06/30/20 

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS 

• Opt-outs: Joe Ross, Ryan Zimmerman, Mike Leake, Ian Desmond 
• Matt Kemp to COL on minors deal 
• Drafting prospects  

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We’re just going to freeform this and make it essentially a notes column. I’ll start by saying that not every move is influenced by the 60-game season. In fact, few are. A lot of them are influenced by a change in health or just more studying that led me to make a move.

RISERS

Biggest moves up the rankings since my February 28th list.

Rich Hill +65 to 64 – He was slated to be out until June with an elbow injury so now his full IL stint happened in quarantine and he’ll now be ready from the jump. He’s been great on a per inning basis the last four seasons, but will he stay upright throughout this mini-season?

Michael Kopech +30 to 82 – Returning from TJ, Kopech was expected to miss some time at the outset of the season with a late-May/early-June target. Like Hill, that time has passed and now he’s made the 60-man roster, though his role is unknown. For fantasy purposes, it’d be perfect if Kopech was paired with an opener so if he’s limited to 3-4 innings, it comes in the middle innings and puts him in line for wins.

James Paxton +27 to 21 – 100% injury-related.

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With baseball officially inching closer to an actual season, it is time to update draft ranks for those of you that are like me and still have leagues that still need to draft. I will likely be updating each set of ranks I release once or twice before opening day as news of the schedule, players opting out of the season, and other information could shake things up tremendously. However, here are my current starting pitcher ranks as of now. (Beginning of tiers are highlighted in blue)

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Here they are!

I’ll have a whole column of notes on different guys on Monday. I just wanted to get the ranks out and we can start discussing them in the comments. This 60-game season is going to be so wild!

Previous list for comparison, though comparing a full season list to a 60-game one is tough.

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My initial goal was to determine the amount of variation in pitching stats in a short season. What I found was a stipulation filled mess. It should have been simple. Just take the first two months and compare how the pitchers performed to a full season. The short answer is that they did great because they pitched in cooler weather and were 100% healthy. Instead, should the results from August and Septemeber be used, by that point in the season, many had broken down and the breakouts (e.g. Lucas Giolito) emerged. There is no perfect way to answer my original idea, so I’ll try to provide several possible answers.

To limit the focus, I’m going to implement the following guidelines. It’s a lot and when I was setting them, I was questioning any possible findings. By changing any one of them, the process to find the results and the actual final results differ.

• Assumed a 12-team league and used SGP (Standing Gain Points) equation from The Process.
• I used historic Steamer projections to set the preseason valuation.
• I only examined WHIP and ERA. Most of the hot takes I’ve heard involve not wanting to deal with the possible variation in these rate stats.
• Ignored closers. They are their own beast.
• Focused on the 7 starters for 12 teams.
• Used April to May data and then August to September. Both aren’t ideal but the differences can then be analyzed.
• Anyone who didn’t pitch during the two-month time frame got zeros across the board.
• I just did 2019 and kept the mess to one season.

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Note: About 95% of this article was finished before the news that MLB is going forward with a 60 game season.  I finished it knowing that more imporant work needs to be done. This series now comes to an abrupt end and I will return to the series once the season is over one way or the other.

I’m continuing my quest to predict pitcher injuries and their effects as best as possible. I started grinding through the process last week and found through some additional work that injuries from just the past two seasons drag down production. Today, I’m going to go over some other possible other injury causes and provide updated injury ranks.

While I’ve done quite a bit of my own work on pitcher injuries, I decided to scour the web come up with some new ideas. Here are some possible ideas ranked by how I’d like to investigate them.
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If we do in fact get some sort of 50-ish game season, finding any small edge could be the difference between winning and losing your league. One potential edge is platoons. Let’s take a look at the starting pitching handedness breakdown on the assumed rotations for each division. This assumes they stick to this mega-division plan by combining the East, Central, and West division from both leagues.

We’re also going to grade the pitchers using the FIP from their BAT projection. My arbitrary scale is as such: sub-4.00 is good, 4.01-4.70 is solid, and 4.71+ is bad.

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Projecting pitcher injuries and their effect seems like the Holy Grail for fantasy analysis. From years of research on the subject, I find it’s just a frustration filled enterprise with no firm resolution. Until a start to the 2020 season has been agreed upon (or I eventually find an acceptable answer), I plan to continuously grind for a workable understanding of pitcher injuries.

