It’s a pretty straightforward board on Thursday. Be careful with the landmines out there, even the 1-x recos but also guys like Waldron, Black, and Smith-Shawver who have moderately intriguing matchups. I just don’t trust them in any of those road setups. If you want to discuss anyone further, drop a comment and I’ll get to ’em throughout Thursday!
I wanted to see what kind of pitching has been available on the wire this year so I took a quick look. I used the NFBC’s Rotowire Online Championship which is a 12-team setup with 9 pitcher slots in the starting lineup and just 7 reserves, no IL or minor leaguers. I took the pitchers who were picked up in at least 25% of the 228 leagues in the contest, so 57 or more leagues. From there, I just calculated their results from the time they were picked up through May 21st. I realize that’s not perfect because some guys have definitely been cut so many teams might’ve missed some of the ugliness.
Just a note that the date listed in the chart is the Sunday they were picked up so the data starts the day after which is definitely worth noting because several of these guys threw gems on that Sunday which no doubt raised their bid price that night. Also there are some guys listed twice and that’s not an error, they had more than one period where they met the 57-league threshold. Obviously in comparison to last year’s non-stop rush of pitching prospects who came up and succeeded, this feels light, but even compared to a standard year it feels like we aren’t getting much. Streaming is no doubt a grind in 15-teamers right now and it feels like that is trickling down to 12-teamers, too.
Individual SP comments back tomorrow… but as always, I’ll answer as many comments as I can throughout the day tomorrow so if you have a question about someone, just let me know!
The chart includes their 2024 stats (this changed over from last year’s stats on April 22nd), their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far (this is changed as of April 11th), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but that just means it is a riskier stream as the league gets shallower.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more value focusing on roto and then you can generally expand these recommendations a bit for points leagues.
We’re a month and a half into the season so it’s time for a big sweeping update on the SP rankings. See my Daily SP Charts for regular commentary on pitchers. The $ is the earned auction value so far this year.
There are 151 ranked because I left Cole Irvin even with Grayson Rodriguez returning this weekend just because I hadn’t see what they were going to do. I assume it’ll just be Irvin to the bullpen but I left him in the rankings for now removed him after I ran an update to get Scott into the rankings.
May 19th update – Added C.Scott, Removed C.Irvin, A.Houser | shifted some of the tier rankings
May 20th update – Earned Auction $ and ADP values updated for rookies who weren’t populating
What a treat on Thursday night. It’s a short slate, so you can focus all your attention on Jared Jones for the early game and then end the night with Tyler Glasnow’s start against the Reds.
