While this article is a little shorter than normal, I combed through all the recent articles and got caught up. I’m out the first part of the week but will see how much information is available for a mid-week article.

General

• Hitters could struggle without the needed reps against pitching.

Shelton said the Pirates are more concerned with transitioning their position players back into game-type activity, as it could be a shock to their systems to face live pitching for the first time in three months.

American League

Indians

• The starters will be ahead of a normal Spring Training schedule with one pitcher up to five innings back in May.

Indians pitchers pledged months ago to arrive at Spring Training Part 2 — Summer Training? 2 Spring 2 Training? — more prepared than they would be for a traditional spring ramp-up period. By the end of May, one Indians starter had already built up to a five-inning workload. But with an abbreviated schedule and expanded rosters, will teams even deploy pitchers in a customary fashion? The Indians could get creative, given their depth. Before injuries intervened, they had three starting pitchers — Plesac, Plutko and Aaron Civale — jockeying for the final two rotation spots.

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Notable transactions/News/Rumors

• Ryan Zimmerman may not play
• John Brebbia TJ
• Wander Franco on taxi squad
• Aaron Judge hitting off tee

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With baseball officially inching closer to an actual season, it is time to update draft ranks for those of you that are like me and still have leagues that still need to draft. I will likely be updating each set of ranks I release once or twice before opening day as news of the schedule, players opting out of the season, and other information could shake things up tremendously. However, here are my current starting pitcher ranks as of now. (Beginning of tiers are highlighted in blue)

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Here they are!

I’ll have a whole column of notes on different guys on Monday. I just wanted to get the ranks out and we can start discussing them in the comments. This 60-game season is going to be so wild!

Previous list for comparison, though comparing a full season list to a 60-game one is tough.

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Some random ideas to think about.

• Normally, I don’t care about the opening day starters, they could give owners an edge with the league having an opening weekend. The top-three starters will be the only pitchers getting starts to give some owners a head start.

• Managers with playoff bullpen experience could be at an advantage.

”Managers who have managed in playoff situations probably have a little bit more advantage with how to use their bullpens and things like that,” Shelton said.

American League

Angels

• Shohei Ohtani will throw just once a week and never be a two-start pitcher.

Shohei Ohtani will be utilized similar to how he would in a regular 162-game season. He'll still pitch once a week. Maddon said he expects as a six-man rotation as a result.

— Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) June 24, 2020

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06/26/20

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.

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• @sporer – Host
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Charlie Blackmon has COVID
• As do several Blue Jays (no names yet)
  • Breaking News: Several Twins w/COVID, too
• Alex Verdugo is set to be ready
• Cole Hamels, too
• Angels eyeing Shohei Ohtani, Griffin Canning, & Felix Pena being available

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My initial goal was to determine the amount of variation in pitching stats in a short season. What I found was a stipulation filled mess. It should have been simple. Just take the first two months and compare how the pitchers performed to a full season. The short answer is that they did great because they pitched in cooler weather and were 100% healthy. Instead, should the results from August and Septemeber be used, by that point in the season, many had broken down and the breakouts (e.g. Lucas Giolito) emerged. There is no perfect way to answer my original idea, so I’ll try to provide several possible answers.

To limit the focus, I’m going to implement the following guidelines. It’s a lot and when I was setting them, I was questioning any possible findings. By changing any one of them, the process to find the results and the actual final results differ.

• Assumed a 12-team league and used SGP (Standing Gain Points) equation from The Process.
• I used historic Steamer projections to set the preseason valuation.
• I only examined WHIP and ERA. Most of the hot takes I’ve heard involve not wanting to deal with the possible variation in these rate stats.
• Ignored closers. They are their own beast.
• Focused on the 7 starters for 12 teams.
• Used April to May data and then August to September. Both aren’t ideal but the differences can then be analyzed.
• Anyone who didn’t pitch during the two-month time frame got zeros across the board.
• I just did 2019 and kept the mess to one season.

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06/23/20

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.

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• @sporer – Host
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Latest Proposal
  • Owners using March agreement
  • Target of 60 gms, starting 7/24
  • MLBPA likely to agree today by 5 pm CT
  • Universal DH likely for ‘20, uncertain for ‘21
  • No expanded playoffs
  • Dumbass runner on 2nd rule in extras
  • No jersey ads

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Note: About 95% of this article was finished before the news that MLB is going forward with a 60 game season.  I finished it knowing that more imporant work needs to be done. This series now comes to an abrupt end and I will return to the series once the season is over one way or the other.

I’m continuing my quest to predict pitcher injuries and their effects as best as possible. I started grinding through the process last week and found through some additional work that injuries from just the past two seasons drag down production. Today, I’m going to go over some other possible other injury causes and provide updated injury ranks.

While I’ve done quite a bit of my own work on pitcher injuries, I decided to scour the web come up with some new ideas. Here are some possible ideas ranked by how I’d like to investigate them.
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