First, this article will be a work in progress as I try to find answers to various questions. I can’t fill the RotoGraphs article list with a new article every time I make a change or add more information (Ed. note: Sure you can, Jeff, we’ll post all of ’em!). Every few days or so, I’ll summarize the findings from the previous article’s work and keep moving forward. The series will come to an abrupt end if the framework exists for a start to the season since other analysis will then take priority.
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Introduction

Last year, I introduced a new (yet simple) pitcher metric. Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) arises from the core ingredients of plate discipline from the point of view of the pitcher – control, deception, and contact.

wPDI looks at the following basic binary events:

• Was the ball thrown in the strike zone?
• Was the ball swung on?
• Did the batter make contact with the ball?

That’s all.

Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) does not look at generated bat speed, exit velocity, pitch speed, or quality of contact, etc. wPDI doesn’t even focus on walk rates or strikeout rates, or any other plate appearance result. wPDI focuses solely on the pure components of a pitch. Is the pitch in the zone? Is the batter swinging at pitches in the zone? Is the batter swinging at pitches outside of the zone? Is the hitter contacting the pitch?

That’s all.

In this series of articles, I will be refining and expanding upon what I had started last year. I will look at wPDI’s effectiveness and predictability. Along the way, I shall highlight both pitchers and hitters who catch our eye based on great (and poor) plate discipline performance.

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In the final part of my latest injury investigation, I trying to see if pitchers who have accumulated a certain amount of injuries age worse than those who have stayed healthy. And if so, are there any rules-of-thumb that can be used. I’ve already examined chronically injured hitters and if accumulated days missed for pitchers lead to more Injured List (IL) trips. The results aren’t groundbreaking findings that constantly hurt pitchers declining faster at certain thresholds but now some numbers can be added to the narratives.

My overall goal is to see the accumulative effect of various injuries can lead to a pitcher aging faster. The factors I had never accounted for are accumulated IL days and times of the IL for elbow, shoulder, or arm injury. Also, I’m only diving into starters (GS/G >= .5) from 2010 to 2018 because relievers, especially closers, are already tough to project. I divided the starters by their age based on a steep production decline starting at age 29. For the pitcher’s talent level, I used ERA- that increase, like ERA, as a pitcher performs worse. The results were a little mixed.

One item to keep in mind, pitchers have historically, maintained their production, or declined as they age. While there is always the exception of a pitcher improving, most are headed down with the average change of 2.8 points of ERA- a year.

What I found from this data run and others not listed, age doesn’t matter. Also, while the average IL days steadily climb, the ERA- value jump seems to increase except when it doesn’t. I simplified the results and settled on a 120-day threshold with the following results.

Once a pitcher goes over the 120-day threshold (i.e. a full MLB season), their career declines at a faster than expected rate. Again, there are always going to expectations but rostering too many of these hurt starters increases the downside potential.

Now for one more angle that I had jotted in my to-do book. Most major pitcher injuries center around the arm, so I decided to focus just on them. I bucketed the information by the number of times a pitcher was on the IL for a general arm (e.g. forearm), elbow, or shoulder injury (no wrist or hand). With more than 99% of all instances in the single digits, a simple workable division was easy to find at 2 IL stints.

Even pitchers who had two or few IL stints weren’t in great shape with them averaging over 200 days on the IL. That third arm related IL trip can be a deal-breaker because the pitcher will, on average, will see their skill degrade about twice as fast as those with two or fewer trips.

And finally here are the pitchers who have over 120 days on the IL and three or more arm related IL stints (min 10 IP last season).

Several high ADP names fill the list like Morton, Darvish, Strasburg, Kershaw, and Cole. Does this information mean I won’t roster the pitcher? Maybe. With a fantasy team only starting nine pitchers, I’d like those pitchers to be as rock-solid as possible with little chance of decline. The downside means that I will need them to come with a discount and is an easy tiebreaker. That’s not helpful since that’s everyone’s injury take.

My stance on the information is wishy-washy because I am unsure. I haven’t fathomed a way to weight the information especially if I want to use it to create auction prices. I need to find a way to change ERA- to fantasy-relevant stats. It wouldn’t be that hard but I’m looking at two different inputs (total days and arm related trips). Also, I should incorporate possible time missed from previous IL trips. I’m going to let the information stew for a bit and unless I come to some divine revelation, I’ll perform a forced dive once this season is over or canceled.