Justin Mason is joined by some of the best in the fantasy baseball industry to discuss everything you will need for you fantasy baseball drafts in 2024!
2/23/24
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!
Follow us on Twitter
PATREON
SP PREVIEW Pt. 2
Missed Top 30
Old Heads
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
The Mock Draft episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Chris Welsh
Strategy Section
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Athletics
• Joe Boyle is adding a sweeper.
Focusing this offseason on translating that high-strikeout form to the big leagues, Boyle added a sweeper to his arsenal of pitches, which also includes a traditional slider and curveball.
Blue Jays
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. dealt with full-body pain for most of last season.
The first baseman had documented issues with his left wrist and right knee last year — he missed a handful of games, but was never placed on the injured list — but he said his pain spanned “from head to toes.” That said, Guerrero didn’t want to use nagging injuries as an excuse for his performance, instead saying the onus was on him because he didn’t prepare as well as he could have.
“If I tell you that I didn’t play with pain in a lot of games, I would be lying,” he said. “But that’s not an excuse. It’s part of the game. Sometimes you got to go on the field and grind, even if everything hurts. Also, I probably won’t blame that because I didn’t have the best preparation in the offseason last year.”
2/22/24
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!
Follow us on Twitter
PATREON
INJURIES/TRANSACTION NEWS
SP PREVIEW Pt. 1
1st Round Aces
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Thanks to reader and LOTR enthusiast “Gandalfsstaff” for the comment they made on my article last week:
What if you hopped in the DeLorean and used the new formula pretending it was last year? Would it have predicted better picks in hindsight?
In that article, I wrote about the recipe I concocted, on the shoulders of giants, to target pitchers. I used the skills components in Ron Shandler’s LIMA plan and metrics from Eno Sarris’ pitching models to try and identify great pitchers in the upcoming 2024 season. The recipe included 2023 end-of-season stats and 2024 projected stats:
ATC 2024 Projections
2023 End-of-Season Actuals
Names like Zac Gallen, Gerrit Cole, and Corbin Burnes (new Oriole, no big deal) floated to the top of the bubbling, steaming pot. Ok, enough with the cooking metaphor. There’s a problem, though, with back-testing this recipe on last year’s data as Gandalfsstaff suggested. The K%, BB%, and HR/9 used in the recipe were projected by ATC. I don’t have data on last season’s projections. Next season’s Stuff+ metrics, also, aren’t specifically projected. Stuff+ is used to make projections, but we don’t see a fastball Stuff+ projection for Gerrit Cole in 2024. However, as you will see, Cole’s fastball will likely be very similar in 2024 to how it was in 2023. As complicated as that all sounds, back-testing to see which pitchers met all the requirements of the recipe by year’s end is not. Let’s go back in time. Here are the pitchers who accomplished all the bullet points above by the end of the 2022 season:
| Name | Team | IP | K% | BB% | HR/9 | CStr% | Stuff+ | Location+ | Pitching+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corbin Burnes | MIL | 202.0 | 30.5% | 6.4% | 1.02 | 17.0% | 126.5 | 101.9 | 109.1 |
| Yu Darvish | SDP | 194.2 | 25.6% | 4.8% | 1.02 | 18.2% | 113.7 | 102.5 | 105.0 |
