Archive for Starting Pitchers

Five Always Broken Starting Pitchers To Target

I got the idea for this post while writing a player caption for Nate Eovaldi (more on him in a moment). As I outlined the glass half full scenario for the upcoming season, it occurred to me that 1. Eovaldi is free even in the deepest leagues and 2. pitchers like Eovaldi sometimes spontaneously become useful. Excellent even.

Charlie Morton and James Paxton immediately came to mind – they were always injured and then suddenly they found health and reached acedom (*cough* Paxton is broken again). Those are just two poster children for the upside. Carlos Carrasco, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Lance Lynn, Mike Minor, Eduardo Rodriguez, Frankie Montas, Jameson Taillon, and Homer Bailey are all variations of this profile.

And so, without further ado, I present five always broken starting pitchers who might just might have something left to give.

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Paxton Out 3-4 Months; Stripling to LAA

The New York Yankees announced that top starter James Paxton will be out at least 3-4 months after undergoing a microscopic lumbar discectomy to remove a peridiscal cyst. It’s absolutely brutal news for the 31-year old lefty, who has battled injuries throughout his career as Jay Jaffe outlined in his piece about the injury. It does look like the timeline is for his return to the field so late-May/early-June is the target, but I’d plan for mid-to-late June just to be safe.

In leagues with IL spots, I have no real issue stashing him, even if it were for the full three months of the regular season. His price will plummet, and you need to decide where you’re comfortable grabbing him as a stash. There was only one NFBC draft last night after the news and he went 224th, which put him around the likes of Ian Kennedy, Giovanny Gallegos, and Griffin Canning as far as pitchers. Now it’s worth noting that the NFBC doesn’t have IL spots so anyone drafting him must eat one of their seven reserve spots.

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Ranking Five Tier 2 Starting Pitchers

Depending on league type and tendencies, there is a group of five pitchers who I have a problem differentiating their value. They are Chris Sale, Mike Clevinger, Jack Flaherty, Stephen Strasburg, and Shane Bieber. While the ideal spot would be to take the last of this group, not every owner will have that option. There will be instances where if an owner passes on one of this group, none will make it back to their next pick. I needed to dig in a bit to differentiate them.

The first elephants in the room to deal with are Walker Buehler and Blake Snell. I went through the following analysis and Beuhler came out a bit ahead of the ground and Snell a bit behind. I completely understand if someone wants to include them. All these pitchers are close but currently, they are easier for me to rank. I’m sure someone can’t wait to write a small essay in the comments on why I’m wrong. I can’t wait to ignore it.
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Ottoneu Top 100 Starting Pitchers for 2020

Using a format similar to the one Justin Mason recently posted for 2020 Roto player rankings, below is the 2020 ranking of the Top 100 Starting Pitchers for Ottoneu fantasy baseball.  Ottoneu leagues are auction style, but with no salaries listed (league dependent), think of these lists as simplified “snake draft” rankings (“which player would I take before the next”), or a value ranking of players above replacement level for 2020. Players with multi-position eligibility may receive a slight bump in value (2020 positions listed).  You can reference average Ottoneu player salaries here, but keep in mind these salaries fluctuate throughout the winter as rosters shape up towards today’s keeper deadline for all leagues.

Previous 2020 Ottoneu rankings:

First Base

Third Base

Middle Infielders

Shortstop

Second Base

Outfield

Since a majority of Ottoneu leagues are points leagues (pitching based on linear weights), WHIP and Wins are less of a factor here than in traditional rotisserie rankings.  Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, this list might be a good proxy for sabermetric leagues, so keep that context in mind as you review. “P/IP” represents the projected points per innings pitched from Steamer projections and their estimated innings total.

If I’ve missed an important player, or you believe I’ve wildly over or under-valued someone, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure to update.

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Birchwood Brothers 6.1: Antipasto Salad

Hello again. We are the Birchwood Brothers, back for our sixth season at the old stand. We’re still real-life siblings, still geriatric, still tireless seekers after the Fantasy Baseball dispensation, still reporters, via Rotographs, on the progress of our quest, and still the top finishers among Fangraphs writers (and 7th overall of 315 teams) in last season’s Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, where the elite meet to tweet and compete. It’s been a tough few months on the sidelines, as we have struggled unsuccessfully to care the tiniest bit about Bang on a Can or the Jeter Apostasy (though we’d like to know the apostate’s rationale, if [s]he had one). But now it’s time to contemplate truly important matters, like who will comprise the Dodgers’ eight-man starting rotation or who will play right field for the Mariners.

