Daily SP Chart archive

Decided to skip commentary on some of the obvious ones where I didn’t have anything terribly insightful to say.

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Daily SP Chart archive

With so few games tomorrow, it is easier to just do quick notes on the pitchers going instead of going through the whole charting process.

Logan Webb SFG v. ARI – A fantasy ace; must-start. Reco: All

Ryan Pepiot TBR v. LAA – I’m still fully in on my guy. The 5.40 ERA isn’t great, but the 23% K-BB and 1.02 WHIP leave me undaunted by the extra runs he’s allowing. He’s still locked into my lineup and he gets DET next week, too! Reco: All

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Daily SP Chart archive

Pretty straightforward board on Wednesday. I think you have to stick with Fried and Gausman despite their slow starts. There’s a nice handful of streamer types to take shots with across all formats or in DFS. I really wish Feltner wasn’t a Rockie so I could just roster him all year, I think he’s really good. Next week I’ll start adding this year’s stats for pitchers. I just don’t want to people to get overly influenced by weird ass ERAs. It’s not like next week is some perfect cut-off, either, but I’m trying to wait for most guys to have 4-5 starts at least and I’ll do my best to point out when there’s 1 start causing a misleadingly bad ERA and things like that. I’ve got my chat on Wednesday at 1 pm ET so feel free to bring your questions there or just leave ’em in the comments of this post!

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Daily SP Chart archive

How do y’all handle Hunter Greene? Do you try to time him and skip home starts? Or just go all out and use every start? Obviously he’s a start in Seattle, but I feel like you almost have to do the latter and just run him everywhere. He was a top 150 pick so even in the shallowest formats, he is part of the upper 2/3rds of a roster so there is some real expectation of production. I can envision having a rotation deep enough to spot him a bit in 10-teamers, but in 12-teamers or more, I can’t see sitting him, especially because his splits aren’t even that severe so you can find yourself sitting gems and eating duds.

He and Nick Lodolo are tough ones for me because I’m a really big fan of both, but Great American Ballpark’s 128 HR Park Factor the last three years paired with Greene’s 1.6 HR9 and Lodolo’s 1.4 HR9 rates kept me away at the draft table. I know there’s a world where they both put it together enough to start suppressing homers, even at home, and fulfill their breakout prophecies. And that world is what feeds my FOMO with them.

Skipping Lodolo was just the injury to start the season and I don’t love drafting already-injured guys in the NFBC universe (7 reserves, no IL). But when push came to shove with Greene requiring a pick around 100 to really secure him (137 ADP in the Main Event with a min pick of 89), I just couldn’t see it. In one of my drafts, I took Tanner Bibee (who also throws on Tuesday) and Shota Imanaga in the 2 picks where I was really considering Greene, who went 4 picks after Imanaga at pick 125.

In my other draft, he lasted until 150 but I was hitter focused with 3 of my 4 picks from 101-150 and Yu Darvish as my only pitcher. I can certainly understand the argument for Greene over Darvish, but even at age-37 I felt more confident about what I can get with Darvish. They’ve been about the same thus far per our new Player Rater with Greene at 84 among pitchers and Darvish at 92. It seems like Greene has more upside because we can dream on just about anything if that stuff comes with a summer of premium command a la Germán Márquez in 2018, but we’re also not that far removed from Darvish’s 3.10 ERA/0.95 WHIP of 2022 which still exists as a potential upside. He started off that season with an 11% BB rate in 4 starts before delivering a 4% BB rate over his next 26 starts, fueling the excellent season.

Who do you like the rest of the way: Greene or Darvish?

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Daily SP Chart archive

Pitchers drafted in 150-250 range in the Main Event that I’m really looking to hold through this early storm:

• Mitch Keller
• Ryan Pepiot
• Luis Severino
• Kenta Maeda
• Griffin Canning

You can find that ADP here and then select Main Event. I think I want at least 5-6 starts before moving off this group if I bought in on them at the draft table. League size and who is available of course plays a role as these are mostly for 12s or more.

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Daily SP Chart archive

No comments on today’s chart. I am just dead tired and need to get to bed, but I will answer the comments throughout Friday if you have questions about anyone for tomorrow or the weekend.

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Daily SP Chart archive

I updated the wOBA rank to this year’s versus the pitcher’s handedness. Once the pitchers start to get 4-5 starts for everyone, I’ll add in their numbers. Even those are small samples, of course, but one absolute gem or dud isn’t carrying quite as much weight. Plus, I’m usually citing core skill changes in the blurbs.

Don’t panic over ugly ERAs. Yeah, they’re ugly to look at and frustrating, but I’m not going to panic if the core skills are in order. Luis Castillo has a 19% K-BB, right in line with his 20% the last two years. George Kirby’s is a bit further off the pace, down 4 ticks from last year at 16%, but his calling card control remains in order with just a 0.5 points higher walk rate at 3% flat. Hell, I don’t even worry about decimals on those rates so it was 3% to me last year, too. The difference between 2.5% and 3.0% is about 4 walks in the span of a full year, but I digress. I’m literally 0% worried about either Castillo or Kirby. But even if I was, it wouldn’t be actionable because there’s no world where we cut them. This was all just a slightly different way of telling y’all not to panic, which is the same thing I did yesterday, but after my chat today I figured it was worth reiterating… so don’t panic, it’s dangerous!

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Daily SP Chart archive

The internet has done a lot to foster the fantasy baseball community, but those innovations came at the expanse of a scourge: the up-to-the-second standings. They really don’t do us a ton of good at any point in the season, but they can actively hurt fantasy managers early on. Well at least how we react to them can. Your team doesn’t really have clear needs yet, at least not ones that weren’t there coming out of the draft. The exception of course would be a major injury that undercuts you in a stat.

The first two guys just eclipsed 60 PA on April 8th meaning no one is really off to a legitimately slow start just yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t monitor their skills, but there hasn’t really been much that is actionable thus far, outside of injuries. You can obviously churn 2-3 of your late rounders, but if you’re getting rid of any of your foundation (~top 2/3rds of your roster), then you’re probably doing too much. Trust the guys you drafted for some real time before declaring them cuttable. Just be careful out there.

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Daily SP Chart archive

The chart includes their last season performance until we get some actual data for this year, their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from last year (and then I’ll add the last 30 days outlook next month), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them (notes will be more statistical-based once we get some sample to work with). Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s basically a riskier stream for those spots.

These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more value focusing on roto.

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Daily SP Chart archive

The chart includes their last season performance until we get some actual data for this year, their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from last year (and then I’ll add the last 30 days outlook next month), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them (notes will be more statistical-based once we get some sample to work with). Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s basically a riskier stream for those spots.

These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more value focusing on roto.

Read the rest of this entry »