The Relief Pitcher Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Alex Fast

LABR Recap

• Reactions to the LABR Mixed Auction League Draft

Strategy Section

• Closers
  • How should we draft closers in 2021?
  • What closer tiers are the best return on investments?
  • Is it better to pick a named closer on a bad team or an uncertain closer on a good team?
• Relievers
  • How should we set ourselves up for in-season play with relief pitchers?
  • How much are reliever ratios a consideration while drafting, as opposed to only considering the closers role (saves)?
  • When should you draft a valuable middle reliever over a named closer?

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3/4/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• TGFBI update (0:00)
• DH/expanded playoffs considered dead (15:55)
• Framber Valdez finger issue – season-ending surgery? (18:10)
  • AAA season delayed a month

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3/2/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• TGFBI update (0:00)
• Matt Chapman starts camp as DH (19:05)
• Xander Bogaerts shoulder MRI “nothing concerning” (24:22)
• Jesse Winker hip “no serious concerns” (28:31)
• Which reclamation would you draft? Scott Kazmir v. Shelby Miller (34:12)

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2/25/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Shohei Ohtani hits 97 in BP (4:50)
• Cody Bellinger a full go next week (11:07)
• Brandon Lowe getting reps at 3B (13:45)
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. lost 42 lbs. (19:02)

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Acquiring saves in fantasy baseball is becoming more and more of a headache. The Tampa Bay Rays had 12 different pitchers notch a save in 2020. Imagine if it was a season of normal length? With the league trending towards using their best pitchers in high leverage positions instead of the conventional only ninth-inning role, it seems like grabbing saves are only going to get more complicated. Below you will see some closers that likely won’t be too popular but could help you in the long run. A quick side note, there are a lot of free-agent relief pitchers (ie. Brad Hand) so things can definitely change. If you would like to read part one you can check it out here.

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Note: Make sure to read Piotr’s comment. It’s a simpler in-season alternative.

A completely underappreciated class of players is non-closing relievers. With starters going fewer and fewer innings, the gap between the starting dregs and good non-closers has narrow considerably. This past season Devin Williams, Matt Foster, Josh Fleming, and Pete Fairbanks each ended the season as a top-60 pitcher value.  Starters don’t throw enough to get the Win or accumulate many strikeouts. A reliever can easily occur more strikeouts than a single-start starter in a single week. Additionally, the strikeouts usually come with better ratios and the off chance for a Win or a Save. Picking out elite middle relievers is tough, but I have a couple of simple rules to follow to help find them.

Determining who is going to be a good middle reliever in the upcoming season is tough. It’s almost impossible. First, few repeat being lights out each season (e.g. Andrew Miller). Second, the relievers who show the skills to be elite from season-to-season become closers and their price skyrockets. It’s a dynamic group.

The 2020 season added to the chaos. When it ended, MLB and fantasy teams were just settling into their rotations. Middle relievers were just getting to the point of becoming roster regulars. I don’t think they were as valuable in the shorter season where teams had excessive FAAB to spend on a new pitching staff each week.
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I know information from the 2020 season will be suspect for future use and that includes closer usage patterns. Some parts are interesting. Others useless. Before going through each closer situation, I figured it would be a blood bath. After a month of constant flux, the results are better than I expected (not one established closer lost his job in September). The useable information seems to be in line with the last few seasons.

First off, the emphasis of this study is to determine how many draft-day closers make it through the season. Here is this season’s list with all previous studies found here.

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Introduction

This is the fourth article in my wPDI vs. CSW series. You can catch up by reading the first three articles – on called strikes, whiffs and residuals.

Here is a quick summary of some of the basics of wPDI & CSW from this series:

Last year, I developed the Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) framework, whereby all pitches can be classified into six different outcomes as follows:

Each outcome is then assigned a weight, or an index. A% through F% are the percent of pitches thrown in each outcome. The general formula for wPDI, the Weighted Plate Discipline Index is given as:

wPDI = Index_A * A% + Index_B * B% + Index_C * C% + Index_D * D% + Index_E * E% + Index_F * F%

wPDI can generate an all-in-one sortable metric used to evaluate pitchers. The plate discipline framework may be tailored to mimic (or to correlate to) various measures of deception or effectiveness.

In the first three articles of this series, we developed indices for wPDI to approximate the PitcherList metric, CSW. The Called Strikes + Whiffs (CSW) statistic was featured in last year’s FSWA Research Article of the Year by Alex Fast, and is defined as:

Called Strikes + Whiffs
Total Pitches

We separately tacked the called strikes and whiffs components, and landed on the following wPDI equation to represent CSW: Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

This is the third article in my series – wPDI & CSW. You can catch up by reading the first two articles – on called strikes and whiffs – found here and here.

Here is a quick recap of what we have covered so far:

In this series, we are looking at the PitcherList metric, CSW and how it relates to my plate discipline framework, wPDI. Last year’s FSWA Research Article of the Year by Alex Fast featured CSW, which is defined as:

Called Strikes + Whiffs
Total Pitches

With the Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) framework, all pitches are classified into six different outcomes as follows:

Each outcome is then assigned a weight, or an index. A% through F% are the percent of pitches thrown in each outcome. The general formula for wPDI, the Weighted Plate Discipline Index is given as:

wPDI = Index_A * A% + Index_B * B% + Index_C * C% + Index_D * D% + Index_E * E% + Index_F * F%

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08/27/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @JasonRRMartinez – Guest

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Taijuan Walker to TOR
  • How active do you expect the deadline to be?
• Joe Jiménez out as DET closer
• Is Craig Kimbrel getting the job back in CHC?
• 5 guys for the last 5 TB saves – anyone rosterable?
• Who would you trust most as COL closer: Bard-Diaz-Estevez?

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