We’re about a month into the season (holy cow, seriously, it’s whizzed by so far!), and offense is down at levels we haven’t witnessed in a loooooong time. So I’m going to take a break from my usual player specific leader and laggard boards and review some leaguewide metrics. You may have noticed in your fantasy league standings that pitching ratios are significantly better than we’re used to. In my shallow 12-team mixed league, four teams are sitting pretty with a sub-3.00 ERA! Two teams have a sub-1.00 WHIP (I’m barely above at a 1.0057)…whaaaaaaaaaaat?! Even in my AL-Only Tout Wars, four teams have posted a sub-3.00 ERA, which is just insane! Naturally, these strong pitching results must mean that offense has been missing. Let’s review some of the most basic of metrics to find out what’s driving the decline in offense.

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Ya know what I care most about from a starting pitcher? The ability to generate whiffs. So if I could choose just one metric that excludes ERA and any estimators to evaluate a pitcher, it would be SwStk%. So let’s review the top 10 starting pitchers in SwStk%, as there are some surprises in the group.

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Yesterday, I shared and discussed the nine qualified starting pitchers that have most underperformed their SIERA marks. Let’s now flip over to the overperformers. This group has posted ERAs significantly below their SIERA marks. Are these ideal sell high candidates? Let’s find out.

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With qualified starting pitchers having made four or five starts, it’s the perfect time to start comparing ERA to SIERA marks. While ERA stares us all in the face and could cause panic when it’s significantly higher than expected or excitement when it’s far lower, it’s not all that meaningful over a small sample. Instead, we should be focused almost solely on the underlying skills, and mostly ignore the actual results. Luckily, we have a metric that accounts for these underlying skills and calculates an estimated ERA based on those skills — SIERA. It’s all I look at over the first few months of the season. Heck, I’m not sure there’s a time at all during the season where I choose to use ERA instead of SIERA! So with that in mind, let’s first review the qualified starting pitchers that have most underperformed their SIERA marks. Do any of these names make for good trade targets? Let’s find out.

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Over the last few days, I have shared the wacky rates hitters have posted over the small sample early season so far. Let’s now jump to starting pitchers. A total of 27 starters have made three starts so far, while the rest of the qualified are sitting on two. So these rates are not very meaningful, but are certainly fun to look at.

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Let’s finish running through the extreme performances on the hitting side before moving to the pitchers. Today I’ll check in on the batted ball type related metrics.

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Let’s continue on our journey of identifying the extreme offensive performers so far over the first week and a half of the season.

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What I love about the first couple of weeks of the baseball season is all the crazy rates players are posting. In small samples, the range recorded in all metrics is much wider than over a larger sample. Obviously, the larger the sample, the more a player’s performance will revert toward his true talent level. In only nine to 11 games, anything goes! So for fun, let’s take a gander at some of the weird and wonderful rates that have been posted by hitters so far.

So there’s at least some care given to sample size, I limited my dive to hitters who have recorded at least 30 plate appearances.

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Earlier this week, I shared and discussed starting pitcher velocity gainers on Monday and Tuesday, and then relievers yesterday. Now let’s flip to the fastball velocity decliners. My level of concern for the pitchers on this list, and for those who missed the cut but have also suffered declines, is lower than my excitement for the velocity gainers. Given the abbreviated spring training, it’s understandable if some pitchers are still building up their arm strength, and we’ll see their velocities gradually rise closer to what we expected. Surprisingly however, leaguewide velocity is actually up! During the same date range of Apr 7 – Apr 12, 2022 fastball (four-seam, two-seam, sinker) velocity is actually up from 93.4 MPH in 2021 to 93.6 MPH in 2022. So it’s hard to use the blanket short spring training as an explanation, but I’m sure every pitcher is affected differently. Bottom line is while this group is certainly worth monitoring and a trip to the IL with an injury shared could certainly be announced, I wouldn’t panic just yet.

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This week, I have been identifying and discussing the starting pitchers that have enjoyed a fastball velocity surge during their first start. Let’s now shift over to relievers. Even without recording saves, middle relievers can earn value in deeper leagues. This has been even truer in recent years as starting pitchers have been averaging fewer innings per start, so the difference between a replacement level starter’s strikeout and win totals and a good reliever’s is much smaller than it used to be. Let’s now discuss six relievers that have most increased their fastball velocities so far. Remember, the sample sizes here are small and velocity does fluctuate from game to game.

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