Three years ago, I introduced the best pitcher expected walk percentage formula yet. The formula uses a pair of strike type rates found at Baseball-Reference.com, including a pitcher’s in-play strike percentages, as well as his overall rate of strikes thrown. The beauty of the equation is that it uses components that stabilize quickly, as the rates are per pitch, rather than per inning or per batter. The equation isn’t nearly as strong as my xK% one, as it’s clearly missing sequencing, which may or may not be a consistent skill. But it’s pretty darn good and the best we have at the moment.

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In order to differentiate DFS lineups in large tournaments, you can utilize a maneuver commonly referred to as “fading.” A fade consists of avoiding a pitcher who may be highly owned — for instance, Masahiro Tanaka against the Orioles today — in order to capitalize on the off-chance that he has a subpar outing. By using SaberSim’s Conditionals to fade a pitcher, you will also determine which combination of opposing hitters would be optimal in the event of that pitcher having a below-average outing.

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It’s that time of year again, American League starting pitcher tier update time! You are no doubt well aware by now that ERA means literally nothing to me this early in the season. Player movement between tiers will only occur when there’s a change in underlying skill, pitch mix, or velocity.

Tiers are named for the best characters on the brilliant FXX show, Man Seeking Woman.

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It’s understandable if you came into the season with Chris Tillman buried on your starting pitcher list. After back-to-back intriguing seasons in 2013-14, he ran all the back toward and even beyond his ominous FIP numbers with a 4.99 ERA in 173 innings. In those two solid seasons, he posted a 3.52 ERA, but was all the way up at a 4.22 FIP. An already-tenuous skillset sank further, yielding a 1.9 K:BB ratio and took Tillman off the radar in just about every league type.

On Tuesday night he dropped seven strong on the Yankees, shrinking his ERA to 2.81 and tying a career-high with nine strikeouts (7th ever, 2nd this year). This time around, there’s actually support for his numbers. He has a 2.64 FIP thanks in large part to a 26% strikeout rate and just 24 hits allowed in 32 innings. His 9% walk rate is a little high, but workable with those strikeout and hit rates for sure. His 11% swinging strike rate is far and away a career-high and supports the surge in punchouts.

What’s Tillman doing to draw such strong results? Let’s take a look at the three main areas that I (and most, I think) often look to first when a pitcher is showing a big change in performance, for better or worse.

VELOCITY

I’m fairly certain that velocity is the first check for everybody when seeing what’s up with a pitcher. Brooks has Tillman up over a full tick at 93.8 MPH – a career-best and his first time north of 93 on average since 2012. The cutter is the only other pitch where more velocity would help and while he is up, it’s negligible at just 0.6 MPH. The 87.4 MPH mark is second-best in his career behind the 87.5 he logged in 2013. His velocity increase is a tangible, positive change, but it alone certainly doesn’t explain this jump in performance.

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A few weeks back, I looked at hitter stats that you can use early in the season. And they presaged the Domingo Santana mini-breakout! Now it’s time to look at pitchers, and let you into my toolbox.

There will be leaderboards.

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The A’s may not boast one of the more prolific rotations in baseball but entering the season they certainly featured one of the deepest. Now with Felix Doubront lost to Tommy John Surgery and one of my favorite sleepers, Chris Bassitt, likely facing a similar fate, the rotation suddenly looks a tad shallower. So this week we look at two pitchers available in a vast majority of leagues who’ve either made it back to the East Bay or who we can expect to arrive there shortly.

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Two years ago, I modified the first equation I developed to yield an improved expected strikeout rate formula. The formula uses a trio of strike type rates found at Baseball-Reference.com, including a pitcher’s looking, swinging, and foul strike percentages, as well as his overall rate of strikes thrown. The beauty of the equation is that it uses components that stabilize quickly, as the rates as per pitch, rather than per inning or per batter.

Yesterday, I discussed the starting pitchers whose xK% most exceed their actual strikeout rates. Today, I’ll look at the other side of the list — those starting pitchers whose actual strikeout rates most exceed their xK% marks. These pitchers are at significant risk for regression.

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Two years ago, I modified the first equation I developed to yield an improved expected strikeout rate formula. The formula uses a trio of strike type rates found at Baseball-Reference.com, including a pitcher’s looking, swinging, and foul strike percentages, as well as his overall rate of strikes thrown. The beauty of the equation is that it uses components that stabilize quickly, as the rates as per pitch, rather than per inning or per batter. I calculated the xK% marks for all qualified starting pitchers, compared it to their xK% marks, and sorted. Let’s discuss those with the most significant potential upside, as suggested by xK%.

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Can you believe we’re almost done with April? It seems like the season just started. I swear baseball weeks move 10x faster than winter weeks. Anyway, it’s time to check in on the National League starting pitchers. I didn’t do an official first run of tiers last month, instead letting my final rankings update serve as my baseline, but from here on out I will be updating monthly per usual.

The release of Drake’s fourth studio album today gave me an easy theme for the May tiers, though I obviously need more than four tiers so I’m including some mixtapes and collaborative albums to get us to eight. They’re just in order of how I like them so “Views” comes in last just because I’ve only listened to it three times so I don’t really have a feel for it yet. I think first impressions with albums are kind of worthless.

I can’t tell you how many times I hated something on first listen only to love it two weeks later after another 10 spins. With due respect, I don’t care what you think about Drake in this particular forum (btw, that probably reads as more aggressive than I’m intending… I’m just saying, it’s tangential to the piece so let’s not get too hung up on it). I know some people don’t like him. I don’t like some music that others love. That’s just how it works. Comedy and music are two subjective arts that I finally stopped telling people how they should feel about once I realized that not everyone had to like what I like.

Let’s get to the pitchers!

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late

• Clayton Kershaw
• Jake Arrieta

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In Ottoneu, like any fantasy format, small sample sizes to begin the season drastically impact the standings. The team with the worst pitching in your league has probably allowed more homers than expected. While the team in last place has likely has pitched the fewest innings. It’s easy to blow off these types of starts due the unsustainable performances that aren’t likely to continue (or to front-loading innings). I thought it would be fun to take a different approach today. So let’s play a game…

The rules: Pick 5 SP, total salaries for this rotation of $30 or less based on Ottoneu average values (round up $1 dollar). No picks with an average salary over $12. Arbitrary limitations, I know.

The goal: Build a 5 man rotation assuming you can bank all points that have occurred thus far with the goal of accumulating the most Fangraphs points by seasons end. Let’s make some picks.

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