End of Season Bullpen Report: “Expected” Fantasy Rankings

Any day now, Zach Sanders (@zvsanders) will come out with his end-of-season FAVRz/Fantasy Rankings. Look out for them.

For this post, I will provide three sets of rankings using that same approach (summed up z-scores) for our end-of-season “Bullpen Report: Expected Fantasy Rankings”. The Bullpen Report team should follow up with role reports for each division in the coming weeks as well.

The first set of rankings you will find almost anywhere: on the fantasy sites that you use, via player-raters, etc. It’s the standard 5×5 fantasy value (Wins, ERA, WHIP, SO and Saves). The second grid will be for 6×6 leagues (addition of Holds). The last grid will be for 5×5 and 6×6 leagues, but instead of standard ERA and WHIP, we’ll look at rankings if you were to use expected ERA (via SIERA) and adjusted (adj)WHIP through BABIP differential: I will explain below.

1) 5×5 Rankings (Wins, ERA, WHIP, SO and Saves) – actual 5×5 value in column 4; expected 5×5 value in column 5:

2) 6×6 Rankings (Wins, ERA, WHIP, SO, Saves and Holds)  – actual 6×6 value in column 4; expected 6×6 value in column 5:

3) 5×5 and 6×6 Rankings (SIERA vs. ERA and adjusted WHIP vs. actual WHIP) – sort by column 4 for expected 5×5 rankings and column 5 for expected 6×6 rankings:

2014 Pitcher “Expected” Fantasy Value: 

Yesterday, Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) provided me with updated pitcher xBABIP based on Inside Edge data. I used the BABIP differential to come up with an expected amount of +/- hits in order to adjust WHIP. Instead of actual WHIP, I z-scored this adjusted WHIP, which is depicted as “adjWHIP”.

Instead of actual ERA, I used/z-scored SIERA as our expected ERA. I simply added these two z-scores to our counting-stat z-scores: Wins, Strikeouts, Saves (5×5) and Holds (6×6). The results = our “2014 Pitcher Expected Fantasy Value.”

Actual vs. Expected Fantasy Value:

If you want to distinguish their expected fantasy value relative to actual, check out the 6th column in the first two grids, titled “5x5diff” or “6x6diff” i.e. the value differential. Red means there is 1.00+ z-sum differential. Green is obviously the other side of the spectrum.

(In the first 2 grids, sort column 6 by ‘descending’ and then sort column 2 by “descending” to depict RP on top) For example, for relievers that you probably own, Neftali Feliz, Santiago Casilla, Darren O’Day and Huston Street all have significant differences between their actual and expected 5×5 fantasy value. According to xBABIP, Street should have given up 9 extra hits, which would have adjusted his WHIP by 16 points. His SIERA was a full 1.5 more runs per 9. Let’s just say that both of his WHIP and ERA-related z-scores would have been cut in half.

(In the first 2 grids, sort column 6 by “ascending” and then sort column 2 by “descending”) On the other side of the equation, again for relievers that you probably should own next year, Kenley Jansen, Carlos Martinez, Adam Ottavino, Steve Cishek, Randall Delgado, Aroldis Chapman, Glen Perkins, Andrew Miller, David Robertson, and Jenrry Mejia not too far behind all have significant differences in a good way i.e. we would have expected even better value. While KenJan dominated and furnished 44 Saves with 101 SO’s, the BABIP differential outputs about 6 less hits jumping his z-score by .50, and SIERA has him at over a run less per 9 incurring a z-score about 1.25 higher.

Give me a make-believe reliever with Aroldis Chapman’s Fastball, Zach Britton‘s Sinker, Kenley Jansen’s Wade Davis‘ Cutter, Craig Kimbrel’s Brett Cecil‘s Curve, Greg Holland’s Wade Davis’ Pedro Strop‘s Slider, Francisco Rodriguez‘s Alex Torres‘ Change, Koji Uehara’s Joaquin Benoit’s Splitter and enough innings, and then maybe we have an expected 5×5 z-sum in line with Clayton Kershaw (14.99), Corey Kluber (12.58), Felix Hernandez (12.17) or David Price (11.48).