And now let’s begin our annual foray into Fantasy Baseball theology—a consultation of the Holy Quadrinity. For those of you who are new to our world: Back in the day, Bret Sayre of Baseball Prospectus posited that “the three skills that are most important to the art of pitching [are] getting strikeouts, reducing walks, and keeping the ball on the ground,” and that pitchers who can do all three of those things, as betokened by their above-average stats in those categories, are or can be something special. He called this approach The Holy Trinity.

The Quadrinity is our contribution to the ongoing dialectic. We look for pitchers who are in the upper half of two categories (strikeout percentage and soft-hit percentage) and the lower half—in other words, the upper half—of two other categories (walk percentage and hard-hit percentage). You can see why both the Trinity and the Quadrinity would work, insofar as they identify really good pitchers. But you don’t need them to tell you that Jacob deGrom and Chris Sale are really good pitchers. What we found surprising is that the Quadrinity often identifies pitchers who are in fact really good, but aren’t recognized as such by the Fantasy market. Read the rest of this entry »

This is always the most difficult ranking for me. I research and re-slot. Research and re-slot. And even after settling on this list, I could still draft a team differently as I start to draft for need over best available once I have 3-4 starters.

At any rate, I’ll keep this intro short because I have much more on the way about starting pitching, but I’ll reiterate as I do in all of these SP rankings to not focus too much on the number. I’ve discussed The Glob™ regularly since last year and it’s more prominent than ever. The basic takeaway is that the tiers get huge after the top 30 or so and thus the true talent gap between something like pitcher #56 and #82 isn’t as large as a 26-point difference might otherwise suggest.

That’s not a copout to avoid accountability. I’ve ranked these guys in my order and I will still defend my rankings with evidence of why I like one over the other, but I will stress that the differences just aren’t always as vast as a number might usually suggest. Realistically if I wanted to focus heavily on the number, I’d probably have ties, but instead let’s just focus more on the tier and talent instead of the number.

Previous iteration: Top 120 – Feb.

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3/12/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – PRE-ORDERS AVAILABLE NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms for the March 22nd release! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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Velocity Readings

● I’m continuing to track all fastball velocities on this spreadsheet which is updated when I feel like it.

● Martin Perez’s made a few changes to his delivery and as a side effect, his fastball is up a couple of ticks.

Pérez said he’s using his hips more in his delivery after working with new pitching coach Wes Johnson and his knowledge of biomechanics. Though Pérez insists he’s not necessarily focused on adding velocity, his fastball showed consistent velocity around 95 mph for the second straight start — up from an average of 92.8 mph last season, per Statcast.

“Before, I just used my arms,” Pérez said. “Now, I’m using all my body, and you guys can see the results. I don’t miss inside anymore. One or two, but before, I missed — like I was trying to use all of my upper body. Now, I just stay on the line and just throw the ball in front of my eyes.”

It could be an improvement in his results with his fastball getting the following results at different velocities.

MPH: SwStr%
90: 3.7%
91: 3.9%
92: 3.5%
93: 5.5%
94: 4.9%
95: 7.4%
96: 10.1%

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We all have our guys. Those players where you circle a round in your notes and make sure you’re adding them to your squad. You chuckle, smile, and type your love for them into the league chat.

Today, I’m going to highlight three pitchers that I’ve found myself owning in the heavy majority of my leagues.

Zack Wheeler (New York Mets, FP ADP #94)

I’ve written a fair amount about my love of Wheeler and I’m going to add on a bit here. Wheeler sports a hard fastball that he favors not only on both sides of the plate within the same at-bat, but also elevated for strikeouts often. It’s an elite pitch, returning a 20+ pVal last season, including a rugged opening 14 starts to the year.

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3/6/19

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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I’m going to say something that hasn’t been said enough this off-season.

There is a lot of starting pitcher depth this year.

That may be a bit of a surprise given the constant emphasis on getting aces early or leaving the first seven or eight rounds with three starters, but with every mock and real draft I’ve done, I’ve found myself with quality arms left on my queue in the final rounds.

You’re targeting most of these names already, maybe even all of them. At the very least, these ten arms should serve as a reminder that you do not need to chase elite arms early as there are plenty fewer impact bats left in the late rounds than quality arms.

I’ll be using Fantasy Pros’ aggregate ADP to gather the names past pick #400 and despite their price of “free” in standard leagues, these pitchers deserve heavy consideration in the final rounds.

Merrill Kelly (Arizona Diamondbacks, ADP #409) – This cheap price for Kelly is expecting his floor, while not embracing the possibility of his ceiling – a sub 3.70 ERA with a decent WHIP and a 20%+ strikeout rate. The Diamondbacks are going to let Kelly fly for as many innings as they can, especially when he has a lock on a rotation spot. It’s hard to find an arm with strikeout upside and a strong volume of frames without toxic ratios and I wouldn’t be surprised if the first person who owns Kelly retains him through the full year.

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2/22/19

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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I got a suggestion to write a column on my favorite starting pitchers to target (thanks @cwsoxfan!), but in truth, that column is sort of scattered all over the place. For example, my last post for RotoGraphs included some analysis on why I will be targeting Joe Musgrove. I’ve written about several pitchers I’m ranking above ADP and the industry consensus, such as Matthew Boyd, Carlos Rodon, Anibal Sanchez, Mike Minor and Jaime Barria, in other pieces.

Still, there are a number of starters whom I do like better than other fantasy owners do, including those in the industry, but I have yet to write about them to explain why. For this piece, I will focus on five starters who will likely be frequent targets for me, based on my rankings as compared to ADPs. These aren’t exactly sleepers, though. Rather than going deep in the motherlode for bargains, I’ll be taking a look at widely-owned players who could provide a generous return if you are able to draft them at or near their ADPs
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For the last couple of seasons, I have been waiting for a Tyler Anderson breakout. Over the course of 2017 and 2018, he induced whiffs on 11.9 percent of his pitches, which is good for the 21st-highest SwStr% among the 91 pitchers who have thrown at least 250 innings over that span. As I seemingly write in every other column, it is well established that SwStr% is strongly correlated with strikeout rate, yet Anderson’s 22.3 percent K% from the last two years ranks just 41st out of those same 91 pitchers.

The reason for Anderson’s apparent underachievement is clear: he doesn’t get many called strikes. The Rockies’ lefty throws a lot of pitches in the strike zone, and he gets swings on those pitches at an unusually high rate. That helps his swinging strike rate, but the flipside is that he has frozen batters at a subpar 16.5 percent rate over his career.
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