Tipping Pitches: Max Scherzer’s Home Runs
We’ve seen a paradigm shift in fantasy baseball the last couple of years as starting pitchers are being trusted more and more as early round, bankable assets. There has been a sharp change in offensive environment across the league as the “PED era” has given way to “Strikeout era” and fantasy managers don’t want to get caught without a premium ace or two, similar to how you needed at least a couple 30+ HR bats in the early-2000s to have any chance in the offensive categories.
This year is the most confident I’ve ever seen the market be in starting pitching as the top 20 were all drafted within the top 70 picks overall. Another six after that still made the top 100. Taking it a step further, 18 of those 20 were top 50 picks compared to just 10 pitchers elected as such in 2015. We are now a month and a half into the season and a whopping 60% of the top 20 starters are underwhelming against expectations. Some are lagging in a category and feel just a click off from dominating. Others are just flat out bad. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be investigating what’s going on with those in the top 20 who are underperforming. Today, let’s look at of the biggest laggards compared to expectations: Max Scherzer.