In the latest episode of the Launch Angle Podcast, Rob Silver asked me how many Wins did I expect Chris Archer to accumulate this season. Basically, I came back with my normal response, I don’t chase Wins and don’t care. He pushed a little harder and wondered the actual difference. I just stammered out a horrible response because I didn’t know. I’m not one to not know so found out with the answer being a win or two.

For years, I’ve used the potential for more Wins as a tie breaker between pitchers with similar baseline stats (strikeouts, walks, and groundball rate). I focused on talent first. Usually, I found pitchers on projected better teams being drafted way ahead of those with similar skills on worse teams. I just assumed the better skills will lead the pitcher to as many Wins as the worse pitcher on a better team. There is no need for me to make that assumption anymore.

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Every year Jason Collette puts together a list of pitchers who are adding a new pitch. Last year, over 50 different pitchers said they were adding/changing at least one of their pitches. Once the season was over, the pitchers who made the biggest gains from adding a new pitch weren’t on the list. As much as I personally enjoy helping with the list during the spring, it doesn’t help fantasy owners. Instead of focusing on the list, I’m going to work propose a different method for finding pitchers to target.

Once every season ends, I go examine where the fantasy industry missed on players. Two top-15 pitchers who made the list were Robbie Ray and Luis Severino. In both cases, they began to effectively utilize a third pitch. For Severino, it was a changeup which generated a 13% SwStr% and his K/9 jumped from 8.4 to 10.7 and his ERA dropped from 5.83 to 2.98.

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Changing a pitcher’s pitch mix seems to be the newest path to success. Having a pitcher utilize his two to four best pitches can help him focus his arsenal for peak results. Finding these pitchers can be a huge advantage and the great and wonderful Eno Sarris used the original work to find Carlos Carrasco. I’m going to step an owner through the procedure using a few examples from the news so they can find their own diamond in the rough.

The basic idea behind changing a pitcher’s pitch mix is to have them throw as many effective pitches as possible. The original studies focused on above-average pitches. This is a simple method and one I use when examining a pitcher. The pitcher’s pitch results can be found by going to their page at FanGraphs, clicking o the Splits tab, then the Pitch Type Splits tab (example).

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Since NFBC ADP (average draft position) data has been available here at FanGraphs, I’ve kept the weekly values. Here are some biggest ADP movers over the past three weeks who started or ended up in the top-250 picks.

A note to remember is that a move at the top is more important in the steep section of the talent curve instead of later with the talent levels off.

Justin Verlander +2 (37th to 40th)
Zack Greinke +2 (44th to 46th)
Robbie Ray +3 (44th to 47th)
Yu Darvish +2 (50th to 52nd)

The second-tier starting pitchers are dropping in ADP. This drop is not surprising as my podcast mate, Rob Silver has noticed this spending trend away from starters in previous seasons.

I usually find it closer to 68/32 or 69/31 by March.

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) January 25, 2018

I don’t see either of these pitchers as dropping in value, just the overall hitter-pitcher mix.

Alex Bregman -2 (34th to 32nd)

Owners are liking Bregman more and more. I think he’ll eventually be going in the second round regularly as owner have a “fear of missing out” with him

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A few days ago, many of the best fantasy baseball minds got together for the 15-team mixed LABR draft. While several storylines existed with it, the running joke in the draft chat was it if Mike Podhorzer or Scott Pianowski would blink first and draft a pitcher. Mike did and took Jake Arrieta in the 7th round while Scott held out until the 12th. While these two owners obviously took accumulating hitters to an extreme level, other owners took a more balanced approach or bought into pitching. Finding a hitter-pitcher balance, especially in a draft can be tough to calculate on the fly. The following a simple tool to help with that in draft confusion.

The first concept to understand is that the talent is not evenly distributed. I went over this concept earlier this week showing the non-linear talent drop using auction prices. Using concepts from this analysis can help create a simple framework by giving each round its own auction value. This can be done by going to our auction calculator, entering your league settings, and downloading both the hitter and pitcher values.
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The lights-out middle reliever is making a huge inroad as being a valuable fantasy asset. Some are throwing nearly 100 innings and with 10 K/9 or better. Along with their great rate stats, they are a cheap option instead of many back-of-the-rotation arms. Al Melchior did a great job highlighting some of these arms this past week. I’m going to take his list and find out when they are going in NFBC drafts and compare them to the starters going around them to find any possible values.

One note to remember is that NFBC drafts are 15-team leagues with 9 pitchers per team with a decent number of pitchers on the bench for streaming. My plan is to acquire one of these non-closing studs and use him as a “streamer” when one of my pitchers has a tough matchup (e.g. road game at Colorado).

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Major league talent drop is not linear and it shouldn’t be treated as so in fantasy baseball but it does for many owners because we love our simple ordinal rankings. The talent drop from the best shortstop to the 10th is more than the drop from the 10th to the 20th. As soon as an owner moves away from using just rankings and goes to an overall production value they will gain a leg up on the competition. The whole idea can be explained by the talent distribution curve.

The talent distribution curve can be created with auction dollars. Other values can be used such as raw Standings Gain Points. But setting our auction calculator to the standard 12-team roto settings. Here is the talent distribution curve:

Note: While only 276 players are needed for this example, I extended the data out for deeper leagues. For those in 12-team -Only leagues, they will be picking at the 552 mark where the talent really begins to drop.

I’m not even sure if it has a shape. Maybe a sideways ‘S’. There is an extreme drop for about 100 picks and then starts to level off. Owners want to acquire as many players in this first group. In this part of the draft, talent needs to be prioritized over a position since talent differences exist more at this level.

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It’s tough to get excited about this year’s batch of rookie pitchers. One reason is that most of the top arms (Reyes, Gohara, Buehler, Flaherty) have already debuted in the majors. Many of the other top-ranked arms have not pitched in double-A yet.

With this year’s class looking down, there always seems to be a few pitchers who come out of nowhere like Luis Castillo did last season. He wasn’t picked among the top 600 players in NFBC and now he near a top-100 pick. Jake Faria and Dinelson Lamet were a couple other arms who were off owner’s radars. It just takes a pitcher gaining a couple ticks on his fastball or developing a new pitch to shoot up in talent.

I found it best to be aggressive on this these mid-season call-ups. They may be getting promoted because they are ready. Investigate any recent scouting reports and don’t be afraid to roster them if they’re talented.

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With prospect week happening on the main website, I’m going to look at the hitting prospects ranked by their NFBC ADP (average draft position). This will be the batter’s value just in redraft leagues, not in keeper or dynasty leagues. I’ve included the player’s average, low, and high ADP values along with their Fangraphs prospect ranking.

Ronald Acuna (133 ADP, 88 min, 207 max, #2 prospect)

As the first rookie hitter off the board, his price is just a little too high for me considering the options available after him. He’s a talented ball player who is consistently ranked as either the #1 or #2 prospect in the game. He’s going to be good but how good in 2018 is the question. I have two reservations about him.

First, the no league has had a chance to adapt to his weaknesses and then have Acuna adapt back. Even pitchers found Mike Trout’s “weakness” and he had to adapt. Acuna will need to also. The question will be when the adaptation will occur and how long will it take. Will it happen in the minors and take a couple months? Or will happen in the big leagues and only be a week or two. This adjustment time could really frustrate owners.

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