It seems we spend most Aprils ballyhooing about what should and shouldn’t be believed, what can and cannot be discussed. Some valid, some not. What I believe can sometimes get lost in early season analysis – or missed completely – is what the data (whether in April or September) can tell us beyond the numbers and beyond the sample.

Intent.

Good or bad, change or no change, we can find intent within data, regardless of sample size. Because, simply speaking, professional baseball is played by humans who are trying to be good at baseball. And like most humans, they will attempt to do more of what gets them a reward (being good at baseball) and less of what gets them a punishment (being bad at baseball).

If you start from there and work backward, intent can help you with analysis when the sample size is lacking. This can be more telling in regards to pitchers, at least early in the season, as they are the first-mover in baseball’s 1-on-1 battles, chooser of their path on every pitch.

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Baseball is happening! 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!”

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Baseball is happening! 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!”

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With Statcast replacing their radar-based tracking systems with the new Hawkeye (optical-based) system in 2020, what we’re now able to see on the field has taken another giant leap forward. What was once inferred is now being observed and those observations have led to ground-breaking work by Barton Smith, Driveline Baseball, and others in fully parsing the forces in play when it comes to pitch movement.

I highly recommend the above readings (and a host of others) for a more in-depth explanation but here are some cliff notes for those new to the concept of seam-shifted wakes:

Every baseball spins in a certain direction, spinning around a certain axis, resulting in a certain movement. The old method of determining spin direction was to use the movement measured by Pitchf/x and work backward to infer what the spin axis should have been. Or, “the baseball moved this way, it must have spun in this direction”.

Hawkeye’s cameras, however, are able to observe what the spin axis actually is after leaving the pitcher’s hand. When comparing the two measurements (inferred and observed) the deviation between the two can tell whether more forces than the downward one of Magnus are at play.

The work of Smith and at Driveline has centered around how the seam orientation of the pitched baseball in flight is informing those “side forces” and how best pitchers can attempt to keep their seams in the place most conducive for their desired movement. Sounds difficult but it’s certainly possible and pitchers have been doing it unknowingly as long as baseball has been played, playing with and cycling through grips in search of the elusive nirvana that is “I just found one that works”.

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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.

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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.

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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!”

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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