If you didn’t consider either the Aramis Ramirez or Scott Kazmir trades last week the first blockbuster of this year’s deadline deals, then you can certainly cross that event off your list now. Johnny Cueto leaves the only team he has played for and travels West to the darling Kansas City Royals. Does Cueto’s value “receive a big boost”, as one popular fantasy news site suggests?
Let’s take a gander at the American League starting pitcher leaderboard for SwStk% over the last 30 days. Since that time span typically comprises just four to five starts, such dominance could get lost in the full season numbers. So I’ll highlight some of the more interesting names among the leaders.
I like a lot of pitchers who have unperformed this year. With strikeout and walk rates (K%, BB%) of 20.5 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively, Drew Hutchison delivers everything I want from a mid-rotation fantasy starter. With a 5.19 ERA and a 1.47 WHIP, however, he delivers a flaming bag of feces to my doorstep.
The same can be said for Taijuan Walker who, after a terribly rough start to the season, dazzled for seven straight starts before recently tossing three stinkers. With plate discipline ratios better than Hutchison’s and just 22 years old, Walker demonstrates the skill set and ceiling that have earned him consensus top-20 honors on prospect lists from 2012 through 2014. Yet his 5.06 ERA and 1.29 WHIP have left fantasy owners not only disappointed but also reeling.
Hutchison and Walker share a common trait: their ERAs dwarf their fielding independent pitching (FIP) statistics. FIP was designed to demonstrate a pitcher’s true performance in light of the events he can control — that is, events independent of balls put into play at the mercy of the defense supporting him (among other things).
If you sort Yahoo!’s player page descending by ownership, Justin Verlander shows up on the second page. That means, at 70-percent ownership, he ranks in the top 50. Julio Teheran shows up there, too, at 73 percent. What the two have in common: more than 1,000 other players have been more valuable than them.
Verlander deserves an ounce of clemency: his 31 innings haven’t allowed him ample time to generate value. His 6.62 ERA, sixth-worst among all pitchers who have thrown at least 30 innings, really damages his stock.
Then again, so would his 5.01 xFIP, good for ninth-worst. Or his 6.06 FIP, good for fifth-worst. He has simply done nothing to inspire confidence in anyone, yet because of name recognition alone he’s owned in far more Yahoo! leagues than the pitchers I’ll present now.
We made it to the mound. After touring the diamond for the position players, we finally reach the starting pitchers for our midseason rankings. I’m not sure any rankings are more disparate than pitching rankings. There aren’t too many ways to interpret Paul Goldschmidt’s success. He’s raking and just all-around dominant. Dallas Keuchel is doing the pitching equivalent of raking, but he isn’t universally seen as a top-flight, no-questions-asked pitcher in the fantasy baseball world just yet. Keuchel might not be the best example as he didn’t fall further than 12th in any of the four ranking sets (with a peak of 6), but what about somebody like Carlos Martinez?
He is pitching brilliantly and showing why he was so heralded as a prospect coming up with the Cardinals, but as of July 21st he already has a career-high 111.3 innings (99 last year, 104 in the minors back in 2012 as a previous career-high) and they’ve already shown how much they value protecting him by keeping him in the bullpen for virtually all of his 2013 MLB time and for 50 of his 57 MLB appearances last year. How far will they take him in the regular season?
It might be the start of the second half so far as real baseball is concerned, but for us fantasy folks, we’re deep into the middle of the 2015 stretch run. Whether you’re looking to plug in some spare parts to aid your efforts or just need some warm bodies to fill your roster as you mull a fire sale, here are two players unowned in the vast majority of leagues who could help your cause.
The usual fine print: The players in this column are typically better suited for mono leagues, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.
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In 2013, I began polling you readers on which group of pitchers you think will post the better aggregate ERA post all-star break. The two groups were determined based on ERA-SIERA disparity, pitting the underperformers versus the overperformers during the pre-all-star break period. You can view the results of the first experiment here. For some strange reason, it appears I never actually calculated the results of last year’s experiment, but here was the original poll.
I came up with this idea given my faith in using SIERA over smaller samples, rather than ERA. I generally ignore ERA completely during the middle of the season and it’s interesting to see how everyone else thinks. Will the SIERA outperformers continue to outperform, perhaps due to continued strong defensive support or will the magic vanish? And is it just bad luck that is due to reverse course for the SIERA underperformers or are they being hurt by something that should continue to play a role the rest of the way?
My population group consisted of 97 qualified starters, which included some that are no longer in a rotation. I have decided to only include those who will remain a starter. Group A is composed of the 10 largest SIERA outperformers, while Group B is composed of the 10 largest SIERA underperformers.