| Zac Gallen | ARI | 184.0 | 26.9% | 6.6% | 0.73 | 17.7% | 107.5 | 105.2 | 106.9 |
| Carlos Rodón | SFG | 178.0 | 33.4% | 7.3% | 0.61 | 16.5% | 114.1 | 103.1 | 107.1 |
| Shohei Ohtani | LAA | 166.0 | 33.2% | 6.7% | 0.76 | 16.6% | 125.7 | 97.8 | 107.5 |
| Nestor Cortes | NYY | 158.1 | 26.5% | 6.2% | 0.91 | 17.2% | 106.4 | 103.3 | 104.5 |
| Brandon Woodruff | MIL | 153.1 | 30.7% | 6.8% | 1.06 | 16.9% | 113.7 | 106.9 | 108.5 |
–
| Name | Team | IP | K% | BB% | HR/9 | CStr% | Stuff+ | Location+ | Pitching+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bryan Baker | BAL | 69.2 | 26.1% | 8.9% | 0.39 | 17.4% | 110.0 | 100.1 | 102.0 |
| Jesse Chavez | – – – | 69.1 | 25.3% | 6.9% | 1.04 | 20.8% | 102.7 | 106.1 | 101.2 |
| Rafael Montero | HOU | 68.1 | 27.0% | 8.5% | 0.40 | 17.6% | 113.0 | 106.2 | 106.9 |
| A.J. Puk | OAK | 66.1 | 27.1% | 8.2% | 0.95 | 17.9% | 109.7 | 97.9 | 99.2 |
| John Schreiber | BOS | 65.0 | 28.8% | 7.4% | 0.42 | 17.0% | 115.4 | 99.2 | 104.4 |
| Kenley Jansen | ATL | 64.0 | 32.7% | 8.5% | 1.13 | 18.5% | 131.7 | 103.3 | 103.9 |
| Clay Holmes | NYY | 63.2 | 25.0% | 7.7% | 0.28 | 17.7% | 122.5 | 95.9 | 101.8 |
| Jason Adam | TBR | 63.1 | 31.7% | 7.2% | 0.71 | 17.3% | 120.5 | 97.7 | 106.5 |
| Evan Phillips | LAD | 63.0 | 33.1% | 6.4% | 0.29 | 20.5% | 126.2 | 101.2 | 108.1 |
| Edwin Díaz | NYM | 62.0 | 50.2% | 7.7% | 0.44 | 17.5% | 140.9 | 100.2 | 111.1 |
| Scott Effross | – – – | 56.2 | 27.1% | 6.6% | 0.48 | 20.7% | 113.4 | 103.8 | 106.9 |
| Michael King | NYY | 51.0 | 33.2% | 8.0% | 0.53 | 20.2% | 119.0 | 102.3 | 110.2 |
Now that looks pretty darn good. Anyone of those seven starters could have anchored a fantasy rotation. The true secret ingredient here is a dominant fastball. My attempt at creating a recipe pre-season 2023 did not turn out well because I wasn’t using the best metrics. pVals are not predictive and they didn’t belong in my preseason analysis. Stuff+, however, is predictive:
You can read all about the predictive power of Stuff+ and other pitching models, but the chart above explains a lot. Fastball Stuff+ is generally repeatable year-to-year. This is nothing new. Once a pitcher has a dominant fastball, they can work their secondaries with more success. Hitters, bless their hearts, have enough to deal with when a fastball’s Stuff+ rating gets above 100. Furthermore, the ability of a pitcher to earn called strikes is important because he needs something that brings the bat off the hitter’s shoulder when the hitter has the advantage. Sure a pitcher has a good fastball and secondaries, but if those pitches rarely get a “Strike!” from the umpire, hitters can just become observers. Finally, the LIMA plan skill components from days of old were just as good in 2021 and 2022. You can’t fake striking someone out. Let’s take a look at who followed this recipe to the flour-stained, bottom of the pages in 2021:
–
| Name | Team | IP | K% | BB% | HR/9 | CStr% | Stuff+ | Location+ | Pitching+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walker Buehler | LAD | 207.2 | 26.0% | 6.4% | 0.82 | 18.1% | 120.2 | 103.9 | 108.8 |
| Gerrit Cole | NYY | 181.1 | 33.5% | 5.7% | 1.19 | 17.6% | 128.4 | 104.5 | 113.8 |
| Brandon Woodruff | MIL | 179.1 | 29.8% | 6.1% | 0.90 | 17.2% | 113.9 | 107.4 | 109.4 |
| Corbin Burnes | MIL | 167.0 | 35.6% | 5.2% | 0.38 | 17.2% | 133.1 | 104.1 | 112.0 |
| Freddy Peralta | MIL | 144.1 | 33.6% | 9.7% | 0.87 | 16.8% | 110.7 | 98.1 | 104.0 |
| Sonny Gray | CIN | 135.1 | 27.0% | 8.7% | 1.26 | 19.5% | 108.2 | 99.8 | 102.1 |
| Tyler Glasnow | TBR | 88.0 | 36.2% | 7.9% | 1.02 | 16.5% | 135.3 | 100.2 | 109.7 |
