I’ve started my 2020 draft prep (i.e. writing player previews) and thought I had all the information I needed. I was missing some useful pitcher information, a pitcher’s high fastball rate and how often they are behind in the count. The two measures aren’t publicly available, but they are useful to help see why a pitcher’s overall profile is off. I’m going to rehash each stat and go over some leaders and laggards.

Ahead and Behind in the Count

Being ahead or behind in the count means more than strikeouts and walks. In the original research article at BaseballHQ ($$), I found that pitchers who are consistently ahead in the count limit hard contact. The theory goes that if ahead in the count, all a pitcher’s pitches are can be thrown. If behind, the pitcher may only have one or two pitches he can throw over the plate for strikes and the batter can wait and crush them.

First, I found being ahead or behind is sticky from season to season (i.e. predictable). It has about the same year-to-year correlation as strikeouts and groundballs. The key threshold I found was being ahead 50% of the time more than being behind. On average, these pitchers post a lower than average home run rate and have an ERA lower than their FIP and xFIP. For those pitchers constantly behind, their production drop doesn’t warrant any action.
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I love shopping in the middle and late rounds for pitching. It’s not that I won’t buy studs, I love doing that, too, but finding gems who greatly overperform their draft slot can be instrumental to winnings leagues. I’ve already started analyzing the pitching pool thanks to Justin’s #TooEarlyMocks and here’s a handful of guys I’ll be eyeing as later pickups, especially in any winter drafts I do as they’re all priced to buy right now.

John Means | Baltimore Orioles

Velocity gains didn’t net early results as he managed just a 10.13 ERA and 1.31 WHIP in first four starts. Excellent changeup from 2019 wasn’t there but he regained the feel and put up a 2.73 ERA and 0.88 WHIP over the final six starts (33 IP). The changeup had a 4.2 pitch value during that run and he maintained the velo boost. The home runs are still concerning with a 2.5 rate in 2020 and 1.6 for his career. If he can start keeping the ball in the yard more often, there’s some low-3.00s ERA potential here especially if the new velo and strikeout rate maintain.

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While most of the off-season analysis will be on top players, I’m going to focus my attention on the players who will be on the fringes of rostering. They are the players who once the season starts, managers are going to have to make a quick decision on adding or dropping. These players will be in play all season. It’s time to learn about a few options beginning with starting pitchers.

I decided to not pull the pitchers out of thin air but use the ADP from the #EarlyMocks to find them. I started at the bottom and selected any pitcher added by two or more teams (and no auto drafts). Here is an evaluation on the bottom four starters.
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The Kansas City Royals decided to use the shortened season to their advantage when it came to their young pitchers. Lynn Worthy wrote an interesting piece for KansasCity.com gathering quotes from their pitching coach Cal Eldred. Directly from the article: “We got to take all of our pitchers in the organization, those on the 40-man roster and shift them back into player development,” Eldred said. “They had an opportunity when their arms were as healthy and felt as good and strong as they possibly could be to work on some of those things without the strain of, ‘You’ve just got to make it to the next start,’ or, ‘You’ve just gotta make it to the next outing and get outs.’ You can’t do that in a bullpen in between.”

The Royals already had a young and budding starter in Brad Keller but in 2020 they decided to call up both Brady Singer and Kris Bubic as well. Both of which hadn’t seen competition over AA ball. Both were bold moves and came with speculation but like Eldred said they had time to focus on development and these young Royals pitchers really improved as the season went on.

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Back in late August, about a month into the season, I proclaimed that the big Kevin Gausman breakout has arrived. At the time, he had thrown 31 innings and was sitting with an unattractive 4.65 ERA. How could a pitcher’s breakout have arrived if his ERA was actually worse than the 4.48 MLB average?! It’s easy really, it’s all about the peripherals, or underlying skills as I call them. ERA, especially over a small sample like 31 innings, is pretty meaningless and doesn’t tell you a whole lot about how a pitcher has actually pitched. So we dive deeper, look at those underlying skills, which ultimately drive SIERA, a much better indicator of a pitcher’s performance, again, especially over a small sample. We now know that since I posted my breakout article, Gausman posted a sterling 2.51 ERA the rest of the way over 28.2 inning. So yeah, the breakout arrived. Let’s see if anything actually changed though, or if it was merely the luck metrics (BABIP, HR/FB, LOB%) that reverted back toward the league average.

