If the Nationals don’t add another starting pitcher by the time Spring Training rolls around, then it’s likely that Joe Ross claims the fifth spot in the team’s rotation. Ross debuted last season, making 13 starts and three relief appearances, after just 24.2 innings at Triple-A. In those 13 starts, he was excellent, striking out 22.5% of the batters he faced, while walking just 6.6% of them. He also induced grounders at a strong 49.5% clip, which paired with his strikeout and walk rates, resulted in a 3.61 SIERA. The showing has unsurprisingly already led to some preseason sleeper love. As I continue to work through my Pod Projections, I have come to the realization that I both love and hate Ross, similar to how I felt about Carlos Martinez last preseason.

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We released our composite starting pitcher rankings yesterday. Presently, I’m going to offer my thoughts about the ace-heavy draft pool. If that part doesn’t interest you, skip down to my early mock observations. That part has important strategic implications.

It turns out we all agree on one thing – Clayton Kershaw is the ace of aces. We couldn’t even agree on Mike Trout as the top outfielder. Kershaw’s ranking isn’t a surprise, but it is a testament to his dominance of the field.

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Let’s throw some hyped names into the equation. After each name, I listed their NESN NFBC Average Draft Position (ADP) as of 1.15.16 followed by where I have them ranked without a position adjustment according to Rotochamp composite projections (1.12.16):

• Luis Severino: 158.50 ADP vs. 391 (-233)
• Raisel Iglesias: 166.72 vs. 148 (+19)
• Joe Ross: 209.61 vs. 358 (-148)
• Lance McCullers: 129.39 vs. 120 (+9)
• Aaron Nola: 233.39 vs. 288 (-55)

Rotochamp and Steamer grounds our expectations. If you adhere to their projections/these rankings, you might not land Severino, Ross or Nola. ADP on the other hand will make you reach at times. Eno provided a KPU-BB leaderboard (K% + Pop-up% – BB%) this past Tuesday. Here is another approach to ranking starters in addition to our Pitch Repertoire Scores.

Look to their peripherals and rank them by skills. Here is one subjective approach. I z-score the following skills and weigh each one by it’s correlation to expected ERA):

• zGB/FB+zIFFB%
• Average z-score between Ct% and SwStr%
• zK-BB%
• Average z-score between Soft% and Hard%

Summing up these four z-scores, we’re left with the following leader board (50 IP Qualifier):

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Some of this is being repeated from the Primer piece that went up this morning. 

We’re bringing them to you earlier this year, but that also means that they’re far from set in stone so take that into consideration as you peruse them. There are still strong arms on the free agent market, let alone all the moving and shaking that happens once players start reporting to camp.

• Outfielder (Jan. 18)
• Starting Pitcher (Jan. 20-today)
• Shortstop (Jan. 22)
• First Base (Jan. 25)
• Catcher (Jan. 26)
• Second Base (Jan. 27)
• Third Base (Jan. 28)
• DH (Jan. 29)
• Reliever (Jan. 29 courtesy of the Bullpen Report crew)

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league.  If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments.

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Perhaps you’ve heard, we’re evaluating playing time battles in preparation for the 2016 fantasy baseball season. We’re still at the beginning of the process, but you can go to this post to catch up on all our previous analysis. Now, onto the Philadelphia Phillies whose pitching staff can be epitomized by a shrug.

The Rotation

After suffering through a miserable 2015 season, the Phillies look to be on the rebound. Their starters produced just 4.3 WAR – worst in the majors. Their 5.23 ERA barely outperformed the Rockies (5.27 ERA). Of course, the Phillies didn’t have to regularly pitch at Coors Field. In any case, they’ll be better this year.

Only three regular contributors will return, Aaron Nola, Jerad Eickhoff, and Adam Morgan. None of them have a guaranteed job. Let’s start with the two guys who are locks for a role.

Jeremy Hellickson and Charlie Morton are the staff veterans. Hellickson is a solid mid-rotation rebound gamble. After a tough start to his tenure in Arizona, he settled in to post a 3.61 ERA (4.14 xFIP) in the second half of the season.

