Trevor Bauer, the National Fantasy Baseball Championship’s No.-9 starting pitcher and No.-31 player overall, has pitched to the tune of a 4.12 ERA this year. All things considered (“things” being, primarily, the juiced ball), Bauer hasn’t been awful. But after compiling a pristine 2.21 ERA in last year’s breakout with equally pristine ERA estimators to boot (3.14 xFIP, 3.21 SIERA), this year’s peripherals (4.35 xFIP, 4.21 SIERA) are far less inspiring, even when adjusted for context.

The easiest way to write off Bauer’s 2018 season as an aberration is, well, to look at everything else he has ever done. He sports a career 3.97 ERA, with just one season (2018) with an ERA under 4.00. The blind squirrel who took an approach as simplistic as this in 2019 would have invariably found a nut.

Such an approach, however, would grossly undersell Bauer’s gains in 2018, which were quite legitimate. Using the most basic of peripherals, Bauer’s swinging strike rate (SwStr%) took the best 3rd-biggest step forward in nominal terms, behind only Patrick Corbin (and his slider) and Gerrit Cole (and his fastball).

Yet 2018 gains do not necessarily beget sustained excellence. Bauer’s narrative is a fairly complex one, so let’s give it proper attention.

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When Julio Teheran takes the mound against the Mets at SunTrust Park on Thursday night, he will be looking to extend a hot streak that extends back to the beginning of July. Over his last seven starts encompassing 42.1 innings, Teheran has registered a 1.91 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP. Since July 1, Teheran ranks 30th in Roto value among starting pitchers (per CBSSports.com rankings), and he would place in the top 20 if not for inconsistent run support and a Luke Jackson blown save that cost him a win against the Nationals on July 19. Despite excellent ratios, Teheran is just 2-1 over this stretch.

When a pitcher gets more strikeouts and reduces walks and home runs, an increase in fantasy value is to be expected, and Teheran has recently been accomplishing all three things. The decrease in his walk rate is the most dramatic of the improvements and also the most needed. Over the preceding season-and-a-half, Teheran’s walk rate was a lofty 11.7 percent, but over his last seven outings, that rate is a slightly-below-league-average 8.1 percent. He did not have a home run problem over the first three months of this season, as evidenced by his 1.05 HR/9, but since then, he has been even better at keeping the ball in the park with an 0.85 HR/9.
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I recently did a solo pod covering my top 30 and I made some mistakes. I didn’t include Madison Bumgarner in the honorable mentions and I forgot to transfer Jose Berrios from the scrap list to the main one I used on the pod (that’s what I get for using two different files). I decided to do a write up and get a bit deeper on the ranking. There are a lot of changes! If you listened to the pod, have fun finding all the differences.

Obviously, they are going to change even more as the season finishes and we get into the offseason, but I was somewhat surprised at how much I changed things over the course of two days just by doing some deeper research. Maybe that’s not surprising at all… of course more research should influence my thoughts on these guys. Anyway, let’s get into it!

Let me know what you think in the comments. There are 52 names listed with the Honorable Mentions (and yes, the HMs are ranked, unlike on the pod), did I miss anyone that has to be within the top 52? As for ranking disagreements, I’m particularly interested in the sharper disagreements (like 7-10 spots). Flipping #22 and #25 is more a personal preference but thinking #30 should be at #19 or something like that is worth some discussion.

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Every week for Sportsline, I write an article on available starting pitching and I lucked into a nice find. Using the criteria of owned in 60% or fewer leagues, increasing ownership, and they’ve never been profiled, Joe Ross met the criteria. I noticed Joe Ross reinvented himself as noted here by MLBDream.

Joe Ross throwing a curveball [h/t @jeffwzimmerman] and upping his sinker usage

👀 @JSpauny 👀 pic.twitter.com/LtkrEQc1CI

— MLBdream (@MLBdream) August 14, 2019

Today, I going to go through some lowly owned starters (in the majors and not on the IL) and see if any have made any positive or negative changes to their repertoire to utilize for the final quarter or the season. I’m going to look at pitchers owned in 16% to 30% of Fantrax leagues (Joe Ross was at 31% ownership).

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A group of guys who’ve shown some improvement lately and could have more success on the horizon. Note to my deep league managers, this group is mostly available in shallower formats (all are sub-50% on FantasyPros, which blends Yahoo! and ESPN).

Jeff Samardzija | San Francisco Giants

The Shark has rediscovered his teeth this year. After an injury-riddled 10-start lost season in 2018, Samardzija was an afterthought in 2019 drafts going in the 20th round or later. He got off to a fast start in April (2.53 ERA), but then saw his HR issues return in May and June (1.9 HR/9), posting a 5.75 ERA and winding up on waiver wires across the fantasy community.