If you’ve joined us in the past, you know that we are the detritivores among Fantasy Baseball pundits. Where others concern themselves with, say, whether the Blake Snell of 2020 will be the Blake Snell of 2018 or the Blake Snell of 2019, or whether Aristides Aquino should go in the 5th, the 8th, the 11th, or the 14th round, we trawl contentedly on the bottom, among the 4th outfielders, backup catchers, 6th starters, utility infielders, and setup guys—the ones who’ve drifted down to or near the reserve rounds, and who—if we’re right about them—will pay fantasy dividends in excess of what, for example, Jose Abreu will be worth if he hits 40 home runs rather than the 30 everyone projects for him. Sometimes we’re right about our guys, sometimes we’re not, and some seasons we’re righter than others, but it’s a harmless pursuit, and we amuse ourselves, and occasionally our readers, doing it.

In the next couple of weeks, we’ll do a sweep through all of MLB, trying to identify at least one cheap player per team who has a shot at paying lavish dividends. But for the moment, let’s concentrate on a new but already-familiar baseball phenomenon—the opener, or, as we Italian-Americans prefer to call him, the antipasto. As we wandered, lonely as clouds, through the roster of the Detroit Tigers—who, by the way, are a very interesting team, though they may be just as bad this year as they were last—the perennially-disappointing Daniel Norris caught our eye. For most of the season, Norris was dreadful, but take a look at his last eight “starts.” In each of them, he pitched exactly three innings. Obviously, he got no wins or saves, but his other stats were excellent: 24 IP, 16 Hits, 3 Walks, 6 Earned Runs, 23 Strikeouts.

This got us wondering: suppose you projected an antipasto to do over the course of a full season what Norris did for the last six weeks or so of 2019. Would you rather have that guy in your day-to-day lineup than a sixth starter? The answer is, decisively, yes. As we calculate it, using the Birchwood Brothers’ top-secret valuator–which is essentially indistinguishable from everyone else’s top-secret valuator—Norris times four would have earned about as much as Jake Odorizzi or Mike Minor. That’s as in Mike Minor, the guy who attracted four votes in the Cy Young balloting.

Or let’s approach the math from a different angle. The question before the bar is whether your starting lineup is better off with an antipasto who has Norris’s stats than it is with a typical sixth (or, a fortiori, seventh) starting pitcher. Using the current NFBC Average Draft Positions for Draft Champions (i.e. 15-team, 50-round) leagues, we identified the 76th- through 90th-ranked starting pitchers. We took the 2020 stats foreseen for those guys by Ariel Cohen’s nonpareil ATC projections, and averaged them. We found that the typical SP6 is projected to pitch about 140 innings and get about 8 wins with 135 strikeouts, an ERA of 4.40, and a WHIP of 1.32. It appears to us that substituting Norris for that guy on an average Draft Champions team will cost you 3 standings points in wins and one point in strikeouts—but will lower your ERA enough to gain you three points and lower your WHIP enough to get you another three or four. In other words, you’re better off with Norris, and you haven’t had to use a pre-reserve round pick to get him.

We know what you’re saying, which is something like “if we knew ex ante that Norris or someone else would have a full season like that, we’d draft him in the 16th round or so. But we don’t.” True, and we’re not suggesting that you draft [insert name here] in the 16th round, or before the reserve round. What we’re suggesting is that, if you play in a deep league, along about the 25th or 30th round, Insert Name might be a more useful selection than, say, Kevin Gausman or Jordan Lyles.

But whose Name do you Insert? You will not be stunned to learn that we have some thoughts. We found three starting pitchers who last season (1) were way better their first two times through the batting order than their third, and (2) were good enough those first two times, and got enough strikeouts, to make drafting them a possibility on the chance that they’ll be used as multi-inning antipasti. Those pitchers are:

Elieser Hernandez, Marlins, NFBC Average Draft Position 543. (FTTO/STTO: 10.4 K/9; 1.11 WHIP; 4.08 ERA. TTTO: 3.5 K/9; 1.55 WHIP; 7.84 ERA). Hernandez is an extreme fly ball pitcher, and he’s always going to give up home runs. He’ll probably give up more this season, what with the fence retraction in Miami. The question is whether he gives up anything else. He succeeds, when he does, by striking out the guys who don’t hit home runs, and apparently, when he doesn’t strike them out, they get hits. His hard-hit percentage stays about the same no matter how many times through the order he goes, but his BABIP goes from .240 to .316.

Vince Velasquez, Phillies, NFBC ADP 507. (10.3/1.16/4.18 vs. 5.1/2.76/10.95). With Velasquez, you can account for the different outcomes readily enough. First two times through, he’s hard-hit 44.2% of the time with a BABIP of .271; Third time through, it’s 60% and .417. Whether this is because of a decline in velocity, a change in pitch mix, a question of familiarity’s breeding contempt, or something else, it’s happening, and (we posit) won’t happen if you stop him after he pitches three innings.

Tyler Mahle, Reds, NFBC ADP 377. (9.6/1.20/3.58 vs. 5.8/1.85/12.88). When Mahle is on, he throws a split-fingered fastball and a curve that induce ground balls in great profusion, plus a respectable fastball that can strike guys out. When he’s off, he doesn’t and doesn’t.

We know what else you’re saying: How do I know these guys will be succulent antipasti rather than overcooked linguine? In other words, even if I think they’re projectible to Norris-like seasons, how do I know they’ll be used as three-inning openers rather than dollar-short starters? You don’t, of course. That’s why they’re reserve-round picks, and why you’re not counting on them for anything. But their upside is significant, especially when you consider that they’re all still young and that they (or anyway Mahle and Velasquez) were, within living memory, elite prospects. Maybe it will turn out that they can do for five innings whatever they’ve been doing right for three. And wouldn’t you rather take a chance on them rather than suffering through another season of the uninspired and uninspiring chicken parm that is Rick Porcello or Zach Davies?


Lingering Effects of Elbow & Shoulder for Pitchers

I don’t know for sure where I read or heard it, but an analyst mentioned they would never go near Luis Severino this season in drafts because of last season’s major shoulder injury. This claim is something I can investigate on the surface to see if anything sticks. Besides the numbers for shoulder injuries, I included the pitchers with elbow injuries.

For the analysis, I took the players who were on the IL for a shoulder or elbow injury in year one and then compared their next season projection and results. I had matching data going back to 2010 but didn’t use 2018 IL data because for some reason I didn’t clean up the last year’s data. Read the rest of this entry »


We Are Ignoring J.A. Happ At Our Own Risk

If there was any mystery about J.A. Happ’s status with the Yankees, it got resolved on Thursday, when general manager Brian Cashman announced that the 37-year-old would begin the 2020 season as the team’s fifth starter, as reported by the YES Network. The lefty has elicited a yawn in early NFBC drafts, as his 474 ADP has him well outside the top 150 pitchers. Maybe the previous lack of clarity around his role has played some role in the low level of interest, but given the dropoff in his productivity from 2018, this news probably won’t move the needle much on Happ’s ADP. That means, at best, that Happ won’t be viewed as anything more than a reserve round pick in 15-team mixed leagues.

It was a mere two seasons ago that Happ was a top 20 starter in terms of Roto value (and a top 25 pitcher overall), sporting a 17-6 record, 3.65 ERA, 1.13 WHIP and 193 strikeouts in 177.2 innings. It was Happ’s fourth straight season with an ERA in the 3.00s. That performance is being heavily discounted as we head into the 2020 season, largely due to Happ’s ERA soaring to 4.91 in 2019. The fact that he is now in his late-30s amplifies last season’s slide. Also, while Cashman has ensured us of Happ’s place in the starting rotation for the start of the season, he would seem to be at risk of losing it once Domingo Germán has completed serving his 81-game suspension for his violation of Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy in early June. He could also face competition from Jordan Montgomery, Jonathan Loaisiga and prospect Deivi Garcia, among others.
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Assessing My Big Differences with ADP, Pt. 2

A couple weeks ago, I looked at 10 pitchers where I’m higher than the market with the promise of a second part looking at the pitchers where I’m a good bit lower than the market. I’m using the early average draft position (ADP) information at the NFBC in their Draft Champions leagues (50-round draft-and-hold format).

10 Where I’m Lower

Dallas Keuchel | 73rd SP in ADP; 113th SP by me

My rank is almost certainly lower than he’ll finish on a player rater if he gets at least 150 innings, but I don’t understand taking him in the top 75 when you can easily replicate his worth much later than that… possibly even as late as I have him. He doesn’t miss bats, he’s allowed more than a hit-per-inning in three of the last four seasons, his new team’s defense is unlikely to help, and he moves back to the American League with the DH after developing a bit of a home run issue last year (1.3 HR/9), so what’s there to like?

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 767 – Fireside Chat: Nick Assesses Paul’s Rankings

01/16/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

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Good Pitches from Bad Pitchers* Pt. 2

*Bad in this case is a 4.50 ERA or higher^ in 2019

^Except for one guy, who had a 4.49

Yesterday I looked at some quality four-seamers, sliders, and cutters coming from these so-called “bad” pitches – again, we’re talking about bad in the fantasy realm as most leagues won’t have major use for someone with an ERA north of 4.50 – and today we’re looking at changeups, curveballs, and splitters.

CHANGEUP

Lg. average: .653 OPS, 22% K, 17% SwStr, 38% Chase

Daniel Norris, DET | .532 OPS, 31% K, 20% SwStr, 42% Chase

Here’s our guy with the 4.49 ERA, by the way. Norris also had a solid slider, but like so many guys I covered yesterday, his fastball held him back. He allowed a 1.024 OPS with his heat including 19 of his 25 home runs. Homers have been a career-long issue for Norris, too, but especially the last two years with a 1.6 HR/9 in both seasons.

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