My piece yesterday got me thinking a bit. Seeing the high-impact finishes of Jake Arrieta and Jacob deGrom of 16th and 37th among starters despite not even qualifying for the ERA title (162+ IP) had me marinating on Masahiro Tanaka. Are we being too cautious with him because of the partially torn UCL? On Tuesday’s episode of The Sleeper & The Bust, Eno mentioned hearing “a talent evaluator” (which is the latest version of “they say” or “sources say”) suggest that upwards of 40 percent of pitchers are working with a partially torn UCL.

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Whether it’s daily fantasy or dynasty, being able to evaluate a pitcher in a small sample can separate the top from the bottom of your league table. Results — particularly balls in play, but really any results that depend on the outcome of a plate appearance — can only go so far. Per-pitch metrics help, since there are four pitches per plate appearance on average, but if you’re talking results, you’re still cutting your sample into those moments when a player swung or put the ball in play.

And then there’s movement and velocity. We know, for example, that it takes only three starts to reliably predict fastball velocity the rest of the way, and that one start actually gives us a good idea. So maybe movements and velocities can help us evaluate young starters quickly.

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I think something the fantasy universe forgets too often at this time of the season is the sheer length of the season. Six months. Twenty-six weeks. And of course, 162 games. In today’s game, very few players are able to play ‘em all. Just four players were able to do so in 2014. The pitching equivalent is 34 starts and just 10 pitchers managed to reach that height last year. So there are countless guys populating the top 50 or 100 who didn’t play anywhere near the full season.

Trust me I understand why we as a fantasy community have such a sharp focus on the here and now, prioritizing players who have roles secured at this moment. After all, you absolutely can’t play 162 games or log 34 starts if you aren’t even slated to start the season with the major league club. We know many starting roles will turnover as the season goes on and we will churn our fantasy rosters week-in and week-out. With that in mind, you need to make sure you aren’t being too dogmatic about avoiding injured guys or those on the outside looking in of a starting role.

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A few weeks back, I dropped some ice-cold water on some of the spring’s favorites just to give us a reality check about their downside. Interestingly enough, the guy I was struggling most to wet blanket is the one who is now dealing with an ailment: Anthony Rendon with his MCL. For me, his checkered health record was the only thing really holding him back as it could cut into his base-stealing production if it was something nagging and obviously something more severe could really take a chunk out of his numbers. Today, I’ll do the same from fast-rising pitchers and ideally, I’ll go beyond health concerns for all three picks as those loom overhead for every single pitcher every single time they throw the ball.

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In our ceaseless pursuit of Fantasy bargains, we now consider the Cincinnati Reds—or, as one of us will go to his grave calling them, the Cincinnati Redlegs. (This was actually the team’s name from 1954 through 1959, presumably in order to avoid confusion with the crosstown Cincinnati Communists of the Internationale League.)

But we divagate. The Reds in 2014 lost 38 one-run games, the most in a single season by any team in this century. Their record in such games was 22-38, which is likewise abysmal. You’d figure that such a team would have a weak bullpen, and the Reds sure did. They had the fourth worst bullpen ERA in the majors, and no other team was even close to the bullpen’s 11-31 won-lost record. You might also expect that such a team would have a weak closer, but the Reds didn’t. In fact, as you no doubt know, Aroldis Chapman is perhaps the best closer in baseball, and finished second last season in percentage of saves converted. Moreover, Jonathan Broxton, his replacement for the first month or so of the season, converted five out of his six save opportunities.

No, it was the rest of the bullpen—including Broxton, once he became the set-up guy after Chapman returned—that sank the Reds. Chapman, you see, was used almost exclusively (1) in the 9th inning with (2) either the score tied or the Reds holding a narrow lead. If the Reds, courtesy of the bullpen, couldn’t get to the 9th, Chapman wasn’t a factor. Likewise Broxton, in his capacity as closer. Read the rest of this entry »

Losing a young pitcher like Zack Wheeler is never an easy thing, but there are not too many teams positioned well enough to handle a season-long injury to a young starter as well as the Mets. The Mets have three top-10 prospects that could conceivably fill in for Wheeler right now, though the likelihood is that Dillon Gee is given an opportunity to eat innings in the back end of the rotation while the prospects continue to develop in the minors.
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The 2014 Reds rotation ranked third in ERA but just 23rd in WAR, which is a bit strange given that Cincinnati got more innings out of its starters than any other team. Alfredo Simon played a fairly large role in that discrepancy as he threw just shy of 200 innings with a 3.44 ERA but just 0.9 WAR. Simon’s low strikeout rate doesn’t exactly rack up WAR. If Mat Latos and/or Homer Bailey had been able to throw a full season’s worth of innings, the discrepancy surely would have been less pronounced.

The good news is that Simon will be staving off the regression monster elsewhere and Bailey will hopefully make at least 30 starts this year. The bad news is that Latos is gone and the Reds didn’t do much in the way of replacing Latos or Simon’s numbers. They’ll go with internal options, which isn’t assured to go wrong, but the back half of the rotation is iffy at best. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of Quick Look changes for Spring Training. I am going to be doing more players, but with less information. Some pitchers I watch will only throw an inning or two. Also, some broadcasts don’t have radar readings. Finally, the camera angles are horrible to be kind.

Another change I will be implementing is grading the players on the scouting scales of 20-80. I will Kiley McDaniels scale he discussed in this article.

I will give a value for where I think the pitcher could currently fit in on the average team (CV=current value) and where they could end up (FV=future). I am sure I will disagree with some grades from others, but I am only looking at one game.

Note: If I say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

3/8/15 Padres vs Rockies (no velocities)

Tyson Ross (60+ CV/65 FV)

• He was the reason I picked this game. He has talked of the expanded the role of his change-up.
• He throws very over the top.
• His fastball was had some downward motion.
• His slider had a sharp 12-6 down breaking action.
• Now to the change. It looked to be same speed (I checked previous speeds and it was the same) and broke the direction as his slider. The break was less and not as sharp. It was basically his slider, but worse. I can see why he hasn’t used it.
• I wonder if he could add a cutter to give himself a third pitch.

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

There aren’t many more spots left to cover in our Depth Chart Discussions. It’s not surprising that the Rockies rotation was one of the last areas claimed. Even in the very capable hands of RotoGraphs writers (yours truly excepted, of course), there’s not much to get excited about when thinking about pitchers pitching half their games at Coors Field. No one has really seemed to crack the Coors Code yet when it comes to pitchers. Since the team’s inaugural season in 1993, qualified Rockies starters have put up an ERA under 3.00 exactly once: Ubaldo Jimenez did it in 2010. There are three other three qualified pitcher seasons under 3.50.

Jeff Sullivan recently wrote about how Jorge de la Rosa has figured out how to pitch at Coors Field; in fact, he’s been better there than in other stadiums as a whole. De la Rosa is actually a deep sleeper for me going into 2015, so let’s just dive right in and talk about him since he’s the undisputed ace of the staff (for now).

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The Steamer and I series concludes as I finish with the last starting pitcher comparisons. Today, I check in on two pitchers of whom the Steamer projections are significantly more optimistic than my Pod Projections.

As per SIERA, Zack Greinke is coming off the second best skills of his career, driven in part by a rebound in his slider usage. He’s managed to post sub-3.00 ERAs for two straight seasons now, which has made him the 10th pitcher off the board on average in NFBC drafts. James Shields hit the free agent jackpot by signing with a National League team and remaining in a pitcher friendly home park. He, too, is loved by drafters, who are nabbing him 22nd among starters in NFBC. Let’s see why Steamer and I disagree on these two fine lads.

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