–
| Name | Team | IP | K% | BB% | HR/9 | CStr% | Stuff+ | Location+ | Pitching+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scott Barlow | KCR | 74.1 | 29.7% | 9.2% | 0.48 | 17.3% | 112.3 | 97.7 | 102.2 |
| Garrett Whitlock | BOS | 73.1 | 27.2% | 5.7% | 0.74 | 17.5% | 114.1 | 105.1 | 107.4 |
| Clay Holmes | – – – | 70.0 | 26.7% | 9.9% | 0.64 | 21.8% | 125.5 | 99.9 | 101.5 |
| Michael Kopech | CHW | 69.1 | 36.1% | 8.4% | 1.17 | 18.9% | 127.4 | 104.3 | 112.5 |
| Ryan Pressly | HOU | 64.0 | 32.4% | 5.2% | 0.56 | 19.0% | 138.9 | 105.2 | 117.0 |
| Craig Kimbrel | – – – | 59.2 | 42.6% | 9.8% | 0.91 | 17.4% | 122.0 | 98.5 | 108.4 |
| Yimi García | – – – | 57.2 | 25.3% | 7.6% | 1.25 | 16.7% | 113.7 | 105.7 | 107.1 |
| Aaron Loup | NYM | 56.2 | 26.2% | 7.3% | 0.16 | 19.3% | 120.6 | 101.0 | 107.7 |
| Kendall Graveman | – – – | 56.0 | 27.5% | 9.0% | 0.48 | 17.8% | 111.3 | 98.7 | 100.3 |
| Phil Bickford | – – – | 51.1 | 28.5% | 9.2% | 1.23 | 16.6% | 113.2 | 105.1 | 107.9 |
Once again, the recipe yields positive results. Don’t get too hopeful about this recipe, it’s difficult to predict which pitchers will end 2024 having met all of the very challenging criteria above. It’s even more difficult for even the top-most gifted pitchers in the world to go out and do it! If I were stuck with only one statistic to predict with confidence for the upcoming season, I would choose innings pitched every single time. Nestor Cortes was awesome in 2022 but dealt with injury all 2023 long, limiting his innings pitched and therefore, a repeat great season. If only I were Biff Howard Tannen. Unfortunately, we can’t predict anything with that much confidence, so relying on repeatable skills and moving forward with fingers crossed seems to be the best way to go.
This is Jordan Rosenblum’s debut at Rotographs.
I’ve spent the last couple of seasons building out a fully-fledged projection system. You may have seen the StuffPlus-fueled version of them, ppERA, published by Eno Sarris over at The Athletic, or else variations of them elsewhere. Like most projection systems, mine includes aging curves, major league equivalencies, park factors, league run environment adjustments, historical performance, and regression to the mean.
My pitching projections performed well in terms of predictive accuracy in 2023, generally holding their own against other more established projection systems, with my rookie projections performing especially well. I must, however, concede that Steamer dominated the field overall—all hail! This article unveils my top 10 projected pitching prospects for 2024 and beyond, highlighting names worth breaking the TINSTAAP pledge for.
As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.
Angels
• José Suarez will be stretched out as a starter and is out of options.
Like Adell, Suarez is out of Minor League options and will have to be exposed to waivers if he doesn’t make the team. Suarez, 26, is coming off an injury-plagued year that saw him post an 8.29 ERA with 28 strikeouts, 20 walks and 10 homers allowed in 33 2/3 innings. But he has had success in the past, including a 3.86 ERA in 207 1/3 innings from 2021-22.
…
Suarez is currently stretched out to be a starter, giving the Angels some rotation depth. But his best chance of making the club is as a long reliever and potential spot starter.
2/19/24
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!
Follow us on Twitter
PATREON
INJURIES/TRANSACTION NEWS
OF PREVIEW Pt. 4
Mid-to-Late Rd Upside
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS