American League SP Tiers August Update
Tier update week is upon us again and it’s time to check in on the American League starting pitchers. Check out the July rankings to refresh your memory and rememember that these rankings only reflect how I expect the pitchers to perform over the rest of the season.
Justin Verlander
CC Sabathia
Zack Greinke
Felix Hernandez
Jered Weaver
Not surprisingly, no movement here as the expected aces are doing their things. However, we do welcome Zack Greinke to the American League and shower him with fantasy love. I would still like to know what magical pills Weaver is taking though. His BABIP has dropped every single season since 2007 and now sits at a ridiculous .230, his LOB% is over 80% for the second year in a row, and his HR/FB ratio once again stands below 7.0%. He’s the Matt Cain of the American League, as his SIERA is significantly above his ERA as usual. He does induce a better than league average IFFB%, but his LD% is also above league average this season and his fly ball rate has come down, both of which should have served to increase his BABIP, not lower it. Anyone? Bueller?
David Price
James Shields
Jon Lester
Chris Sale
Dan Haren
Yu Darvish
Some may have an issue with leaving Shields in this tier, and it’s understandable. However, his luck metrics have really bounced around, so it’s hard to make the determination that he simply lacks the skill to post league average rates in those categories. He’s done it before. Jon Lester just cannot catch a break. While his SIERA tells us that he is indeed pitching worse than last year, the majority of his season results are clouded by poor fortune. In July, he posted a 9.36 (!!!!!) ERA, which oddly also represented the month with his highest K% of the season. I still think he’ll be fine. Darvish drops to the bottom of the tier as his control hasn’t improved as I expected. He’s still generates gobs of strikeouts, but his ground ball rate isn’t quite as high as I figured, which would help eliminate all those base runners reaching via the free pass.
C.J. Wilson
Matt Moore
Max Scherzer
Jake Peavy
Would you look at that, C.J. Wilson is human after all. After outperforming his peripherals since becoming a starter, his luck finally began to disappear, as he has allowed 23 runs over his last 29.2 innings spanning 5 starts. His surface stats look a lot more reasonable now, but he is still at risk for furting ERA inflation given his 4.00+ SIERA and sub-3.50 ERA. With an ERA nearing 5.00, but an AL-leading 3.12 SIERA, Scherzer is going to show up on everyone’s sleeper lists next year unless he turns it around in a hurry. While better defensive support isn’t going to suddenly manifest itself, it’s hard to believe that ERA/SIERA disconnect will continue, and at the very least, he’s a strong source of strikeouts. Yeah, it’s too late and not very helpful now, but Peavy moves up a tier now. His ERA has jumped above 3.00, so I don’t have to worry as much about luck regression leading to a poor rest of season mark.
Josh Beckett
Jeremy Hellickson
Phil Hughes
Doug Fister
Hiroki Kuroda
Anibal Sanchez
Josh Beckett has finally been dropped another tier. I have always been a fan, but with his velocity and strikeout rates down, this move is overdue. It’s unlikely the good Beckett is going to materialize again this year unless he magically rediscovers his fastball. Hellickson continues to defy the odds, posting a strong ERA, despite one of the worst SIERA marks in baseball. We probably need more than the 300 innings of magic to know for sure what kind of expected ERA outperformance skills he actually owns, but I guess I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Hughes jumps a tier, as his velocity has returned and he is throwing a ton of first pitch strikes. The extreme fly ball tendency is an issue though. It’s odd too, because he was a ground ball pitcher in the minors. Fister also joins the tier as his strikeout rate is finally high enough, backed by a SwStk% nearing the league average for the first time. After a slow start, Kuroda’s skills are right where they have always been. Anibal Sanchez joins the rankings and obviously saw his fantasy value take a hit with the move.
