We can be dumb about pitching. Rather, we tend to be not as smart in April as we are later in the season. As the year goes on and we get more information about the skills that pitchers (and their opponents) have, we naturally get more choosy with who we’re willing to start.

In April, however, we’re still all high off of draft prep and are more willing to believe whatever narrative sold us on them in the first place. We put aside obvious questions like, “What if Chris Paddack still has a terrible fastball?” and  “But isn’t he still Andrew Heaney?”, instead going full bore with, “Good enough to draft, good enough to start!”. At least until the wheels come off.

The simple reason to raise your bar for starting early in the season is that this is when we know the least about the pitchers themselves, as well as their opponents’ general offensive prowess, strikeout rate, win likelihood, etc. Compared to what we’ll know later in the year, we’re often flying blind in April, at least in terms of the pitchers outside of the top tiers. And yet at the time when we’re the least informed, our bar for starting is often the lowest.

Obviously, you want to avoid bad starts all the time but I aim to be even more risk-averse early in the season because I want maximum flexibility later in the year. Acquiring good ratios (whether via FAAB, the wire, or trade) is expensive (or impossible) later in the season while scrounging for wins and strikeouts can be cheap. That is, at least they are if you don’t need to stress about ratios when doing said scrounging.

August and September may seem far away but focus on keeping your ratios shiny early and you’ll give yourself more avenues for doing business later.

Let’s go deeper on a few of the shakier options you may be tempted to roll with early, but just remember to choose wisely.

Read the rest of this entry »

You may remember, in the before times, a game called Beat the Streak. The game challenged baseball fans to hypothetically beat one of the greatest records of all time. The idea was to pick one player each day to get a hit and to do that 57 consecutive times, beating Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hit streak record. Way back in preseason 2020 I wrote about my ambitions of becoming a millionaire by using predictive, machine learning models to aid in winning the competition. The game’s 2020 cancellation gave me time to think, time to read, time to learn how noisy my upstairs neighbors are, and time to build a better model.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is happening! Watching baseball again is quite possibly the best feeling in the world. Better than getting married and I can say that because my wife doesn’t read any of my stuff…. can’t say I blame her. I decided for the entire season to run a weekly article on pitchers who have been “heating up.” I will dive into what it could mean for the pitcher and what you should do with them. This should be a captivating concept because it will be pitchers of all levels, anywhere from aces to pitchers you would have never drafted. That’s what it’s all about, catching players as they improve and acting on it before anyone else can realize. Welcome to “Throwing Heat!”

Read the rest of this entry »

When grabbing pitchers and hitters towards the end game of the draft it makes complete sense to grab players who start off with an easy schedule. Based on the Main Event format where 450 players are taken overall so we will stick with pitchers who are in the 400 range. Below are some pitchers who are decent additions to start the season due to their matchups. Just make sure not to hold on for too long where they can burn you.

Alec Mills, CHC 432 ADP 

Projected starts: vs PIT, @PIT, @MIL 

I was crazy enough to make a bold prediction that Mills would be the SP1 for the Cubs in 2021 so how could I not mention him here? Mills is known for being deceptive and seems to possess our brand new shiny toy called seam-shifted wake. He holds a deep arsenal where he prefers to lean heavily on his sinker and four-seam fastball. His pitches provide a ton of movement especially his changeup and slider (throw them more Mills!). Overall the late price could be seen as perceived value. 

Read the rest of this entry »

1) Zach Eflin is the Matthew Boyd of 2020.

Matt Boyd had a lot of buzz coming into the 2020 season. He had a stellar first half of 2019 and the high strikeout rate seemed like an intriguing option. Well, this year it seems like Zach Eflin is being touted by several analysts in the fantasy baseball Twitterverse. Last season overall Eflin produced a 3.97 ERA, 3.39 FIP, and an impressive 28.6 K%.

Of course, any time a pitcher raises their strikeout rate by 10% it will bring excitement. I’m here to temper those expectations. On the surface level let’s look at what he did in two months compared to his career average.

A ton of improvement compared to his career numbers. Eflin is only 26 so growth can occur but with improvements on surface stats, we have to look deeper to figure out why he improved.

Read the rest of this entry »

As the saying goes, boring is better. A lot of fantasy baseball players look for the next best thing. This is mainly due to the fear of missing out on a breakout or new exciting young player. Sure, it’s extremely valuable to find those pitchers but it’s also really hard to find them. What most don’t realize is that taking those “old” boring players can be just as valuable. With a long track record and decent numbers, these pitchers could give you stable innings and ratios with a predictable floor.

Read the rest of this entry »

For this article, we will be going through a couple of pitchers that you might want to avoid on draft day. This doesn’t mean they are in a sense bad, it just means based on their ADP they don’t seem to have any perceived value. This could be for a variety of reasons such as playing time, stuff, or injury history.

Walker Buehler ADP 19

We all know that innings will be at a premium coming into the 2021 season. We have heard of teams already saying tack on 100 innings to their innings pitched from last season. We have also heard of teams already setting a hard cap like the Mariners. This is the only reason you might want to avoid Walker Buehler.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training can be helpful in determining a pitcher’s future performance. While most of it should be taken with a grain of salt, sometimes it can be a calling card for things to come. Some major components to look out for involve velocity, command, and pitch mix.

Read the rest of this entry »

At the beginning of free agency, there were so many free-agent closers on the market. This left it very difficult to get a grasp on bullpens if you were drafting in November and December. One popular strategy for those who were drafting early was to grab one of the top four to five relief pitchers so you didn’t have to worry about it. Recently there have been a few signings that could clear up some of these muddied situations. 

Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post, we looked at Ottoneu head-to-head (H2H) leagues and how starting pitching values shift due to different rules. Because season-long points leagues use an innings-pitched cap, innings pitched are the scarce resource you expend (and need to maximize) during the season, putting a premium on SP who post high points per IP. But because H2H leagues use a games-started-per-week cap instead of IP, IP are no longer a scarce resource and the premium is on pitchers who score a high number of points per start, regardless of their points per IP. Today, we’ll see if we can identify pitchers to target or avoid based on that.
Read the rest of this entry »