Ottoneu: Chad’s Keep or Cut Decisions at SP

Lucas shared his difficult keep or cut decisions at SP earlier this week and in the process answered a couple of difficult choices for me. Cristian Javier, in particular, has been a thorn in my off-season planning and seeing Lucas so comfortable moving on has helped me come to terms with what has to be done. But there are still a few SP on my rosters that I am not 100% sure what to do with.

Nick Pivetta, SP/RP
Salary: $5, $4
Average Salary: $4.60
2023 P/IP: 4.89
Proj 2024 P/IP: 4.07

Nick Pivetta can be maddening.

At times, he looks great and he can extend that “great” for multiple games at a time – almost all of 2018, parts of 2021, big chunks of 2022, and most notably the back half of 2023. He can also have stretches that are, well, we’ll say “not great.” From a fantasy perspective that makes him the kind of guy you pick up, and drop, then pick up again, then drop again, and never quite get comfortable with.

On top of that, his role is not 100% clear. Roster Resource lists him as the Red Sox #2 SP, but the Sox are rumored to be in on the SP FA market and looking to maybe trade an OF for a starter. And while Pivetta might be #2 today, he’s also the oldest SP in the rotation (at 30 – it’s not that he is old, but he is the oldest) and it’s hard to know if Boston’s leadership seems him as a rotation anchor or as a filler. If they add Shoto Imanaga or make a trade, or both, how confident are you that Pivetta stays in the rotation while one or more of Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello, or Kutter Crawford gets the boot?

And last year he was in and out of the rotation, sometimes used as a reliever, sometimes the bulk guy behind an opener, sometimes a traditional SP. That makes him hard to predict.

But there is reason to buy into the performance improvement in the second half – Pivetta joined the hottest trend 60’6″ from home plate and added a sweeper.

You can see the sweeper appear in May, creep up in usage through June and settle in as a key element of his repertoire in July. There’s also some shifting in his slider/cutter usage, but Pivetta and the Sox talk about his slider, sweeper and cutter as a single pitch, so my read is that he was adjusting and working in a new pitch, and Statcast represented it this way.

The important thing is that post-All-Star break, he saw his K% increase 8 points and his BB% drop 4 points, while also getting more ground balls. If that is what drove his improvement, that’s a great sign.

Keep or cut?
I expected to cut Pivetta. He has been so up and down that it is hard to believe this will stick. But that pitch change is a real reason to believe and I am willing to take the gamble.

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Reid Detmers, SP
Salary: $13, $8
Average Salary: $9.01
2023 P/IP: 4.15
Proj 2024 P/IP: 4.04

Maybe it isn’t just Pivetta. Maybe all pitchers can be maddening. Or maybe it’s just Pivetta and Detmers? Probably it is everyone.

But Detmers. I expected a nice step forward from Detmers in 2023. Coming off a solid 4.58 P/IP 2022, Detmers was 23 years old and was on a 13-start run with 9.89 K/9 and a 2.51 FIP. There was some HR/FB luck you could expect to regress, but even his 3.70 xFIP would have been pretty solid.

Instead, he went the wrong direction, largely due to corrections in his HR/FB rate and BABIP, despite giving up barrels at a lower rate. He did improve his K%-BB% to 16.8%, but even that was just 49th out of 117 P who threw at least 100 IP as a starter. That doesn’t immediately sound great, but the 49th best pitcher in that kind of stat, having thrown 148.2 innings, has some pretty clear non-zero value in Ottoneu leagues. Looking at the 2024 Surplus Calculator, his projected season – which looks pretty similar to his 2023 – is worth $8. The FanGraphs Auction Calculator puts him even higher, just over $12, in FanGraphs Points leagues.

You can see that while his results have been up and down, Detmers has consistently held an around-league-average walk rate while increasing his K-rate.

That rise in strikeouts coincided with a tweak to his slider in 2022. In 2023, he again made changes to his slider, after apparently feeling it was too hard and too similar to a cut fastball. In fact, if you look at his repertoire over his career, you get an interesting picture:

He is a 24-year-old with under 300 career IP who is still trying to find himself. But the solid (and at times excellent) K% with a decent BB% with reason to believe he hasn’t found his final form is pretty intriguing.

Keep or cut?
The $13 version is getting cut. He just has not been good enough to justify that price, as much as I might like it. The $8 version…is probably also getting cut, but format matters there. That is in a SABR Points league, and those leagues lean a little more heavily to hitters – while Detmers is $8 in the Surplus Calculator for FanGraphs Points, he is only $4 for SABR Points. I wish I had $4-$6 versions because they would be easy keeps for me. Instead, he’ll be an auction target.

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Logan Allen, SP
Salary: $7
Average Salary: $7.17
2023 P/IP: 3.92
Proj 2024 P/IP: 3.87

What a difference a start makes. As of September 18, Allen had made 23 starts, throwing 122.1 IP, and had 506.36 points, good for 4.14 P/IP. That’s not an ace, but it isn’t a disaster either. On the 19th, he went just three innings in his final start of the year and gave up -14.9 points at Kansas City. And with that his year ended with 3.92 P/IP, which is also not an ace but kind of is a disaster.

The problem is, of course, you can’t just ignore that start. It really happened. He did go on the IL after that start with a shoulder injury. Whether that was a real shoulder injury or a “the season is almost over and we are just going to shut you down” injury is hard to parse – I haven’t seen anything to suggest he won’t be ready for 2024, but that doesn’t mean something didn’t interfere with his ability to pitch in that final start.

That last start doesn’t stand out when looking at fastball velo, but there is a pretty clear drop in there, from his June 28 start, after which he was sent down, to his July 18 start, when he was recalled. His fastball sat 91.9 through his first 12 starts, then dropped to 90.9 for his last 12, after he was recalled. Some other numbers changed, as well.