Ryan Dempster
Francisco Liriano
Derek Holland
Gavin Floyd
Brandon McCarthy
Ivan Nova
Justin Masterson
Scott Diamond
Alex Cobb
Tommy Milone
Jarrod Parker
Chris Tillman
Carlos Villanueva
Ryan Dempster joins the AL tiers and is put in a tough spot in one of the league’s best hitter’s parks. According to his xFIP splits, Liriano really only had one terrible month, that one in April, but he has posted marks in the mid-3.00 range ever since. The move to Chicago does hurt him, but he has been pretty darn good since returning to the rotation. As such, he jumps a tier. I don’t know what led to Holland’s increased velocity last year, but it is gone now. Suddenly, he’s average all around and I’m less optimistic about his future potential. So, he drops a tier. After returning from an elbow issue, Gavin Floyd has walked 14 batters in 19 innings. Hmmm, is something more serious going on? Well, he drops a tier. Diamond has obviously been a pleasant surprise, but more strikeouts would be nice.
Milone jumps a tier as his strikeout rate has been much improved and his minor league history suggests it’s sustainable. I still don’t really care for Parker, but his control has improved and his Swstk% suggests a higher strikeout rate may be in his future. He jumps a tier. I am getting a little worried about Tillman. After debuting with an average fastball nearing 95.0 miles per hour, that average velocity has declined in literally every outing. In his last start on Monday, he averaged just 91.0. I have no idea what to make of it, but I obviously liked him a whole lot better throwing 95 than 91!
Jose Quintana
Felix Doubront
Matt Harrison
Bartolo Colon
Wei-Yin Chen
Clay Buchholz
Ervin Santana
Ricky Romero
A low strikeout rate and great fortune keeps Harrison in this tier. Colon’s great run is nice and all, but when you sport the worst SwStk% in all of baseball and aren’t even an extreme ground ball pitcher to offset all those extra base runners reaching via the base hit, I want no part of you. Santana and Romero are having forgettable seasons to say the least. They are very close to the bottom tier, which is crazy to have believed in the pre-season.
Kevin Millwood
Zach McAllister
Henderson Alvarez
Ubaldo Jimenez
Jason Vargas
Luke Hochevar
Rick Porcello
So is Ubaldo’s career over? What a sad story.
Injured:
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Greinke’s ERA- over the past two years are 101 and 95 respectively. I understand his peripherals are great, but I don’t see how you can put him in the same tier of pitcher as Verlander, Weaver, Felix, etc at this point in the season.
Agree. He and Price should switch places
I agre with Avon (or whomever). Zack Greinke above Jered Weaver, Felix Hernandez & David Price seems especially foolhardy and not at all reactionary enough.
Wait, what kind of league are these rankings for?!?! Because some preseason rankings are more useful.
Firstly, Greinke in the top tier? Uh, have you seen any of his games the past 3 months? What about the past 3 seasons? The fact that the writer celebrates Greinke but questions Weaver, huh? Seems to me like over-analyzing when the answer is right in front of your face.
Meanwhile David Price is hanging out with Lester and Yu. I hate being so negative, but this is borderline disinformation.
Ya, there is absolutely no way Greinke is the 3rd best fantasy pitcher in the AL.
All the guys in the first tier are better, along with several of the 2nd tier pitchers.
era-
does that account for a crappy defense?
Haren just can’t be in that tier until things get back on track.
Buchholz has been excellent for over two months now. He’s two tiers too low.
Not really. His xFIP in June was 3.94 and 4.16 in July. He’s just been lucky with a .253 and .200 BABIP those months which kept his ERA below 3.00.
What does his xFIP have to do with his standard rotisserie performance? Clay Buchholz is on a team that should give him ample run support & is 7-1 with an ERA of 2.43 & a WHIP below 1.00 since May wrapped. Do you think any Buchholz owners would even consider a SU trade whereby they’d receive Justin Masterson, Gavin Floyd or Josh Beckett at this juncture? Of course not.
the point, i believe, is that they should strongly consider such a trade if they are planning ahead instead of assuming that everyone will do exactly what they did the last 2 months
xFIP is a much better predictor of future ERA is than ERA itself. So while no one actually plays with xFIP as a category, everyone does ERA, and since these rankings are for future performance, I look at that metric before actual ERA.
So what is someone like CJ Wilson doing to stay so far above a Buchholz (or so high in general)? He hasn’t had an xFIP below 4.06 since Apr (though I’m skeptical of just utilizing monthly xFIP anyway) with a terrible walk rate. While he looks really good at times, he just hasn’t had any measure of consistency the last month-plus.
I’ve been down on Buchholz for some time and was really down on him coming into the season, but Collette & Normandin encouraged me to check out some of his starts with that sinker dominating and his success definitely cannot be written as simply “lucky”.
…errrr, okay maybe just one tier too low, on second thought (based on K-rate).
Grienke has 0 wins, 6.05 ERA, and 1.50 WHIP since June 28th. He does NOT belong in tier 1
These are rankings going forward, not how the pitcher has performed over the last month.
I hope must understand that, but I’m sure some are forgetting that. However, past performance is a key factor in predicting future performance. Greinke’s sharp skillset earns him those shiny xFIPs that make statheads drool, but his inability to avoid the implosion starts (often self-inflicted) prevent his results from matching those indicators.
I’m just not seeing how he can realistically be projected to out-perform Felix at this point, let alone Price and probably even teammate Weaver. Obviously in a short sample anything can happen and we’ll see some things we don’t expect in the coming two months, but I think there is a general overrating of Greinke at this point. Not just by you.
I’m sorry but David price is a CLEAR first tier guy at this point. That tier is a mess. How are darvish and price anywhere close in value?
They aren’t that close. Price is at the top of the tier and Darvish is at the bottom. The order within my tiers does matter.
‘Price is at the top of the tier and Darvish is at the bottom. The order within my tiers does matter.’
So the order does matter?
Still, there’s no way Price isn’t a first tier guy. I realize you’re saying there are degrees between them, but still having Price & Darvish in the same tier is a bit out there.
There is no consistency between the authors’ ranking methodology on fangraphs. I can’t tell you how many times a player’s ranking has been justified by the author with the explanation, “A player’s position within a tier doesn’t really matter; he can be switched with any other player within the same tier.”
I agree with that explanation, too. Isn’t that the point of tiers: to group the guys that you can’t realistically differentiate with a numerical ranking? Otherwise, why not just straight rank them from 1-100 and just eliminate the tiers altogether? If Price and Darvish are that far apart, put them in different tiers.
Is Zach McAllister too low here?
Curious why you’re not higher on Matt Moore – in his last 15 starts, he is 7-4 with a 3.11 ERA, a 1.29 WHIP and 90 Ks in 89.2 IP. He’s had only 3 of those starts where he gave up more than 3 earned runs and 10 with 2 or fewer. Is it the high walk rate (4.22 per 9)?
And what about Price has him not in the top 5? Is it the league-leading xFIP? #4 in FIP? #5 in K/9? #5 in fWAR?
I understand this is “for the rest of August”. Just wanting to know what trends you’re seeing that has them lower than they’ve pitched to date?
That’s funny, I was higher on Moore than everyone else! In fact, I own him in all my leagues. I dropped him a tier last ranking, because his walk rate hadn’t improved like I expected. Despite the shiny ERA, his xFIP hasn’t gotten any better. He’s just had better luck.
On Price, there really isn’t much of a difference between the bottom tier 1 guy (Weaver) and top tier 2 guys. Maybe $2 of value? That’s not a big deal. Price specifically though has a lower than league average SwStk%, which suggests that the strikeout rate should be lower. He’s also been quite lucky with LOB%.
I’m concerned reading through this that you see a number that is above or below league average and you instantly label it luck whether good or bad. It’s never that simple.
Like accounting all of Buchholz’s recent success to luck sells him REALLY short and I think it’s actually incorrect. I think that kind of stats-only analysis loses some folks and leaves you prone to bigger misses.
Stats are great and they definitely merit consideration, but it looks like they are the *only* factor in these rankings based on the commentary and then your comment responses. And I’m sorry, but there is just no way that Price hasn’t been a top tier AL SP and done enough this year & throughout his career to project the same going forward.
I dont think you know what a “tier” means
How you like Moore now? Kidding. Sample size notwithstanding, in his last four starts, his walk rate is down to 2.5/9 IP. Much more in line with what we were anticipating. As a Moore owner in a keeper league, I couldn’t be more excited for his next couple of seasons.
Beckett is a hot mess right now. I would have trouble trading him straight up for Bartolo Colon. At least with Colon you could start him in the Coliseum. When do I start Beckett? He has an unfavorable home park, in the toughest division in baseball. I’ve had him ride the pine in my league for the last month, and I’m thinking about dropping him. Theres no telling whenever he’s going to take a dump all over your ERA and WHIP, and since I can’t trust him, I’m honestly thinking about cutting him and just doing daily streamers.
Beckett is way too high….
Agreed. He at least needs to drop a group. And he isn’t striking batters out anymore. I dropped him for Doug Fister last week. No regrets at all.
You play in a league where Doug Fister was on waivers?? 5-teamer?
I think all Angels pitchers should have a BABIP of around .000with Trout and Hunter out there. Fly balls+big park+speedy smart OFs sounds like a good recipe for beating your predictors. Visiting Oakland and Seattle alot helps too, I’m sure.
say what you want about jason vargas, his dependence on safeco and so on, but he’s having a nice season and you’re still ranking him below jerome williams and derek lowe, who aren’t even starting pitchers any more. lowe isn’t even on a roster. seems harsh
Oops, forgot to pay enough attention to the bottom guys! I removed Lowe and Williams. As for Vargas, his SIERA is 4.40 and that comes with a terrible strikeout rate and a weak offense behind him.
Jon Lester is entirely too high. Did Rip Van Winkle contribute to this submission?
If you had any commom sense, you’d realize that these are rankings MOVING FORWARD.
I love how you ass clowns come on to these rankings’ posts to make ridiculous claims. Mike and co. do a great job EVERY DAY and for some unknown reason these pieces provoke non-sensical comments like the one above.
‘Nonsensical’ doesn’t need a hyphen. It’s one word. Also, what about the comment was nonsensical? Not a Washington Irving fan?
Of course it’s understood that the rankings are going FW (where did I ever say otherwise?) & I happen to be a big Jon Lester fan. Ranking him at any place near David Price &/or Chris Sale (above?) at this point is borderline absurd & can’t possibly be based on their performances or even their talent levels.
David Price should not be in the same group with guys like Lester and Shields. He has been one of the most consistent AL starters this year.
Exactly. Classifying Price otherwise is practically indefensible.
Mike – any idea when National league tiers will be up? Debating some options in trades here and need an extra perspective.
And Mike, I’m sorry, but the Lester ranking is a crazy head-scratcher. That K rate has been falling off a few years now. Not sure if he’s just a pitcher in decline, but that ranking – even going forward with great luck – is really tough to defend. Ive had a mancrush on him for the last 3 years, but clearly he’s not the same guy any longer
I mean, I like beer and fried chicken
more than most folks and my game is also certainly in decline. I see a correlation here…
BTW if you want another voice to juxtapose against Michael’s rankings, I released by rest of season SP ranks – http://paulsporer.com/2012/08/08/starting-pitching-rankings-for-remainder-of-12/
Excellent – thanks
That’s is not the correct context to use the word “juxtapose “.
Additionally, regarding your RoS “rankings”:
J Zimm > Burnett
Greinke > Cain
Weaver > Price
Wow, snark much? Sure it is: “to place close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.”
And those are your opinions… duly noted, but I obviously disagree. Greinke’s periphs are great, but he has to start being dinged for the fact that he isn’t performing up to them. His implosion starts on him, can’t just keep chalking it up to “bad luck”, especially if you watch ’em. I realize statheads love him and I do, too, but Cain is better.
Weaver is great; Price is better.
And why exactly are they “rankings” as opposed to rankings? LOL.
Paul, I am surprised you have Wainwright ahead of Weaver. I realize they are right next to each other, but shouldn’t a quick look at their stats show that Weaver is clearly better? I think a long look at their stats would show the same. Why was Wainwright ahead of him?
Ok, to insert the definition into you sentence:
“BTW if you want another voice to ‘place close together or side by side’ against Michael’s rankings…”
That makes no sense. You may have stated, “…another voice to juxtapose Michael’s rankings…”, it would probably sound like a better way to self-promote your site.
Can you please explain AJ being ranked above Zimmermann?
