Archive for Starting Pitchers

Some teams would call it an embarrassment of riches, but the rise of Emerson Hancock in the absence of Bryce Miller early in the season has left the Mariners in a bit of a bind from a roster construction point of view.

With not enough starts to go around for six starters, Jerry Dipoto, Dan Wilson, and company opted to piggyback Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo. While the results spoke for themselves, it certainly did not look great off the field.

Whether that be Castillo launching his glove and jacket into the benches of Sutter Health Stadium, or Miller himself, very uncharacteristically for a starting pitcher, giving his thoughts rather candidly on the situation.

“This setup is not very comfortable.”

He stated awkwardly, in his post-game interview in Sacramento, before reverting to the usual newspeak we have come to expect from MLB players.

For both Castillo and Miller, there is only one way to remove yourself from any ideas of future piggybacking: pitch so well they don’t remove you.

That is exactly what Miller (and Castillo to a lesser extent, to his credit) has done, so far, since Operation Piggyback began.

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He says he wants to be the “face of the franchise.

His name is Bryce Eldridge.

On the Agenda: 

1. Closer Chaos
2. Quick Hits
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitchers

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In a previous article, we looked at starting pitchers who improved or lost their stuff and command over the past two seasons. This time, we’re examining starting pitchers that gained stuff and command in May and June compared to April to identify small sample changes. Sometimes a pitcher’s stuff and command improve closer toward the career averages. However, there can notable changes in a pitcher’s location and movement profiles that impact their stuff and command grades. This may be small sample noise, but it can also represent a change. Fantasy leagues can be won by being an early mover on a player who is breaking out. We’ll examine a few starting pitchers who made improvements in their stuff and command since May 1.

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Now that the foundations have been laid and the methodology explained in Part 1 of this series, we can dive deeper into some of these pitchers.

As noted in the previous piece, Corbin Young wrote two breakdowns of individual rookie starters that I will link below:

The first covering Nolan McLean, Bubba Chandler, and Parker Messick. Link here.

The second covering Payton Tolle, Connelly Early, Brandon Sproat, and Trey Yesavage. Link here.

So this will be more of a collective analysis of the rough groupings and what stands out from the composite rating, and whether any deeper stats can further support or provide additional context for fantasy purposes.

The composite z-score rating has provided a solid framework for assessing this group of rookies, and most have now logged enough innings to draw early conclusions from the metrics. It is these pitchers who will receive the bulk of the analysis in this piece, while Gage Jump has looked enticing in his two starts — 12 innings is not quite enough for meaningful metric analysis just yet, but well worth keeping a close eye on.

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Though I’m not sure there’s a particular comparison study that makes such a definitive conclusion, it certainly feels like pitchers’ underlying skills are far more volatile during the season than batters. While that usually shows up in strikeout and walk rates, we also might see it in new stats like Stuff+. So it’s worth tracking recent trends to identify pitchers whose stuff has either improved or deteriorated as that could explain recent performance and potentially predict future performance better than if using stale Stuff+ marks.

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I’ll be in the comments answering questions and discussing changes!

Focus more on tier differences over rankings differences within a given tier. Sure, the top and bottom of a tier can be discussed, but 7-10 rankings within the same tier isn’t a huge split to me and comparing them would likely come down to short-term matchups.

Full Rankings Without Tiers

We’re following up on last week’s article covering a few rookie starting pitchers. This feels like an outlier season with so many rookies making positive impacts on our fantasy baseball lineups. We’ll examine four more rookie-eligible starting pitchers, including a pair of teammates.  We’ll continue examining rookies throughout the season, including advice on whether to buy, sell, or hold in keeper and dynasty formats.

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Below are the biggest notable swings in remaining projected playing time for starters and relievers for the last two weeks. To help provide additional context, I’ve added a couple columns to the starting pitcher table to illustrate the change in projected starts for the rest of the season, in addition to the percentage. Because teams have about 100 games left at the time of writing this, the percentages ironically would have been just fine for this week, but I’m introducing the widened table this week anyhow.

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Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit for Ottoneu points leagues. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.

I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence.

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This crop of rookies has now had some time to get adjusted to the big leagues, and this piece will look to check in on how they have measured up so far through the season. Less of a prediction of things to come, but more so of how much we can rely on them at this stage of their young careers. But of course, this is fantasy. So there will be a natural eye on what could be… are some guys getting the rough end of the stick, and are some getting away with it a little?

Corbin Young recently wrote a fantastic check-in piece that went into depth on some rookie pitchers, Nolan McLean, Parker Messick, and Bubba Chandler. While this won’t go into as much of the nitty-gritty, it is a more macro exercise analysing how they stack up against each other as a whole.

I wanted to establish a composite rating that accounted for metrics that provided a balanced view of their profile as a pitcher, balanced against their xERA. These metrics were then weighted to favor those I felt were more important and those I want to see in a pitcher. This will be split into two pieces: this one sets up the methodology, so to speak, and the reasoning behind the metrics used for the ranking. The next piece will dive into more of the nuances and any interesting cases the data throws up.

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