After the first twenty-five starters are off the board, it gets a bit dicey. As we’re seeing in the PL Experts Mock, starters went quickly in the first six rounds (23 gone in the first 72 picks!), but just twelve were plucked in the following five rounds. The cliff hits suddenly and owners are taking their time to pick up their fourth and fifth starters.

But when the time comes, who should they target? Here are five names to consider during the middle rounds of your drafts.

J.A. Happ (Free Agent) – At 35-years-old, Happ continued to produce, registering his fourth straight season under a 3.70 ERA while boasting career bests in WHIP (1.13), strikeout rate (26.3%), and over swinging-strike rate (10.4%). His new affinity for the K began when he elevated four-seamers consistently and even a transition to the Yankee squad didn’t hold back the punchouts. The major pushback from owners is his elevated Hr/9, which rose to a 1.37 mark along with his career-high 13.4% HR/FB rate.

There’s a case to be made that all but the worst landing spots will help keep the longballs down while I expect his strikeouts to stay elevated near the 23-25% mark given his strong high heat approach. Mix in his ability to produce solid H/9 and walk rates and Happ transforms into a prime option for owners to pad their rotation.

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Alas, we have reached my final recap of the season. Finishing things off, it’s time to review my Pod’s Picks again, but on the starting pitcher side. I limited the list to pitchers that landed in my preseason top 60 and excluded pitchers like Rick Porcello and Julio Teheran that earned their projected value through volume, rather than good ratios. Let’s see how these pitchers performed.

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We finally got our first huge move of the offseason (sorry, Mike Zunino!) as the Mariners traded James Paxton to the Yankees for Justus Sheffield, Erik Swanson, and Dom Thompson-Williams. I’ll save the analysis on Swanson and Thompson-Williams for Kiley McDaniel because I can honestly say I was unaware of both prior to the deal. Here is Kiley’s piece and Jeff Sullivan’s piece, which includes analysis of both (and Jeff’s has full analysis on the deal). I’m going to focus on the fantasy impact for Paxton and Sheffield.

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Yesterday, I published an article on a few pitchers whose fastball velocity changed over the course of last season. And then my old buddy MGL showed up.

He’s right. I have so much on my plate right now, mainly my first book and a 2019 player previews, that I didn’t take it another step forward. Here are most of his answers.

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It may seem that fastball velocity gets over utilized for explaining a pitcher performance, but I don’t think it gets used enough. As I get going full steam ahead in my off-season research, I find myself always looking to see how a pitcher’s velocity held up over the season. Instead of looking up each pitcher individually, I decided to go ahead and collect 2018 fastball velocity reading for an easy reference.

For the data, I found the pitcher’s velocity for the whole season, April to June, July to October, and just September/October. The entire data dataset can be found here.

I went through the data and found some intriguing pitchers who gained and lost a few ticks. I divided up the analysis between first versus second half and first half and September. Many of the same pitchers would have made both lists. Here is the first to second half values.

Stephen Strasburg is the most concerning name on the list with his fastball down ~2 mph. The drop occurred after he went on the DL with shoulder inflammation.

His results also took a hit with his ERA going from 3.46 to 4.20 and his K%-BB% dropping from 23% to 19%.

Strasburg is getting in the danger zone where his fastball will start losing its effectiveness if he loses any more velocity. Here are its swinging-strike rates since he joined the league at different velocities.

The fastball starts to lose its effectiveness as it dips near 93 mph.

With the velocity drop, Strasburg will still be a good pitcher because his changeup is elite and curve and slider are decent. His issue is that he’s already been cutting his fastball usage from 73% when he entered the league to 52% last season. I think the chances of him having that elite season has passed.

One major consideration will be if he can get his walks under control. In the first half, they were at 2.1 BB/9 but jumped to 3.5 BB/9 in the second half. Spring training reports are going to matter quite a bit on how he gets valued.

Corey Kluber is the name which jumps off. For pitcher going in the second round of mock drafts, an ~1.5 mph drop in his fastball throws a major red flag.

He got hit around more in the second half with his BABIP jumping from .248 to .321 while list strikeout and walk rates remained constant (22.5 K%-BB% to 22.1 K%-BB%). Kluber found a way to be effective even with the velocity loss.

My gut says something is off but I can’t find it. His steamer projection has his ERA next season back in the 3.50 range (same as 2015). so it even sees that something is not right. I’ll read some more previews as the season nears and see if I can gain a better understanding of him.

Yesterday, I reviewed my preseason list of starting pitchers composed of guys my Pod Projected ERA was significantly better than Steamer’s forecast. They were my upside guys. Today, I’ll recap how the guys my projections considered as having ERA downside ended up performing. You might notice that this is half the size of the upside list, which likely owes to my projections being more optimistic on ERA on the whole.

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A computer program and I are back for some more abuse. After lining up the Steamer hitter projections with the Standings Gain Points (SGP) for The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, the pitchers now take center stage. And boy can I see some conflicts to fill the comments.

The SGP formula is from the average of the 13, 15-team Roto leagues and will soon be available in The Process (looks like Monday at the latest).

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Let’s flip back to evaluating my preseason pitcher projections. I compared my Pod Projected ERA with Steamer’s ERA projections and discussed 11 I was most bullish on. Let’s see how they performed. Hopefully I didn’t embarrass myself. Also, be aware that these were the projections as of the date my post was published, which was March 6. It’s very possible that my or Steamer’s ERA projection changed from then through the beginning of the season.

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A while back, I ranked hitters if all their 2018 stats were prorated to 600 plate appearances. It’s now time for the pitchers. In all fairness, the rankings are a huge disappointment with no surprises coming through.

I adjusted the rankings for 180 innings for starters and 60 innings for relievers and no one seemed out of place. With the hitters, Raul Mondesi at the top was an attention-getter. Looking over both sets of top-25 pitchers, the biggest surprise was Joshua James and he’s not really a surprise since he dominated at the season’s end. Time to get bored.

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Did you know some people don’t like to be referred to as a “Twitter person.” On that note, Twitter person Bradley Newman created a poll asking the wild reaches of the baseballverse to choose Gerrit Cole or Aaron Nola for 2019. The poll received considerable attention thanks to an assist from Paul Sporer and Justin Mason. The results, you’ll see in a moment, are shocking.

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