Do your rankings include arm tattoos?
drew, that was one rank I looked at yesterday right after posting & regretted. I think I’d reverse those two if I re-did em.
Wow, you’re trite. Honestly, if you weren’t behaving like a tool, I’d engage you in a discussion about the rankings, but you don’t seem to be worth the time.
“into you sentence” …
Sweet grammar, bro. Into you sentence? That’s not even a phrase!
See how that comes across? That’s how your messages read.
If you want to plug your own website, buy an advertisement.
Methinks Pdiddy = Paul Sporer, methinks.
Oh, c’mon… If you don’t want to go to the site, don’t click the link. It’s not like I’m spamming FG w/links to my site. It’s pertinent to the article and I’ve been a part of the community here for quite a long time. I’m not begging for click-throughs. I didn’t think it was a big deal.
Methinks you’re completely wrong. Methinks. I have one acct. here.
Methinks he’s a belligerent tool. Nothing to see here..
Gable, was that directed at me?
No Paul – it was for the Habs fan guy.
These rankings are basically useless for fantasy players so long as Price and Lester are in the same group. I don’t understand what Price would have to do to get in the first tier. Leave the AL East or something?
It’s ridiculous. Not to mention Chris Sale being placed below Lester on the same general tier (meaningful or not, in 2012 parlance they shouldn’t be in same stratosphere).
Can you imagine pitching a Jon Lester SU deal to a Sale owner whilst telling said individual to pay no mind to the ERA a shade under 6.00 because his K rate in July was his highest monthly rate of 2012? Me neither..
“Peavy moves up a tier now. His ERA has jumped above 3.00, so I don’t have to worry as much about luck regression leading to a poor rest of season mark.”
Um, what? This is moronic. Gambler’s fallacy much?
Totally understand your point here and I’ve struggled with deciding whether the gambler’s fallacy applies to pitchers in baseball or not. For the most part, I think pitchers do see their luck regress and their ERAs will change in a hurry to their expected mark. No studies to confirm this, but from experience, it seems to happen this way more often than not, as opposed to the pitcher just pitching near his SIERA the rest of the way, and finishing the season outperforming it.
Statistically speaking, the gambler’s fallacy applies (in that it remains a false expectation) everywhere. If we truly believe that baseball players performance, all things being equal, has a mean and a standard deviation, which is what basing projections on sabermetrics like xFIP explicitly assume.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_averages
If a pitcher’s true talent level is a 3.00 ERA, and he’s at 2.00 via some luck, with luck taken out of the equation, you should expect his ERA to be 3.00 going forward. You don’t expect him to have a stretch of 4.00 ERA performances to get him back to 3.00, before he becomes a 3.00 ERA pitcher again. I don’t see how this is logically arguable–players do not become worse than their talent level simply because they’ve played a bit over their head for a while and need to “regress”. Good luck to start a season doesn’t require bad luck on the back end to balance it out–or at the least, it has no place outside of a Matthew Berry column.
Completely understand your point, and I know that’s the argument in favor of the fallacy applying. However, I have seen time and time again that ERAs do overcorrect to make up for good luck earlier in the season. I justify this because our projections for a pitcher is that he is a true talent 3.00 ERA guy over a full season. That doesn’t mean every single time out he’s a 3.00 ERA guy. It’s usually a roller coaster ride, but eventually he’ll settle on that 3.00 ERA. So if the ups all happen to occur early in the season, then lots of times the downs will soon follow. Of course, no research to back this up, and not every pitcher follows this pattern obviously, but I do see it enough to have my doubts about applying the fallacy.
Sorry, Mike you’re just not making any sense here. “To make up for good luck earlier in the season”?? Are there a series of baseball gods doling out luck during the season and after sprinkling James McDonald with tons of good luck during the beginning of the season, they’re now dousing him with bad luck? That’s silly.
I think the problem is that you simply chalk *way* too much up to luck, good & bad. It’s a very simplistic (and generally incorrect) way of explaining things that run counter to your expectations. Brian nails it here and you willfully ignore it which, with all due respect, makes it hard to put much weight into your analysis & rankings.
Where does Straily fall? That was the #1 reason I came here 🙁
Ughhh, I knew I would leave someone obvious out. He’s a real tough one to peg. Lack of great stuff, but excellent minor league stats. Do the strikeouts translate if he’s only averaging 91? They haven’t so far for Hellickson who throws with the same velocity. Straily is also an extreme fly ball pitcher so home runs are going to be a problem, though Oakland’s park helps. I’d throw him into the I’m Not Okay tier.
But where in the tier, since there is apparently a huge difference between top and bottom 😉
Haren & Lester way too high. Fister in the same tier as Beckett? Ok.
WHAT ABOUT ME? IS MY QUALITY START MACHINE DONE?
I guess you’d go in the injured tier w/the others.
I’ll jump on the “David Price is first tier” bandwagon. If you are grouping in tiers then he is certainly more similar to the Felix/Weaver/Greinke group than he is to Shields, Lester, and Darvish.
Price has put up elite xFIP/SIERA in the low 3’s for 2 years running, lowering his BB rate while bumping the K-rate. He has had a WHIP below 1.20 for 3 years running now. Even if you expect him to “regress” to a 3.27 ERA (like ZiPS RoS projects, right at his SIERA/xFIP marks) the excellent WHIP, K and W totals clearly put him in the 1st tier.
Greinke has that lovely xFIP and K-rate, and I expect his ERA to drop to the low 3’s going forward like Price, but his high BABIP (he has NEVER posted a BABIP below .300 since his rookie year) keeps his WHIP at 1.20+. Outside of his super awesome CY year in 2009, he has never posted a WHIP below 1.20.
And if you are going to ding Price for his SwStr%, note that Greinke’s is lower this year (7.9%).
Compare their 2012 stats:
Price: 3.17 xFIP / 3.26 SIERA, 1.13 WHIP, 14 W, 8.88 K/9, 8.6% SwStr%
Zack: 2.96 xFIP / 3.12 SIERA, 1.26 WHIP, 9 W, 8.68 K/9, 7.9% SwStr%
Other than the slight xFIP/SIERA advantage Price is slightly better across the board. And you can’t expect the BABIP difference to iron out the gap with regression — Price has a .282 BABIP which is slightly higher than his career .274 mark, whereas Greinke’s .328 is a bit higher than his career .310 mark. Greinke gets less advantage from the awesome LAA OF defense because he is an extreme GB’er, but I would still expect that BABIP to come down a bit…
Not arguing that Price is BETTER necessarily going forward, but they are obviously in the same tier.
great comment, Batpig. It’s a shame the author refused to acknowledge it though. Lester lol
True, he stayed away from the more incisive replies on here, lol
That’s unfortunate. I think there were some really good replies/questions here. Not just hatchet jobs on Mike, but rather people looking for some real conversation to better understand the ranks because some things seems to contradict others and it’s hard to get a read on why he ranked some the way he did.
I just think its funny that most of the guys on FG and now espn unfortunately, have now focused all their emphasis on peripheral statistics rather than standard stat categories that are actually relevant to fantasy leagues…xFIP and SIERA are all great and fancy, often making people sound a lot smarter than they actually are…yet, most of these guys prolly wouldn’t trade josh Beckett for ryan vogelsong….essentially 2 straight years of dominance is simply written off as luck….has anyone considered that a lot of the statistical data collected in order to make statements like “xFIP is a better indicator of future success than ERA”…was accumulated during the steroid era?…where almost all pitching stats should be discounted
I just think in general there is a severe tendency to overvalue guys that have historically done well, while undervaluing guys that might only have had 1-2 good seasons….I like to read their rankings because I find them interesting, but in reality, they are so random….for instance, at this point, how can you seriously put Paul konerko ahead of A-Gon, whose prolly been the single best player in the league since the ASB?….whereas konerko may be headed to the DL….and these rankings should unquestionably look something like this…..Verlander, Felix, Price, Weaver….I love the undying faith in Lester…when is someone else going to realize that he’s really never had an elite elite season?….
Jesus Ubaldo! Be terrible or be great make up your mind! 10 K’s vs 1 BB tonight over 6 IP, and he’s done similarly well against decent offenses already this season! Most infuriating pitcher I’ve ever seen!