With the calendar turned to December, the “Way Too” portion of the title feels  incorrect. Still, we have a series to finish so let’s get down to business. This is the seventh of eight volumes in the Way Too Early Rankings collection. Pre-Order the complete edition now – it makes a great stocking stuffer! You can find outfielders and links to the rest by following a link.

As a reminder, these rankings represent my first reactions rather than a truly rigorous approach. I’ve used an absolutely objective technique called mental math to compile the lists. I’m assuming a standard 5×5 format.

The purpose of this exercise is two-fold: to get an early start on 2017 rankings and to crowdsource missing or misranked players. That’s where you come in. Let your thoughts and feelings be known in the comments. As we’ve done in previous editions, we’ll break this into digestible chunks.

Starting pitcher is the deepest and most difficult position to rank. I’ll be focusing written analysis on the players who most interest me. There’s a very high likelihood some players have slipped through the cracks. I think we’ll have a lot to talk about in the comments.

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Yesterday, we were treated to a thrilling blockbuster of a trade, the type that has probably become all too common in keeper leagues, in which a contending team gives up their top prospects, and a rebuilding team “dumps” their star(s) in return. You know by now that Chris Sale is heading to Beantown and will don a Red Sox uniform. Or perhaps you just heard that his socks have changed color, ya know, from white to red. Paul Sporer gave you a quick rundown on how the move is likely to affect Sale’s fantasy value, but I wanted to go through the park factors and get more specific. So let’s compare the relevant park factors and discuss how the park switch may impact his performance.

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Clayton Kershaw missed a big chunk of the season yet he was still a fantasy MVP. The real world NL Cy Young award debate was duplicated in fantasy land with Max Scherzer and Kershaw comfortably leading Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, and Madison Bumgarner. What’s more valuable, Scherzer’s quantity or Kershaw’s quality? Our auction calculator says quantity by $1.50.

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Hyun Soo Kim signed with the Orioles before last season on a two-year deal. He struggled mightily in spring training and because of the nature of his contract, the major league team was forced to roster him. After just 17 plate appearances in April, he became a decent semi-regular in the lineup. The left-handed hitter got on the strong side of a platoon with Joey Rickard or Nolan Reimold being the other half.

He became a decent fantasy option in daily transaction leagues by posting a .329/.410/.454 in until July 10th when he went on the DL with a hamstring injury. After the injury, he hit only .275/.353/.386. The second half numbers are decent numbers, but not as good as before the injury.

With the new StatCast data, I examined it to determine if there was a drop in Kim’s exit velocity around the time of the injury. Using a 10-day rolling average, the available data may not look like it but the rolling average generally stays around 7 mph of the overall average. Additionally, there was  no huge pattern change around the time of the injury.

The problem is that StatCast is not able to collect all the available data as documented at FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. The missing data is normal weak groundballs or high infield popups. I am not going to regurgitate the reasons and the exact details from the previous articles but I am going to take a step forward in accounting for the missing data.

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About a week ago, I went over the stats I use when examining hitters during the offseason. Today pitchers take center stage. With Pitchf/x and now Trackman publicly available, I find it quite a bit easier to evaluate pitchers and the changes they make. For pitchers, I have one sparkling new main source and one old standby.

Pitchers are so much easier to evaluate compared to hitters. If a pitcher gains a couple ticks on his fastball, we know right away within a couple of pitches. If a hitter can no longer catch up with a 96 mph fastball, it may take a few months to know for sure and even then, we may not be sure why. Here are the tools I use to help find pitchers who have changed for the good or the bad.

Pitch Type Metrics

Ever since helping Eno dive into pitch-type metrics, I’ve determined that I will evaluate pitchers using this type of data. Even though it took a while to hammer everything out, the final results have been extremely promising. We can now determine what each small pitch change will mean for each pitcher and how pitchers can improve their results. The complete write up of the process is available, but here is a quick summary.

• The key change is to give each pitch an ERA value (pERA) based on the pitch’s swinging strike and groundball rate. All the values are based off the average values for starting pitcher. Closers will have higher grades because their stuff plays better coming out of the bullpen.
• The pitcher’s control is determined from their walk rate which is separate from the pitch grades.
• I’ve put each pitch on the 20-80 scale with 50 being average, 80 great, and 20 horrible. For starters, target pitchers with three average or better pitches. For relievers, they just need two pitches.

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The Texas Rangers signed Andrew Cashner to a one-year deal for $10 million dollars on Friday. It’s tough for a one-year deal to be really bad, almost regardless of the cost because the commitment is so short, but I’m not seeing too much upside here for Cashner or the Rangers. The 30-year old righty showed promise after being installed into the Padres rotation full-time back in 2013, posting a 2.83 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in 298.3 innings (45 starts) over two seasons. But it all started to come unglued in 2015.

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There is no denying that this year’s free agent class is weak, especially compared to recent years that all had multiple big-ticket stars. Yoenis Cespedes moves the needle as do Edwin Encarnacion and closers Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen, but that’s about it in the top tier. The weakness of the free agent market offers hope at a robust trade market this winter. The league tilted toward a have/have-nots setup this past year with 11 teams finishing at least 20 games out of first in their division, up from seven each of the last two seasons.

The contenders will be looking to buy from the pretenders while the pretenders will be get a chance to stockpile young talent for their next big run. The turnaround time in baseball has shortened as teams are open trusting young players much more these days. There are many huge names who could feasibly be moved and while most of them won’t be, I think we will see some superstars change teams via trade. I’ve plucked three interesting pitchers and mapped out a trade path for each. I’ll have a trio of hitters soon, too.

Chris Sale

• To StL: Sale

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I’ve had a strong opinion of Sean Manaea and Kevin Gausmann which is significantly below the industry’s opinion of the pair. I believe while they have some plus tools, those tools don’t work together well. I did a quick look at the pair to see if I should alter my opinion of them based on recent performance.

Kevin Gausman

My previous beef with Gausman was that his fastball is not effective even though it comes in averaging 95 mph. To see if anything has changed, I watched the soon to be 26-year-old’s start on September 27th versus the Blue Jays

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A few days ago, I made my first attempt at trying to determine a pitcher’s value knowing their pitch grades. Since it was published, I have made some adjustments to the pitch grading scale. With the new scale in place, I have been working on comparing grades a pitcher previously received to their actual performance. The results have been extremely disappointing.

In the original article, created a framework to grade individual pitches with an ERA equivalent value (pERA) and a scouting grade on each pitch. While I liked the overall framework, one part really bothered me and I will address the issue first.

The change was to put some consistency in pitch grades, especially with fastballs. The problem was that a pitcher’s fastball is getting graded because of its velocity, but that velocity changes depending on if the pitcher was a starter or reliever. Relievers can really ramp up their velocity when moving to the bullpen.

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When I started this series which attempts to determine the projected fantasy value for prospects, I knew today’s step would be the hardest. The issue was converting various pitch grades (and control) into a workable framework for a pitcher’s overall production value. I thought I may not end up with a workable answer, but the following results have promise beyond just grading pitches.

I was able to piece together work from various articles and gave each pitch a grade based on the ERA scale. Combining per-pitch-ERA’s with a control value, it looks like we can estimate a pitcher’s overall value.

A pitching prospect is usually given a value on each of their pitches and a command and/or control grade. For example, the MLB.com’s grades for their top rated pitcher, Lucas Giolito, are:

Pitch: Grade
Fastball: 80
Curveball: 70
Changeup: 55
Control: 55

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