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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For this fun exercise we are going to look into some pitchers who gained or lost velocity on their fastball. Usually a gain or loss in velocity could lead to a difference in performance. This season is a little tough because the question of the year is, were pitchers able to throw faster because they knew it was a short season? Or vice versa, did some of these pitchers lose their velocity because they didn’t have time to properly build up their arms? Or are they typically slow starters? Unfortunately these are questions that won’t be answered until the 2021 season begins. With that in mind let’s take a gander and these pitchers and what it could mean moving forward.

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Introduction

The key to succeeding in fantasy baseball:

Maximize the value of your accumulated roster.

At the start of a draft, each fantasy owner is handed a set of draft picks. Each owner receives a 1^st round selection, a 2^nd round selection, a 3^rd round selection, and so on. If your league chooses to hold an auction rather than a more traditional serpentine draft – each team is handed $260 at the auction start. Players are then purchased throughout the auction with the use of these finite funds.

The key to gainfully drafting is not to draft a 3^rd round player in the 3^rd round, or a 9^th round player in the 9^th round, etc. The key is to draft a 3^rd round player in the 10^th round, and a 9^th round player in the 20^th round.

In an auction, if you purchase every player at his projected value, you will have paid $260 of auction dollars for $260 of value. What you will have is an average team. You won’t finish last, but you won’t finish first. Instead, with your $260 – you need to buy some $290 or $300 or $310+ of total value.

The key is to make a “profit” on as many roster spots as you can. The goal is to purchase players at bargain prices.

I have asked this question before – but it is worth asking every now and again. Suppose that you competed in an NFBC fantasy baseball auction back in July this season.

Which player was the better purchase?

Bryce Harper (OF, PHI)

OR

Andrew McCutchen (OF, PHI)

Before opining on the better Philly outfield purchase of 2020, let’s take a look at their final 2020 stat lines:

On the surface, it seems like a pretty obvious answer. Harper had more HR, SB, R and a better batting average than McCutchen. He had just one fewer RBI.

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Today, I continue reviewing my early season velocity change articles to see how the starting pitchers with the biggest gains and losses versus 2019 ended up performing the rest of the year. I’ll move on to the velocity decliners I posted on July 30, which were velocities as of July 28. Did these pitchers regain their lost velocities over the rest of the season or not?

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On Monday, I reviewed my first starting pitcher velocity surger post. However, since it was so early in the season, not every starter had actually pitched yet. So I posted another one two days later, which I’ll review now.

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