Group A – The SIERA Outperformers
| Name | IP | ER | K% | BB% | BABIP | LOB% | HR/FB | ERA | SIERA | ERA-SIERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Young | 87 | 29 | 16.0% | 6.9% | 0.212 | 77.3% | 6.9% | 3.00 | 4.80 | -1.80 |
| Zack Greinke | 123.1 | 19 | 22.8% | 4.3% | 0.233 | 89.5% | 6.3% | 1.39 | 3.17 | -1.78 |
| Hector Santiago | 108.1 | 28 | 22.0% | 7.6% | 0.244 | 88.9% | 8.4% | 2.33 | 3.95 | -1.62 |
| Yovani Gallardo | 113.1 | 33 | 16.8% | 8.5% | 0.267 | 77.4% | 6.6% | 2.62 | 4.22 | -1.60 |
| Shelby Miller | 113.2 | 30 | 20.4% | 7.5% | 0.276 | 78.8% | 5.9% | 2.38 | 3.73 | -1.35 |
| Nick Martinez | 97 | 37 | 13.4% | 8.0% | 0.286 | 76.3% | 9.3% | 3.43 | 4.76 | -1.33 |
| A.J. Burnett | 119.1 | 28 | 20.5% | 6.8% | 0.314 | 81.7% | 4.7% | 2.11 | 3.43 | -1.32 |
| Sonny Gray | 123.2 | 28 | 22.4% | 6.2% | 0.249 | 79.0% | 4.8% | 2.04 | 3.25 | -1.21 |
| Kyle Gibson | 113.2 | 36 | 16.7% | 7.7% | 0.268 | 80.6% | 13.4% | 2.85 | 3.95 | -1.10 |
| Scott Kazmir | 101.1 | 28 | 23.3% | 8.3% | 0.265 | 77.2% | 7.9% | 2.49 | 3.59 | -1.10 |
| Total | 1100.2 | 296 | 19.6% | 7.1% | 0.262 | 80.9% | 7.3% | 2.42 | 3.84 | -1.42 |
Group B – The SIERA Underperformers
| Name | IP | ER | K% | BB% | BABIP | LOB% | HR/FB | ERA | SIERA | ERA-SIERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Lohse | 108 | 74 | 17.0% | 4.9% | 0.312 | 64.2% | 15.4% | 6.17 | 4.07 | 2.10 |
| Rick Porcello | 100.2 | 66 | 18.1% | 5.3% | 0.331 | 64.8% | 14.5% | 5.90 | 3.86 | 2.04 |
| CC Sabathia | 100.1 | 61 | 19.3% | 4.6% | 0.332 | 69.0% | 17.1% | 5.47 | 3.65 | 1.82 |
| Drew Hutchison | 98 | 58 | 21.0% | 6.9% | 0.358 | 65.2% | 9.7% | 5.33 | 3.75 | 1.58 |
| Rubby de la Rosa | 110.1 | 62 | 21.1% | 6.2% | 0.299 | 70.6% | 20.2% | 5.06 | 3.51 | 1.55 |
| Carlos Carrasco | 108.1 | 49 | 27.7% | 5.2% | 0.339 | 70.3% | 11.0% | 4.07 | 2.73 | 1.34 |
| Taijuan Walker | 102.1 | 55 | 22.9% | 6.2% | 0.307 | 68.9% | 13.1% | 4.84 | 3.50 | 1.34 |
| Matt Garza | 99 | 61 | 15.3% | 7.4% | 0.317 | 65.3% | 16.0% | 5.55 | 4.38 | 1.17 |
| Jeremy Hellickson | 94.2 | 53 | 19.4% | 6.6% | 0.309 | 69.2% | 11.6% | 5.04 | 3.91 | 1.13 |
| Kyle Kendrick | 103 | 68 | 12.0% | 6.4% | 0.287 | 70.3% | 16.8% | 5.94 | 4.89 | 1.05 |
| Total | 1024.2 | 607 | 19.4% | 6.0% | 0.319 | 67.8% | 14.6% | 5.33 | 3.82 | 1.52 |
Amazingly, the two groups have nearly identical SIERA marks, but a nearly three run difference in ERA. The outperformers have exactly half the HR/FB rate as the underperformers, along with a lower BABIP and significantly higher LOB%.
I frequently hear/read about the importance of strikeouts on DraftKings. A strikeout is worth two points on DK, so hitting double digit strikeouts is a good way for a pitcher to put up a good total for the day. But 10-plus strikeouts is obviously a good thing no matter how much a strikeout is worth. That’s why I’ve always found the seemingly shared idea that strikeouts are king on DK to be a bit strange. On the other major DFS platform, FanDuel, a strikeout is worth only one point, but the average pitcher score on FD is a lot lower than it is on DK, so the simple “2>1” math isn’t really relevant. Read the rest of this entry »
In pitching, you have your Matt Cains and you have your A.J. Burnetts — there’s no one way to be a good starting pitcher. Sometimes you have a wide arsenal of representative pitches, sometimes you have one excellent pitch and you find a way to keep throwing it over and over again.
Today, let’s give some love to the Matt Cains and find pitchers with many good pitches. Maybe we’ll find an undervalued guy or two.
First, we’ll use the “above-average” benchmarks set up here, with a low minimum to allow for short-sample pitchers to get into the list. If you’ve thrown your pitch 20 times so far this year, that pitch is eligible for this list. Then, the simple question is, is your pitch over the benchmark? Let’s sum the starters for swinging strikes first.
When it comes to fantasy, it’s an arms race, both figuratively and, well, often literally, as pitching depth remains a precious commodity in deep leagues. This week, let’s take a look at two hurlers, one a newcomer to fantasy circles, the other back from the fantasy dead, who can assist pitching-hungry owners in NL-only leagues.
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