Morton’s a ground ball specialist who has trouble staying on the field. When he’s right, he’ll produce a peripheral supported sub-4.00 ERA. Both Morton and Hellickson are merely innings eaters, but the team needs that more than an ace.

Behind the pseudo-veterans lurks Nola. It would take a minor disaster for him to lose his claim upon a rotation job, but it’s a risk. Nola, 23 in June, was the Phillies first round pick in 2014 (seventh overall). He made quick work of the minors and showed well in the majors through 13 starts.

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We know that strikeout minus walk percentage is the best in-season predictor, or at least we knew that the last time someone checked. We know that pop-ups are automatic outs, and that they have the same season-to-season correlation (.49) as strikes thrown, or at least we know that if you define pop-ups as infield flies per ball in play (PU/BIP) instead of just IFFB (which is PU/FB). And that means we know that these three metrics are three of the strongest by year-to-year correlation, at least among the metrics that the pitcher has the most control over.

Since we ‘know’ these things about as well as you can know things in baseball, it seems about right to combine them into a simple metric. Strikeouts plus pop-ups (the good things) minus walks (the bad things). It’s a quick and easy way to rank pitchers based on what they actually did last year, and it’s how I’ll sort my rankings the very first time I start working on them.

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Today inaugurates what will likely several weeks of depth chart discussions. RotoGraphs staff will discuss and assess noteworthy battles for playing time and/or starting gigs for position players and, separately, pitchers. Here, specifically, this author will investigate the Toronto Blue Jays‘ rotation and bullpen situations.

The Rotation

Frankly, it seems clear-cut at the top. Marcus Stroman isn’t an ace, contemporarily speaking, but his blend of sharp command and ground ball tendencies make him an attractive mid-rotation option. R.A. Dickey, the former National League Cy Young Award winner, hasn’t generated much in the way of fantasy value in standard leagues but, nonetheless, slots in as the team’s #2.

I wouldn’t say it gets dicier from there, but: it gets dicier from there.

Marco Estrada is, presumably, the Blue Jays’ #3. And while a two-year, $26 million contract would certainly warrant it, keep in mind that Estrada hasn’t stuck in the rotation for a full season — ever. Well, except in 2013, he did, but he only started 21 games. Why has he bounced back and forth, you ask?

You didn’t ask, because you already know. The answer screams in your face: Estrada has allowed 92 home runs in 99 starts. His 1.42 HR/9 as a starter is the second-highest among those who have thrown at least 550 innings since 2011. If the Blue Jays want to let their opponents to go punch for punch with Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, they found their man.

Problem is, the solutions aren’t significantly better. J.A. Happ comes off his best season, during which he scraped together one-third of his career WAR (wins above replacement) in about one-sixth of his career playing time. Fractions, man. Anyway, he shaved off a big chunk of the walk rate (BB%) that made him largely ineffective for the majority of his rather long and decidedly lackluster career, and it propped him up.

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Finally, it’s the last recap of my projections from the 2015 season! The Pod Projections are derived using the methodology outlined in my just released eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance. As usual, Steamer and I is a comparison of my projection to Steamer’s. Steamer was significantly more bullish on James Shields, who moved to the National League and joined the Padres, both of which should have boosted his fantasy value. It didn’t of course, as his ERA and WHIP both jumped, despite a career high strikeout rate.

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The Nationals have been attached to rumors for a variety of the top free agent starters this offseason, most recently with both Mike Leake and Scott Kazmir. Perhaps those rumors come from a genuine interest, but I speculate that at least a part of them stems from the star power that already exists at the top of their rotation. Last offseason, the Nationals had four excellent starters with Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Zimmermann, and Doug Fister, and then they added Max Scherzer on top of them. That rotation and not Bryce Harper was the reason most analysts believed the Nationals would win the NL East. If the rich could get richer last year, perhaps they could again this year.

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Bored yet? Oh c’monnnnn, you love making us accountable for everything we say! This is my last review of our 2015 preseason rankings. We continue the look at those players we disagreed on most that we ranked outside the top 100, and we finish off with the starting pitchers. Once again, actual ranks are courtesy of Zach’s calculation wizardry.

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