Archive for Starting Pitchers

On Monday, I started a dive into which pitchers owners might want to stay away from because the pitchers don’t go far into games, limiting their chances for that all-important Win. Today, I’m going to focus on those late picks who are talented and could immediately take on a full-inning workload.

Just for reminder, I’m targeting these pitchers who go longer into games because I expect the second Spring Training to be shorter than normal. Pitchers won’t be stretched out to start the season. Also, the games will be condensed with some starters in piggy-back situations as managers need to pull out all the stops to win games.
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I’m annoyed hearing and reading about how all pitchers will throw just as many innings as the aces in a shortened season. I could see the starts possibly being the same since the younger pitchers won’t wear down and need a phantom IL stint or start skipped. The deal is, if Justin Verlander and Julio Urias make the same number of starts, Verlander is going to throw a ton more innings, accumulating more Wins, and his elite rate stats will be better.

In 101 starts over the past three seasons, Verlander has thrown over 101 pitches 72 times and made it to 5 IP for to be eligible for a Win 95% of the time. Urias has never thrown over 100 pitches and in his starts and only reaches 5 IP in only 46% of them. The extra innings are going to be huge and help boost Verlander’s chance for a Win and boost the impact of his elite rate stats. I’m going to highlight the starters who can be counted on for a few more innings for an advantage in this shortened season.

I’ve backed off guessing what type of season is going to be attempted. Each week there seems to be a new plan that gets “leaked”. I don’t want my valuations to be influenced by some Florida-Arizona rankings but teams end up playing in their home parks. There is one known item, the season will be condensed and some pitchers won’t be on season-long innings limits. Also, a short second Spring Training may have some pitchers building up their arms into the season. For these reasons, I’m planning on targeting pitchers who have historically gone deep into games.
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After working my way through the first eight rounds of the website ADP draft,  some sites leaned heavy pitcher while others were drafting just hitters. Before continuing the draft, I wanted to determine the split difference for each website. The difference wasn’t as big as I thought considering the results seen to this point in the draft.

Just for reference, I used the ADP data collected at FantasyPros from ESPN, Yahoo, NFBC, CBS, FanTrax, and Real Time Sports (RTS). Next, I assumed people were drafting a 12-team league with 23 players (14 hitters, 9 pitchers) which works out to 276 players. Then, I gave each player an auction dollar amount based on their ADP. Finally, I divided them into two groups and added up their auction dollars. Here are the results
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Let’s talk about the best prospect fastballs! These are the 9 pitchers with at least a 70 grade FB – Present (FBP) and 50 or higher FV grade for those with a 70 grade FBP.

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While I had little luck finding the next Lucas Giolito, he still intrigued me. He was possibly the worst major league starter in 2018 (6.13 ERA and 1.48 WHIP in 173 IP). Last season, he remade himself by throwing harder (avg FBv from 92.4 mph to 94.3 mph), throwing more strikes (4.7 BB/9 to 2.90 BB/9), and reworking his pitch mix (dropped the sinker and curve).

The problem is that standard projection systems still incorporate the previous three or more results which hurt his projection. Our auction calculator (Steamer) ranks him as the 45th pitcher while he’s going as the 14th pitcher in the NFBC. Fantasy owners knew to reset his projection but to what? I decided to create a projection system called the GM (Giolito – Marte) based only on the previous season results. Nothing more.
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The last of the Finding Giolito series comes to pause. I couldn’t find any footage on Logan Webb and the Manaea video was crap. That said, the Garrett Richards looked great.

Garrett Richards (Padres, RHP)

Games

• 3/3/20
• 3/9/20

Notes

• Pitches straight ahead attacking the plate.
• The slider has a curveball shape but in the low 90’s.
• He never controlled the curve in either game. He was just giving away those pitches.
• In the third inning of the 3/9 game, he lost control of everything. He might have tried throwing his change since he bounced a couple pithces way in front of the plate.
• While the broadcast talked of the changeup, I didn’t notice him throwing one else it was one of the pitches he bounced.

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Sadly, the NFBC team building fun comes to a close. To go along with my splendid $14 offense, I attempted to assemble a $246 pitching staff using NFBC average auction values from March 15 and on. Just as I failed to spend all my money when buying a dominant offense, I left a buck on the table here as well, only spending $245. Let’s see what such an insane staff looks like.

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Last week I started a series on finding the potential Spring Training breakouts based on increased velocity and a possible new pitch. I planned on going in-depth on a couple of guys but found no game footage for Nick Pivetta, Danny Duffy, and John Means. Instead, I pivoted to Alec Mills.

Alec Mills

Improvements

• Fastball velo up 0.8 mph.
• New two-seam grip.

Games watched

• 2/26/20: 2 IP, Best game to watch. Good camera angle and pitch velos.
• 3/7/20: 3.2 IP, Horrible camera angle.
• 3/11/20: 1 IP

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I’m continuing my quest to find the next Lucas Giolito breakout and failed with these two. They both were to be adding slider and some added velocity.

Tyle Mahle: Reds right-handed pitcher

Games

• 2/29/20
• 3/5/20

Notes:

• Some rise on the fastball but it’s really straight (95 and 97 mph from broadcast on two pitches).
• The curve was inconsistent and he hung a few.
• Just didn’t throw a put-away pitch in the second game.
• He had no feel for the splitter at all in the 3/5 game. It was better in the 2/29 game.
• I wasn’t sure what he was doing. He might not of known either.

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Yesterday, I assembled a 14-player offense from the hitters who weren’t bought in NFBC auctions since March 15. Today, let’s flip over to the pitching side.

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