Archive for Starting Pitchers

Blake Snell

The 25-year-old lefty should have been on several 2017 pre-season sleeper lists but almost everyone missed on him. He was basically a late-round “Why not?” I could see why owners wrote him off with a 4.85 ERA in 20107’s first half. even though he posted a 3.49 ERA in the second half. More importantly, his strikeouts and velocity were trending up and walks were heading down as the season went on.

His K%-BB% climbed from 5% to 16% which put him on par with Jon Lester or Gerrit Cole. Instead, his 196 ADP placed him near Aaron Sanchez, Danny Duffy, and Kevin Gausman.

Snell kept the gains from 2017 with an 18 K%-BB% for the season’s first half. Then, he improved throughout the 2018 season with his velocity climbing pushing his K%-BB% up to 31%.

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I’ve got some piping hot starting pitcher ranks for you today! I’ve been working on this batch of hotness for a good bit now and I’m finally ready to show off the initial. I introduced the concept of The Glob™ last winter – well, I named it. The idea of giant tiers of talent is not particularly new. At any rate, The Glob™ is expanding and still wreaking havoc on drafts everywhere. Even cutting this list at 100, I left off several names I could easily see as Top 100 guys.

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Baseball has a problem, one I’ve personally touched upon numerous times on this site, my personal blog, twitter, in chats, and whilst walking around the grocery store. The traditional role of starting pitchers is dissolving. Even though it has led to teams playing smarter, it’s also deteriorating the product on the field. Baseball, after all, is selling entertainment. We like to pretend that winning equals entertainment, but perhaps that’s not always the case. In fact, we have some decent evidence it is, indeed, not the case.

I explained the problem from a high level on my Patreon yesterday (paywall). I’m hardly the only person to notice this issue – it’s a frequent talking point among baseball circles. Recently, Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer quantified the ways in which starting pitchers are ceding innings to relievers. Bill  James had a rare good tweet about the point of baseball (i.e. entertainment). Jeff Sullivan kindly confirmed that people are pissed via a poll. Sometimes, writers aren’t the best barometer of fan preferences. In this case, we’re all on the same page.

When the way baseball is played changes, so too does the way we play fantasy baseball. The latest trends in pitch usage have altered the way I will approach the 2019 season.

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As I have at the end of the first half since 2013, I grouped two sets of pitchers together and aggregated their results through the half based on the degree of SIERA outperformance and underperformance. I then asked you which group of pitchers would perform better from an ERA perspective over the second half, and which range each group’s ERA would fall into. This year’s poll and voting results are here.

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At the end of spring training, I identified and discussed 10 pitchers whose spring training strikeout rate was significantly higher than my Pod Projection K%. Though the vast majority of spring training stats are completely meaningless, I did find many years ago that strikeout and walk rates do hold some predictive value. So let’s see how these 10 pitchers ended up performing.

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Today, I start the process examining who the industry, owners, and myself missed on with their preseason evaluations. Did a smoking gun exist and everyone missed it or was there no way to guess the outcome?  I’m going to start with two pitchers who had smoking guns, I wrote about the smoking guns, and then I totally ignored them.

The two starters are Gerrit Cole and Anibal Sanchez. Back in February, I highlighted both in a pitch mix change article. Looking back, I made a convincing case for taking a chance on either one. I spent a few hours doing the research and when it came to draft day, I never picked up a share. I failed as both overperformed.

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10/4/18

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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 Playoff Pitching X-Factors

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Touring the league to highlight a pitcher per team whose efforts could’ve slipped past your radar.

Check out the hitters here.

American League

Eduardo Rodriguez, BOS | 3.73 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 18% K-BB

The bottom half injuries continue to plague him, but the skills are still there when he is healthy and upright.

J.A. Happ, NYY | 3.57 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 26% K

This strong effort will help the 35-year old southpaw get a solid multi-year deal this winter.

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It won’t likely come as a shock that, as we have one of our final opportunities to stream pitchers, there are few widely-available options worthy of our trust. In his recent piece on starting pitcher streaming options for the final weekend, Nick Pollack identified three pitchers from Friday’s slate who could be available and have some appeal. However, none of the three are likely to be on waivers in deeper formats.

In this column, I typically consider only pitchers who have an ownership rate of 25 percent or lower in Fantrax leagues, and even with setting the bar for availability fairly high, a couple of the pitchers featured here are at least worthy of consideration for your Friday rotation.
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There are a number of TBDs still listed for starting pitchers on Wednesday’s slate. The Orioles still need a starter for Game 1 in their doubleheader at Boston, and the Astros, Padres and Giants have yet to announce their starters. The same goes for the Rays, but that’s true for three out of every five games for them. It would be Jalen Beeks‘ turn to be their primary pitcher, but he has not lasted more than three innings in any of his last five appearances dating back to Aug. 29. Even if Beeks is at his best against the Yankees, it is doubtful that he will pitch enough innings to make a difference for your fantasy squad.
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