Fastball! Fastball! Inside-fastball!….changeup. It’s almost soothing, isn’t it? The hitter gets some relief from the loud, scary, onslaught of heat to a nice, easy, soft-dropping cambio. But don’t be fooled, that soft-cuddly change of pace can be absolutely devastating. It can send you right back to the dugout looking, and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you just whiffed so hard a little snot came out of your nose, you made a loud grunting noise and possibly pulled a muscle in your lower back. Some pitchers utilize the changeup by only throwing it to opposite-handed hitters when they need it. Some throw it with regularity, lulling hitters to sleep. There’s no perfect way to use it, but a decent changeup in a pitcher’s arsenal can be a difference-maker. Let’s continue the “Know Your Averages” series with a pitch that’s thrown in the zone less often, rarely called for a strike, and chased like a rat terrier going after a….well…let’s just get to it.
Toward the end of the 2024 season, I aggregated fastball performance metrics with “Know Your Averages 2024” and wrote about the pitchers near the minimum, the maximum, and the average. For example, Aroldis Chapman’s sinker still rules the SwStr% category (maximum, 17.8%), while Jake Woodford couldn’t buy a swinging strike (minimum, 0.9%) and George Kirby was perfectly average (6.0%). Below, you can find links to those posts. You may find them useful when contextualizing the statistical vomit coming from any baseball podcaster’s repertoire. I needed to do it for myself:
But now we move beyond the fastballs and attempt to digest all those other pitches. There are tremendous differences in the fastball swinging strike rates around and below 10% and the 15%’ers of sliders and splitters. We’ll begin with sliders.
Breaking and Offspeed Pitches: Sliders | Changeups | Curveballs | Splitters | Sweepers Read the rest of this entry »
One day this flu will fully go away. One day. At least I’m no longer sleeping 20 of 24 hours every day and can actually do things, but my goodness this cough is something else. Anyway, let’s finish off our Gold Digging team by heading to the mound with five notable starting pitchers I’m drafting and monitoring this spring in hopes of seeing the signs that they are ready for a breakthrough. If you missed either part on hitters, you can check those out here:
Herz impressed in a 19-start debut, highlighted by a fantastic 28% K rate in 89 innings. He had some classic rookie issues with a 9% BB rate and 1.1 HR9, but the walk rate was actually the best we’ve seen from Herz at any stop in his career (15% BB in 321 MiLB IP). He has a legit 3-pitch mix, all of which can miss bats, and the young lefty was so adept at handling righties that he actually posted a better OPS against them (.651, 43 pts clear of his work vL). He will need to iron out some of his volatility to have a major breakout, but I’ll take the shot at this price point.
One Ottoneu manager’s cuts are another Ottoneu manager’s auction bids. But take heed pretend baseball general manager! These pitchers were cut for a reason. Maybe their signature pitch no longer fell out of the zone at the last split second like it used to. Maybe injury has the general public concerned. But, maybe those criticisms will be your opportunities. This article provides some context about the pitchers who were dropped the most at the keeper deadline, using “% of leagues with a cut in the last 7 days” as the starting point. Read the rest of this entry »
Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | MI | 3B | OF | SP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | MI | 3B | OF | SP
You can find all of the information about the format and methodology in Chad’s introduction to these rankings. I’ve matched his tiers so that it’s easy to compare across rankings and to provide a common language to discuss these rankings.
Ranking starting pitching is an absolutely massive beast to tackle (seriously, I have no idea how Nick Pollack does it). And it feels like our understanding of what makes a good pitcher is constantly evolving as we continue to break new ground with all the publicly available data. That also means there are more breakouts to chase than ever before as so many pitchers are one or two tweaks away from really unlocking their pitch arsenal. That makes ranking pitchers particularly tricky because projection systems often have a very hard time picking up on those arsenal or stuff changes without a ton of data to back them up.
If you want to pay up for established, high-end options, there are plenty to choose from, just remember that pitchers break down more often than any other position. That means investing a large portion of your budget into your pitching staff will always carry some amount of risk. Luckily, if you choose to pass on the best pitchers on the market, there’s a large middle tier that you can build a perfectly productive pitching staff with. There’s probably 40-50 guys in this group that have good projections but won’t break the bank to roster. Once you’re past those top 60-70 pitchers, you’re getting into the lower tiers where all sorts of warts and question marks abound. Here, you’re simply searching for potential breakouts, bounce backs, or bulk innings.
Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on each tier below and discuss a few outlier players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.
The biggest difference in my rankings is where I put Wheeler. He’s undoubtedly been the most valuable pitcher in Ottoneu over the last four years purely on the massive amount of points he’s generated, even if his per inning rate hasn’t been the highest. That longevity is incredibly valuable, though he’s getting up there in age presenting some risk to his profile. In addition, the projections for him in 2025 just aren’t that rosy, which was enough for me to drop him a tier.
I’ve got lower evaluations on Yamamoto, Valdez, Gibert, Burnes, and Kirby. Yamamoto still has workload concerns after he wasn’t able make through his first season in the States unscathed. Valdez doesn’t have a high enough ceiling for me to put him in a higher tier. I personally love Gilbert and Kirby, but the former has had issues maintaining his strikeout rate and the latter gives up a few too many home runs, which hampers him in this format. Burnes righted the ship after scuffling for a lot of the season last year, but I’m concerned that it wasn’t just a blimp but a portent for his eventual decline.
I’m higher on Gray and Steele because I believe in the former’s strikeout rate improvements and the latter has provided consistent home run suppression for three seasons now.
Chad thought he’d be the low man on Sasaki but here I am putting him a tier lower. I get the hype, but there are enough concerns about his fastball shape, his injury history, and the transition from Japan to the US that I’m pumping the brakes just a little bit. I’m also lower on Gallen, Lopez, and Imanaga and that’s mostly due to some lower projections capping their ceilings a bit.
I like Greene, Woo, Miller, Houck, and Sanchez a good deal more than Chad and in all of their cases, I’m a believer in the breakouts they all enjoyed in 2024 and think they’ve got even more room to grow.
We’re getting to the end of the middle tier with these two tiers and the end of the truly useful pitchers you can count on for consistent production.
I’m lower on Nola (read why), Williams, and Rodon but there are a ton of guys here that I’m higher on and it’s either because I believe in a skill change they showed last year or their projections paint a promising picture for 2025 or that they’ve put an injury behind them and I’m banking on a return to form.
For these lower tier guys, it’s nearly impossible to find any agreement between me and Chad and that can mostly be chalked up to differences in risk management and our preferences in how we fill out the back end of our rosters. Every one of these guys has a wart or two (or three or four), and you can nitpick about which wart is more important than another, but if you’re relying on any of these guys for significant innings in 2025, something has either gone very well for the individual pitcher or very poorly for the rest of your fantasy team.
This was exhausting. We have so much data we can analyze on pitchers and so many people are so good at doing that. And I find myself ranking pitchers and wondering what, exactly, I bring to the table. The biggest thing, to be honest, is my Ottoneu knowledge. There are a number of people out there who are great pitching analysts. There are great lists for re-draft. And for dynasty. But the combination of Ottoneu’s scoring systems, the keeper-but-not-dynasty nature, and the Ottoneu economics make this a bit of a unique list.
Part one of my starting pitcher keep/cut articles had me diving deep on pitchers who have shown major league success but hadn’t yet instilled themselves in any major league rotation with consistency yet. That’s what we’re really after. But it takes time for pitchers to get there and you have to decide first, how long you’re willing to wait, and second, at what price. Read the rest of this entry »
