Blow Up Your Innings
I’m not intending to hurt the feelings of three quarters of you all, but this post is mainly for those of you fortunate to be in serious contention for money and/or bragging rights and/or special unnamed prize. Or whatever else you might be playing for that I probably don’t want to hear about. Chances are, if you’re still coming to Rotographs in late August, you’re at least sniffing the top third of your league or perhaps your day job lacks any level of mental stimulation.
I tend to use innings pitched as a gauge as to whether a team has an inflated win or strikeout total (ahead of pace) or if there’s a team lurking, behind pace in innings. It can put standings into context. This applies in leagues with an innings limit, of course. The rest of you can just move on. But if you’re up there still shaking a menacing fist at the leader of your league, or if perhaps you are the leader, I encourage you to just blow up your innings now.
Why? There are a few reasons – two practical and one kind of psychological.
It’s not news that some pitchers may face some kind of innings limit or they might have their workload reduced. This season, it seems like the list has grown longer than ever (this is unverified and likely embellished by my sense of urgency). There are no doubt many of you that have been relying on the likes of Jose Fernandez, Matt Harvey, Gerrit Cole, Shelby Miller, Jarred Cosart, Tony Cingrani, Taylor Jordan, Sonny Gray, Zack Wheeler, Julio Teheran, and Danny Salazar. I’m probably missing several names here.
Some of these pitchers have hard and fast inning limits and it’s been well publicized for some time. With others, the club gives us the nebulous, “we’re keeping an eye on his workload” which translates to “he’ll frustrate your fantasy team” to me. For a couple of the guys listed above, the team has actually said there will be no inning limit, but as a fantasy manager, you just have to bet they’re not going to be allowed to run up high pitch counts — and fewer innings pitched impacts you in points leagues and certainly impacts overall strikeout potential. At an absolute minimum, I just don’t like the uncertainty. I don’t like not knowing if a pitcher might get pulled at 85 pitches, have starts moved up for unknown reasons, or worse — simply get shut down.
Even if you set aside the issue of rookies or “limited workload” candidates — overall innings go down in September. Looking at 2012 and the average innings pitched per start by month, it’s pretty clear that all starting pitchers have their workload reduced:
Of course, it makes perfect sense. If you’re the Seattle Mariners or the Los Angeles Angels of another city and you’re sitting there 15 games out in September, what motivation do you have by letting Felix Hernandez or Jered Weaver throw 120 pitches? The debate can rage all it wants relative to the Washington Nationals’ decision to shut down Stephen Strasburg at the end of the season, but the fact is, you’ll get less bang for your buck out of your starters in September (and in fact, strikeouts per start actually dips to the lowest level in September, if you really wanted to know…).
Lastly is the psychological, so it’s probably not even a thing. But in leagues where I’m in first, I like to bludgeon the competition. Even if I’m left without a starter to use the last two weeks, I like to build a lead so formidable that other managers start to get sloppy. You know even if you’re a dedicated fantasy manager, there are those teams you check twice a day and there are those teams you occasionally forget about because you’re not sure you’ll be competitive come October. That affects games played and that’ll only help you during the sprint.
Go on, win your league. Blow. Them. Up.
Michael was born in Massachusetts and grew up in the Seattle area but had nothing to do with the Heathcliff Slocumb trade although Boston fans are welcome to thank him. You can find him on twitter at @michaelcbarr.
What about the fact that in September pitchers face lesser competition, with the expanded rosters, wouldn’t that be a reason for doing the opposite and waiting, as long as you dont have any shut-down candidates?
Because then you’re banking on good things happening in September, that may or may not actually happen. Good innings in August are every bit as valuable as good innings in September. If you have the opportunity _today_, don’t sit guys down just because you’re trying to pace yourself on innings. Start your regulars in any decent matchups, and stream guys with +matchups, just like you would any other month.
strikeouts per start, or K%, because if IP/Start goes down, so will K/Start…
the only issues I’m having with blowing up my team is that there’s some real clunkers dropped by these streamers…
Here’s what I’ve done the past few years, and I’ve had fairly good success with it.
My main jelly bean league has a 1250 innings cap (note: that means that we also essentially have a ‘ceiling’ of 1250 K’s or so…means that I use Ks/9 as the first tie-break when deciding on a pitcher, for example).
I keep a spreadsheet with my current SP roster plus my list of ‘streaming option’ SPs. The spreadsheet includes projections from a couple of different sites, and I have a schedule for each team that I use to track expected starts.
For most of the year, I use that schedule mainly to plan out my expected streamers. But once we get down to the last 4-5 weeks of the season, I make extremely heavy use of the schedule both for streamers and for my main SP roster. I try to be about 50 innings ahead of the IP cap pace as of late August / early September to account for the possibility that some rookies are also likely on innings limits, or aces may get a few days’ extra rest here and there.