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Coming into the 2020 season when anyone would mention the Cleveland Indians rotation you would have automatically thought of Mike Clevinger, Shane Bieber, Carlos Carrasco, and maybe even Aaron Civale. No one thought anything of Zach Plesac. Yet here we are two and a half months later and Zach Plesac had an ADP of pick 79 in the “2 early mocks.” Plesac balled out in this shortened season pitching 55.1 innings with a 2.28 ERA and 24.8% K-BB%.

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I’ve been grinding my way through the various inputs I use in addition to projection to make my team-building decisions. It’s time for the final few lists.

For reference, here are the factors I’ve already published.

• Hitters who played through an injury.
• Starter and Hitter Injury Risks
• Pitcher Single Season Projections and pERA Values
• Hitter StatCast and Single Season Projections

Also, I’m not going to take into account two minor league related factors: Voit/Muncy List (2020 list) and bumping up hitting prospect projections. Without a minor league season, the Voit/Muncy list can’t be generated.

As for bumping up hitting prospects, I’m going to pass this year. I know there will be prospect rankings but I’ll not give two-shits about them. Even with some reports from the alternate sites and fall instructs, the information will be spotty at best.
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And the 2021 draft prep data dumps continue. Today, the injury chances for hitters and starters take center stage. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around injuries since I’ve started writing about baseball. The reason it’s a difficult subject to nail down is that the information is spotty.

Also, if a player checks all the factors to head to the IL (Injured List), he could have that one magical season (i.e Stephen Strasburg in 2019) when he never gets hurt. Adding to the mess is that the league moved from the 15-day IL to the 10-day IL, back to the 15-day IL (for only pitchers), and then just started making up rules for 2020. Through it all, the following risk assessments cut through a lot of the narratives and are solid going into next season.

Starting Pitchers

During the extended offseason, started reinvestigating my analysis of pitcher injury chances with a literature review, injury chances, and how injuries lead to increase aging. While age and fastball velocity are still factors, career IL days and arm injuries are most likely to point to future injuries and degraded performance. The simple thresholds were 120 career IL days and three or more arm injuries. Here is a list of the starters (min 10 IPin 2020) who meet both criteria (full list).
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The Los Angeles Dodgers have a ton of depth in their pitching rotation and it’s certainly a reason for their consistent success. In terms of fantasy three of their young pitchers are intriguing options for 2021. Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, and Julio Urias are all popular names among the fantasy community. All of them are young, exciting, and have the potential to break out at any moment. Recently I put up an interesting poll on Twitter asking people who would they take first in a fantasy baseball draft. Side note: I included David Price in the poll but we will disregard that as I want to bring attention to the three I mentioned earlier. With over 1400 votes the results were somewhat surprising. Dustin May gathered 44.3% of the vote with Julio Urias nabbing second at 25.4%, and Tony Gonsolin came in third at 17.3%. Assuming all of them are healthy and in the rotation for 2021, let’s compare their 2020 numbers to each other.

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Justin is running his annual Too Early Mocks and the wonderful Smada has once again compiled the average draft data for our perusal.

The Top 3 SPs: Jacob deGrom, Shane Bieber, Gerrit Cole – deGrom went 1 in one league and Cole went 4 in another, but otherwise they averaged 7.7, 9.2, and 10.3, respectively. It’s not that I’m against the hitters going top 6 (Betts, Acuña, Tatis, Trout, Soto, and Turner), but I don’t understand how the mega aces aren’t more often in the top 3. I feel like the community at large is pushing pitching up (and not just the NFBC ecosystem), but the best of the best still don’t go high enough as far as I’m concerned.

Dinelson Lamet 53.7 ADP – He was unquestionably excellent as he flipped his pitch mix to throw the slider 53% of the time and his fastball was the best we’ve ever seen it, but he’s still at best a two-pitch guy and ended the season with a biceps injury that cost him the playoffs. That said, his slot as the 19th starter off the board matches where I put him in my initial rankings. Short of developing a third pitch, my biggest questions are whether or not the fastball can remain a plus offering and if he can continue to keep the ball in the yard – those are no doubt related as the fastball improvements played a big role his 8% HR/FB rate.

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