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Earlier this season, I introduced a new pitcher metric – Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI). It is a way to aggregate the six possible plate discipline outcomes into one simple quantity. By using plate discipline data alone, wPDI highlights the percentage of deceptive/effective pitches thrown.

Some lesser known undervalued pitchers who were revealed by wPDI in 2018 included Domingo German, Marco Gonzales, Will Smith and Ryan Pressly. Of course, wPDI also confirmed stars such as Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Aroldis Chapman.

You can find the definitions and indexes of wPDI in its introductory article, found here.

Here is a quick reminder on what the six possible plate discipline outcomes look like:

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As we often say, pitchers seemingly change much more quickly than hitters, so you need to be paying attention to any trends in velocity, pitch mix, spin rate, movement, etc. It’s therefore always a good idea to take a look at changes in the last month versus the rest of the season to potentially spot pitchers rising (or falling) to new levels of performance. With that in mind, let’s identify and discuss the starting pitchers whose four-seam fastball velocity has increased most over the last 31 days versus the rest of the season prior.

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Taking a closer look at what drove the biggest risers in my latest SP rankings.

Jeff Samardzija, SF | +65 to 52nd

For those of you who don’t have Shark on a team or aren’t familiar with his numbers this year, take a quick guess at his ERA and WHIP on the season. You may be surprised to learn that he’s at 3.70 ERA and 1.16 WHIP in his 126.3 innings of work. He isn’t just leveraging Oracle Park, either. His home/road splits are very close as his ERA is just 0.25 points higher on the road while his WHIP is actually 0.05 points lower. He is carrying a heavy platoon split (LHB are +186 in OPS at .803) so you might be careful with him in switch/lefty-heavy matchups like Arizona (potentially 6 switch/lefty batters on any given day).

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July was a nightmare. August looks better. Slogging through the July rankings was remarkably difficult because it seemed that everyone after about #40 or so was the same and they were somehow all awful. The middle of the pool has crystallized a bit and hopefully the deadline leaves things settled for a bit, too, outside of the unpredictable injuries. Speaking of injuries, I don’t include guys who are out for a long time, but I did start to put some guys back in who are due back within the week or so (the longest might be P.Lopez, who is tracking around mid-August).

Please leave your questions and comments below!

• March Rankings
• April Rankings
• May Rankings
• June Rankings
• July Rankings

The tiers are as follows:

#1s (10 SPs) – The true aces of fantasy baseball.

Must Start (20 SPs) – Should be pretty obvious, but these are the guys who always start. Again, it isn’t just the very best guys. There are second and third tier arms in terms of market value that I’d start every time out. They don’t have an obvious split or weakness that would give you a better chance at picking off their poor starts. Some of them are “No Coors Field”-types, but it’s predominantly set it and forget it for the foreseeable future.

Usually Start (20 SPs) – If “No Coors Field” is 20-25% with the MS group, it’s more like 60-70% with this group. You need to find a reason to sit them right now in most formats. You might feel like you can spot them properly, but we’re just not that precise in identifying when a solid arm will falter. These guys are good enough to thwart any opponent even on something less than their best day or they could get smacked by a weaker opponent. If you’re rostering them, you should probably be starting them.

Shallow Spot Start (30 SPs) – Flawed talents. A lot of these guys are on the cusp of or have been in the Usually Start tier, but currently you’re looking to curate their starts a bit where you can. These guys might also be US tier arms here temporarily while they get on track. Pay very close attention to gamelogs of pitchers, get a feel for how they arrived at their bottom line numbers. Not all ERAs are created equally and that’s why it’s not a gauge for future production, especially in small samples. I decided to split the group a bit as sort of a way to identify upward or downward mobility for these guys. The shallow ones are a bit more talented and/or running hot so we’re maybe keeping a closer eye on them.

Deep League Spot Start (40 SPs) – I know many of you are dealing with some brutal pitching staff conditions right now after drafting a rotation you thought would be a strength, so you might find yourself in this tier a little more than you’d like. There is some talent to be plucked and the right two-start week could really set you up. This is essentially the Spot Star tier for single leagues or super-deep mixers (16+ teams).

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Looks like we’ll have to wait a little while longer until the real exciting blockbuster trades are made. In the meantime, a pair of lower impact moves were completed involving starting pitchers Jordan Lyles and Jason Vargas. Unfortunately, the park factors suggest both are going to be hurt by their new home digs. Let’s get to the comparisons.

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