking at is an Arsenal Score. With this way of looking at things, it’s possible to have one dominating pitch and still score well. Or a group of lesser pitches that are all positive.

What we haven’t done yet is nail down what the smallest sample for each pitch is. Or how to weight the pitches. Or how to weight the whiffs versus the grounders. So this may look different once we weight each pitch differently, and if we find a way to weight grounders and whiffs more correctly.

But at least we have a first attempt at it here.

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