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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.
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The standard pitching metric of production in Ottoneu points leagues is points per inning pitched. With a 1500 IP cap, innings are currency and you need to maximize the return for every inning pitched. But in head-to-head leagues, innings are no longer the scarce resource managers have to manage. Instead, each team can throw an unlimited number of innings, but there’s a limit on games started per week. For Ottoneu head-to-head, or any other league with a games-started cap for pitchers, the pitching metric that matters for SP is not points per inning pitched, but points per game started. And that can swing values. The question is, how much does it matter?
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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 »

With the recognition now of how wins is a terrible statistic for starting pitchers a lot of leagues have moved to quality starts. Wins for a pitcher has very little to do with their ability. Sure they can put themselves in a position for a win but they are then reliant on both their offense and bullpen to achieve that win. Just take a look at Jacob deGrom (you can probably hear me sigh from wherever you are reading this). Quality starts is something that is more so based on a pitcher’s performance alone. It’s simple, pitch at least six innings with no more than three earned runs and you earn a quality start. Let’s glance at the quality start leaders from last season.

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Let’s start off with the obvious here, what is Z-Contact%? If you check out our handy dandy glossary you would see “Pitches on which contact was made on pitches inside the zone/Swings on pitches inside the zone.” For pitchers, quite simply how often do opposing hitters make contact on their pitches when they throw inside the zone. Here are the leaders from 2020.

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Saves+Holds leagues seem to be on the up and up because of the volatility of the saves category. We all are aware of the shift in team philosophies when it comes to the ninth inning. Many use committees, some use specific pitchers in high leverage situations (could be the 7th, 8th, or 9th inning), and few use one pitcher. This is where Saves+Holds leagues come into play, eliminates the headache of chasing the ever-elusive saves category. Here are the 2020 Saves+Holds leaders.

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If you were to dabble in the fantasy baseball community on Twitter you would find many analysts and writers posting interesting, compelling, and sometimes unbelievable statistics. Ones that sometimes bring forward hidden gems. Often they are lists that combine multiple metrics. Last offseason Kenta Maeda was on a lot of those lists.

He backed up all of his underlying metrics from 2019 by producing a fantastic 2020 season and making the entire fantasy baseball community look like geniuses. Since December 1st Kenta Maeda has been drafted as the 46th player overall and the 15th pitcher off the board. That’s some high praise but drafting is about acquisition cost and begs the question, are we taking Maeda at his ceiling leaving little room for any kind of regression?

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