We covered some of the best starting pitchers earlier in the week. Now, we’re covering the best starting pitchers with an average draft position (ADP) outside the top 150 picks in 12-team leagues. These pitchers have been performing better than the draft community expected.

The visual below shows the starting pitchers who have been drafted outside the top 150 picks in 12-team leagues, sorted by their earned value in the first half. If a player has a blank ADP, that means they were undrafted. 

Though Foster Griffin tops the list, I’ve already examined him in a rookie check-in article in mid-June. Kyle Harrison has been helping to win leagues, though he is on the injured list with a forearm injury. We would love to examine more of these starting pitchers (and maybe we will), but today we’ll highlight five.

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Some call it the second half because it’s easier that way, but there is only 40% of the Major League season remaining. Assuming starting pitchers remain healthy and in the rotation, most will start anywhere from 11 to 14 games between now and the end of the season. There is more than enough time to make up some of our pitching category deficiencies in Rotisserie leagues. Let’s dive into some of the starting pitchers who should be helpful in all fantasy formats and help us finish the season strong.

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Let’s look at starting pitchers who have been performing well in the first half. The average draft position data comes from 12-team leagues in NFBC formats. Meanwhile, the dollar value is the earned value via the FanGraphs Player Rater data. The visual below shows the top 25 starting pitchers sorted by earned value in the first half, including their draft price and results.

While 10 of these 25 pitchers come from outside the top 150 in ADP, today we’ll examine some of the more highly drafted starting pitchers on this list to identify whether they’ll continue their success for the second half, or might be sell high candidates.

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Yesterday, I continued my annual tradition of polling you on groups of players falling into two performance vs expected buckets, by comparing hitters’ wOBA against their xwOBA. Today, let’s finish things off by comparing starting pitchers’ ERA to SIERA, pitting the SIERA overperformers against the underperformers during the pre-all-star break period. This is the poll I began with back in 2013.

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Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Over the years, I’ve gone to the cutting edge of stats to find advantages. I can go into a deep analysis on any player’s fantasy value, but there isn’t always time to analyze each player’s profile. For a shortcut, I use OPS to evaluate hitters and xFIP and botERA for pitchers. They give me a good predictive look, especially in a small sample. Besides those stats, I might make a cursory look at BABIP and Contact% for hitters and K%-BB% for pitchers.

Note: Recent plate appearances could be the #1 stat to follow for hitters, but I’m going to focus on production stats.

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After a week off for the holiday, I’m back with notable pitcher playing time changes for the last two weeks for starters and relievers. Here are the tables:

Did not have Caleb Durbin, Power Monster, on my bingo card.

On the Agenda: 

1. Closer Chaos
2. Quick Hits
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitchers

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We’re back with another rookie check-in, covering several rookies that have been making an impact in fantasy baseball leagues. The theme of today’s article is the examination of several left-handed starting pitchers. Two of these rookies have been performing well. The third pitcher has been struggling, but was a highly ranked prospect. 

We’re examining their strengths and weaknesses, notable parts of their arsenal, stuff, and command, intending to provide a recommendation for whether we should be buying, selling, or holding in keeper or dynasty leagues.

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Daullton Varsho is incredible!

This one preserved the no-hitter, but then it became a hitter.

On the Agenda: 

1. Closer Chaos
2. Quick Hits
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitchers

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We’ve had about a month to digest the Swing Timing and Miss Distance Leaderboards on Baseball Savant. Like with any new metric, there’s probably some noteworthy information and some noise. Let’s by looking at league averages across as a starting point. Here are the the league averages for these metrics across all pitches:

• Average Miss Distance: 2.67 inches
• Flawed Percentage: 7.5%
• Perfect Contact Percentage: 22.6%
• Tied Up Percentage: 8.8%
• Flailed Percentage: 26.3%
• Early Percentage: 21.8%
• Late Percentage: 14.1%

That will provide context for each metric as we dig into specific pitch types, in the table below. Forkballs, splitters, changeups, and breaking pitches (sliders, curves, slurves, sweepers) tend to lead to a higher average miss distance. Meanwhile, the fastball types (cutters, sinkers, four-seamers) generate misses of roughly two or fewer inches. 

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