I then look at my roster of SPs’ schedule and potential streamers, and focus only on the most favorable matchups, to maximize my remaining innings. I’ve even traded away theoretically ‘better’ pitchers (that I won’t be keeping) for solid pitchers with a much better schedule. For example: This year I made a trade that included trading away Jake Peavy for Alex Wood. Peavy’s on a very good team that scores lots of runs, but Boston has a brutal stretch run over its last 30+ games: Baltimore, Detroit, at Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Toronto, two games AT Colorado, then closing at Baltimore. Atlanta, on the other hand, is also a fairly strong offense but has an absolutely beautiful last month: Here’s the Braves’ stretch run from September: Miami, Mets, Phillies, Miami, Padres, Nationals, Cubs, Brewers, Phillies. It’s one reason I’ve had Maholm stashed on my DL for a bit now.
Based on the schedule over the last 4-5 weeks, I plot out how many starts I expect to make with my main guys; I assume 7 innings per start (that’s a bit on the high side, but my RP corps will offset any difference anyway). Then I look at how many innings or starts that leaves me short so I have an idea of how aggressive I need to be in streaming.
Right now I have 260 innings left, and I expect to get roughly 32 starts from my main SPs (Verlander, Hernandez, Hamels, Wood, Maholm, Lynn, Salazar, Samardzija). That will be 32 starts against the dregs of the league: Minnesota, Houston, Miami, White Sox, Phillies, Giants. That comes out to around 225 innings, so I’ll probably need to stream once a week or so the rest of the way.
This is totally Surista.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs
I’d laugh but I’m too busy stacking my jelly beans.
Surista,
To be really honest, I’m impressed and a little jealous I can’t put that much thought into my teams. That’s good stuff. However, when I get close to that much thought or figure out something special like that, I try keeping it to myself, it’s so hard though not to blab to the rest of your league how smart you are and ask why they aren’t doing it this way or that, because obviously that’s why I keep beating your ass.
As an aside, how awesome is that video? I’m not a big fan of that group, but that has viral internet meme written all over it!
Jesus, how much did you spend on your first three SP?
Doesn’t take as much time as you think – the first year it took me a long time to get the spreadsheet set up and working as I wanted. And I do spend some time at the start of the season setting it up for the new year. But the sheets are all linked and auto-update, so I don’t need to spend much time on it at all.
That video is *awesome* btw.
Will H: Actually I didn’t draft -any- of my current SPs; all via (Hernanez, Verlander, Lynn) or waiver wire pickups.
All via *trades* or waiver wire pickups.
My main argument against this: people who blow up their innings tend to drop good SP to fit other needs. This week, the 3rd place team tried this, and after that dropped Derek Holland.
Can’t say it will always happen, but it’s something to be aware of.
This this this this this THIS. This is exactly why I try to keep somewhere under the innings limit coming into the final month. As teams hit their max, even aces no longer have any use, so they get dropped. It’s already begun…one team dropped Shields just yesterday in one league I am in. Large rewards to be reaped by timing your last IP to fall within the last 2-3 days. This has worked very well for me in the past.
Don’t forget about another quietly known innings benefit, at least in Yahoo, is if you have 1 inning left, the next day, you can run 9 starters out there and collect all of their stats. If you have temas dropping aces, you would be well suited to keep at least one inning in your pocket if you know that is going to happen.
I’ve never seen this happen. Can’t imagine a money league would allow it.
Seriously? You’ve never seen this happen? Wow, happens in every single league I am in. There’s no rules against it, perfectly legal, so unless your league agrees it can’t happen before the season starts, you’re actually pretty dumb not to take advantage of this (actually very well known) “trick”.
RMAN – I was referring to dropping top pitchers after running out of innings, not the little starter “trick” — which, by the way, is total bullshit and they need to fix it.
I think at the end of the day, like you said an inning is an inning. If you can max out your innings with all of the best rates and counting stats possible by the end of June, you should do it.
The Yahoo inning thing is a double edged sword. If you are only worrying about counting stats then it is a no brainer. If you need to also consider your rates, you certainly won’t be trotting out the AAA probables for the day that could easily blow YOU up.
Well, most leagues do have can’t cut lists, which alleviates the problem somewhat. In my league R.A. Dickey and Derek Holland have both been dropped in the last two days by owners waaay ahead of their innings cap.
RMAN – That sounds insane. I’ve never seen anybody hit the innings limit in August. Actually, in the 8-pitcher, 8-team AL only keeper league I’ve played in for years, usually only 1 or 2 teams hits the 1250 IP limit at all. You must play in a league with a really low IP limit. Or you just play with morons.
If you play a league with an IP limit and 9 of 10 teams are not hitting that limit every single season… there seem to be extra morons to go around.
Dom – by the last week of the season, even a 10ER blowup isn’t going to move your ratios a whole lot, especially if you have 8 or so other guys going that day that are more likely to pitch at least decently. Sure, if the race in those rate categories is super close, obviously you need to choose carefully, but by the last few days of the season there usually isn’t very many points to gain or lose in the rate cats.