Building a 2021 $9 NFBC Pitching Staff, A Review

Last week, I reviewed two fun exercises using the NFBC average auction values (AAV) from early March to build various imaginary offensive rosters, including a $14 squad composed solely of $1 players, and a team constructed from hitters that weren’t even rostered. Today, let’s flip to my various pitching staffs, beginning with the $9 group composed of all dollar guys.

First, the good news. In my original post, I included the staff’s ATC projections. The team saved more games than projected, and posted lower ERA and WHIP marks. That validates my choices that this group wasn’t getting as much credit as I thought they should. Unfortunately, because several pitchers didn’t record as many innings as expected, whether because of injury, suspension, or poor play that resulted in a demotion to the minors or bullpen, the squad just missed their win and strikeout forecasts. No biggie, you would have replaced those innings with someone else and easily eclipsed the win and strikeout projections after that.

Sadly, only four pitchers even earned positive value, while four hurt fantasy teams, and a last failed to record even an inning all season due to injury that required Tommy John surgery (as a reminder, I’m fantastic at picking players that miss significant time to injury). Remember that these dollar values are calculated assuming you start the pitcher all season. That’s important because Domingo German’s strikeouts and WHIP were both positives, so if you just calculated his value during the time he pitched, it likely would have been positive.

Far and away, the best pick of the bunch was Robbie Ray. If including him here was enough to convince you to go the extra buck or move him up slightly on your draft list, then this article was a rousing success. Ray led the American League in ERA by a significant margin and was the only qualified starter to post a mark below 3.00. He also led the league in strikeouts. He may very well win the Cy Young, which is a huge surprise after a disastrous 2020 when he posted a 6.62 ERA. This year, Ray’s control was suddenly the best of his career, while his fastball velocity spiked to its highest mark since 2016 and the second highest mark of his career. Massively improved control, plus a velocity surge are quite the recipe for a career year. I bet on him here merely for the strikeout ability. When you strike out that many hitters, good things could potentially happen and for a buck, it’s worth taking the risk on those ratios.

Sticking with the starters, Tarik Skubal was the second most profitable, but barely earned in the green. He was severely limited during September, never throwing more than four innings, which capped his win and strikeout totals. After an awful April, Skubal went on a thrilling run in May and June with strikeout rates over 30%. It didn’t last though as his strikeout rate fell to just 20% in July, before rising up again to 28.7% in August. Then during the last month, his strikeout rate fell back down once again to just 21.2%, despite pitching in shorter spurts, which you would have thought would boost his strikeout rate. It was a truly up and down season for the 24-year-old. Home runs were a major issue for him, but you have to assume he’ll improve on that 20% HR/FB rate. I’m still buying in 2022 given the strikeout potential.

At one point, Caleb Smith was on a nice run as a starter, but he had been clearly outperforming his underlying skills. Eventually, his luck ran out and the results regression got him demoted to the bullpen. As an extreme fly ball pitcher, his skill set isn’t heavy enough on strikeouts and features far too many walks to be successful. I bet on his strikeout potential here and got burned.

Dane Dunning made a respectable debut in 2020, but his luck metrics turned the opposite direction this year, so while his SIERA improved, his ERA actually spiked. That’s just the way it sometimes goes over small sample sizes. Amazingly, he won just five games in 25 starts, though he often didn’t even qualify for one since he averaged just 4.6 innings in his starts. There are some nice seeds here with a GB% that surged over 50% and a history of solid strikeout rates. His slider has been elite the last two seasons, while his changeup was fantastic this year as well. While he’ll need to push that strikeout rate back up, he’s an easy candidate to post a sub-4.00 ERA next year.

As we round out the starters, we finish with Mitch Keller, who has tested my patience like no other. Let’s just ignore his ERA for a moment. The biggest issue here is the disappearing strikeouts. Perhaps it’s because he has lost more than a mile per hour on his fastball since his 2019 debut. That year, his slider was incredible, generating a 26.8% SwStk%, while his curveball was solid enough at a 13.2% mark, and his four-seamer recorded an 8.1% mark. Since then, his slider’s whiffiness has dropped considerably, but has still remained around average, while the rest of his pitches have been…pathetic. His changeup this year recorded an almost impossibly low 1.1% SwStk%. Over his career in 127 pitches, it sports just a 1.6% SwStk%! Oh, and its wOBA against is .496. Why does he continue to throw it?! Given the velocity and potentially premium slider, there’s clearly potential here for a future breakout, but so much has to be improved upon that it’s impossible to know when or if it’s going to happen.

Now let’s talk relievers. Jonathan Hernandez, who I thought would compete for saves in the Rangers bullpen, instead missed the entire season. But Diego Castillo and Gregory Soto made up half of the profitable pitchers on this team. As a reminder, finding saves among the dollar bin is extremely difficult, so recording 34 of them from two players is a win. If Castillo didn’t wear a Rays uniform, he would have likely earned a lot more saves, but every time you were sure he was the de facto closer, the team would give someone else an opportunity. In fact, 14 pitchers recorded at least one save for the team! That’s crazy. Then of course he was shipped off to the Mariners and continued to face competition for the job. He ended up saving just two games for the team despite posting a 2.86 ERA.

Similarly, Gregory Soto was on and off as the Tigers closer, as he lost his job to former starter Michael Fulmer and then it temporarily looked like Jose Cisnero was the man of the hour. Soto, though, enjoyed the much improved results I thought he was capable of, except this time it required more luck, as his skill actually declined versus 2020. Walks remains a major issue, so it’s hard to imagine him getting near 20 saves again without a major improvement in control.