I love the idea, almost to a fault, of taking one or two of the top 5 SPs in the first and/or second round. The reason I like getting these top arms is that they provide a ton of strikeouts with great ratios. This base in ratios allows me to ignore pitching for almost 10 rounds and then bottom feed. One problem I’ve run into with this strategy is that I won’t have this option available if I’m picking in a draft’s first few spots. I’m not passing on the five-category hitters and according to the current NFBC ADP (average draft position), the top Aces will be gone by the time my second pick comes around. If I’m forced into this situation, I’m considering going with the what I’ll call the “Streaming WHIP” plan.

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How different are these two pitchers?

• Pitcher A: 3.67 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 24% K, 7% BB, 3.18 FIP
• Pitcher B: 3.77 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 28% K, 7% BB, 3.41 FIP

I’d probably lean toward B as I’m a strikeout slut, but the idea that they’re markedly different wouldn’t really hold up. Even if you look at their pitches, I’m not sure there’s a clear difference:

• Pitcher A: -4.2 FB, 10.0 SL, 1.4 CB, -1.3 CH
• Pitcher B: -4.8 FB, 11.2 SL, 4.8 CB, -3.2 CH

Pitcher B has a stronger second-best pitch with that curve, but Pitcher A’s fastball and changeup were both better while the pair shared similarly strong sliders. After his campaign, Pitcher A was taken as a top 40 SP in most drafts. Currently, Pitcher B is going among the top 25 SPs, which means yes, it’s two different seasons for these stat lines. Both also happen to pitch in the most hitter-friendly environment the game has ever seen.

By now you’ve likely guessed that both are Colorado Rockies.

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We all knew that Sonny Gray’s days as a New York Yankee had come to an end, and finally, the Reds acquired him and immediately signed him to a three-year extension. Moving to the National League is a good thing. Will the park switch improve his chances to rebound as well? Let’s check the 2017 park factors.

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It’s time to start discussing pitcher rankings and fantasy managers need to know it’s a new landscape for two reasons. First, the idea of every team having one or two 200-inning starters is *over*. The top arms are putting up similar stats to the past. The change now is with the floor. It has just fallen. Starters are just not going as long and the Wins and Strikeouts they accumulate are gone. Second, many bullpens are now going to more of a committee approach where there aren’t 30 set closers but more like 20. The lack of Saves in a concentrated few closers boost their value and the overall value of every Save.

It’s time to get to the rankings. I used the 15-team Standings Gain Points (SGP) Formula from The Process to create these rankings. I used FanGraphs Depth Chart projections (stats in the table) along with three other sources (not to be named). I ranked them by the average SGP value and also included the standard deviation in all the values.

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It seems as though each year, fantasy baseball analysts, “professional” and amateur alike, hone in on a new — or, if not new, then relatively untouched — metric or data set for their endlessly eager consumption. In 2015, FanGraphs introduced batted ball data to its leaderboards. In 2016, Statcast data was unveiled, although it arguably didn’t become popular until 2017, and before the 2017 season FanGraphs changed the game with its splits leaderboard. Baseball Prospectus has introduced myriad new metrics, too — DRA in 2015, DRC+ last year, etc. — and we began to lean into pitch-specific performance analysis last year. (The latter-most topic is relevant to what follows here.)

I recently joined Christopher Welsh and Scott Bogman of In This League on their podcast. I thought one of the evening’s questions was particularly topical and prescient (and I paraphrase): What will 2019’s it metric be? The question was asked with pitch values, something I’ve seen garner increasing attention on Twitter, in mind.

You can acquaint yourself with pitch values directly from the man who created them:

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1/14/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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SPs We Like Outside the Top 50:

• NFBC ADP (set to 12/25/18 for the start date to follow along)

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Shortly after the onset of last season, I dug into pitch-level statistics to see how much swinging strike rate (SwStr%), ground ball rate (GB%), and isolated power (ISO) varied by pitch type. I felt inspired after analyzing Madison Bumgarner before the 2018 season and noticed his fastball, once elite, was utterly broken after his dirt bike accident. (See his 2018 player caption and this July post in which I followed up MadBum’s lack of progress.) I felt encouraged by the praise the post received from readers and fellow analysts alike for the clarity it provided. I’d like to think it helped move the needle, even if only slightly, in terms of how we evaluate pitchers.

I wanted to refresh the guts of that post for the 2018 season with additional metrics. There’s not much else to discuss; this’ll be short and sweet. (I’ll toss in some gratuitous high-level analysis following these tables.)

Notes:

• All data is courtesy of PITCHf/x via Baseball Prospectus
• All tables present average rates for starting pitchers only
• Due to pitch tracking/stringing not being perfectly precise, the numbers below are highly accurate but not completely so and may not align exactly with FanGraphs’ batted ball data (for example, Baseball Info Solution strings far fewer line drives than does PITCHf/x)
• Click headers to sort!

Batted ball outcomes by pitch:

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As we anticipate Dallas Keuchel finding a new home this offseason, we should probably be wondering more about where he will be locating his sinker in 2019 than where his moving van is headed.

Sinker location has been key to Keuchel’s success, and his mostly-consistent five-year run has been nearly unique this decade. When he shaved more than two runs off his ERA from 2013 to 2014, Keuchel had a dramatic breakout that may have been most notable for what didn’t change. He didn’t throw substantially harder. He wasn’t notably better at throwing strikes or getting whiffs, chases or freezes. Keuchel did induce more grounders, but his biggest improvement came in his avoidance of hard contact. His rate dropped from 29.3 percent to 19.7 percent, and in the four seasons that followed, Keuchel continued to demonstrate that skill — as long as his sinker was down and away from righties.
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Strikeouts have become a massive part of today’s game both on the field and in fantasy baseball. The ability to consistently miss bats is a key driver in success and can be a building block for a breakout. Let’s take a look at the top 10 gainers in SwStr% (min. 100 IP) and see what drove their gains.

Gerrit Cole, Astros | +4.6% to 15%

We’d been waiting for this Cole breakout since he debuted! He had the big 2015 season with 2.60 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in 208 IP, but even the 24% K rate that season felt short of what Cole’s arsenal could do at peak. There was a valid concern that Cole wouldn’t ever reach those heights, though. The Pirates preach heavy fastball usage which can undercut the potential of a secondary arsenal as strong as Cole’s. During Cole’s 2013-17 tenure in Pittsburgh, they led baseball in starter fastballs at 62%.

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Mike Foltynewicz, a first-ballot Hall of Namer, immediately strikes me as someone who outperformed his strikeout rate (K%) in 2018. I don’t have to look far for confirmation: his 27.2% strikeout rate outstripped his 10.3% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) by a mile. Because whiff rate correlates so strongly with strikeout rate, it serves as a useful proxy for what one could expect of a pitcher’s strikeout ability.

I generally follow this rule of thumb when I’m reluctant to get too into the weeds when assessing peripherals: SwStr% * 2 = K%. It’s imperfect but useful in a pinch. Folty violates this rule of thumb pretty dramatically. Of 13 qualified pitchers who struck out at least 27% of hitters, his 10.3% swinging strike rate falls well short of the shortlist’s 2nd-lowest mark (Charlie Morton, 11.9%). Foltynewicz’s 2018 performance has already wilted under what amounts to very little duress.

Still, I wanted to allow Foltynewicz the opportunity to redeem himself. Whiff rate does not a pitcher make; there are other components to plate discipline allowed such as chase rate (O-Swing%) and zone rate (Zone%), among others, that describe each pitcher in much finer detail. I broke down a pitcher’s plate discipline allowed into its component pitch outcomes:

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