Ottoneu: Lucas’ Keep or Cut Decisions at SP

“Good pitching beats good hitting.” I think Casey Stengel said that. The replacement level for a starting pitcher in Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues is 4.55 P/IP. I said that. What is “good pitching?” from a fantasy baseball standpoint in a very specific format? Well, there are many inputs you can add to the calculation to help answer that question. In this post, I’ll analyze four starting (or expected to be starting) pitchers who I have to make keep or cut decisions on, and soon!

Louie Varland, SP/RP
Salary: $7.00
Average Salary: $4.67
2023 P/IP: 3.39
Proj 2024 P/IP: 4.23

Louie Varland had a home run problem in 2023. After three early starts (15 IP) in AAA, Varland was called up to the big leagues and he made 10 starts for Minnesota. In those 10 early season starts he got banged up, producing a 2.25 home run per nine rate while walking batters at a 2.57 per nine rate. That is a terrible combination. He was, as you can likely guess, sent back down to AAA. There he recorded 12 starts and 66.2 IP and still struggled with a high walk rate, but lowered his HR/9 to 0.94. It was good enough for the Twins to give him another shot with the big league club towards the end of the season, but only in relief where he tacked on 12 more big league innings. Remarkably, his K% and BB% improved:

In his first start early in the season, he walked only one batter and struck out eight. That’s the reason his (blue) KK% line decreases so drastically thereafter while his (red) BB% line increases in unison. Those lines are subject to small samples. While this graph shows improvement and stabilization in his K and BB ratios, it hides the fact that he gave up three home runs in that first game.

Why so many home runs? First, he filled the zone with his four-seamer producing a well-above-average 59.9 Zone%, with the MLB average being 50.7% (PitcherList). While the grades on his four-seamer are good, it still got hit for home runs. Here is a table of Varland’s pitches and how many home runs he gave up on each:

Highlighted in red are the areas where Varland is below average. Varland fills the zone with four-seamers, gets a lot of swing and miss, yet gets beat often enough. His slider misses the zone too much and isn’t getting the swing and miss that it should. This may indicate that while Varland’s fastball is good, hitters aren’t worried about his slider getting called for strikes, allowing them to lay off and wait for a fastball. But, when the slider got stuck in the zone, hitters took advantage. Here are all 10 slider and four-seamer home runs given up by Varland in 2023:

The fastball may be getting hit more as hitters get another look at it. Here are Varland’s splits through the order compared to the MLB average:

This theory only holds up if Varland’s slider isn’t a concern to hitters. While I’ve read a lot about Varland’s incredible stuff, the actual measurement of that in the form of Stuff+ doesn’t match up with the buzz:

When the innings pitched threshold is brought down to 60 (all pitchers), it ranks 134th. That ranking is a little clouded given the fact that relievers are included and relievers have the benefit of going all out in a single inning. Even still, Varland’s is above 100 and should be producing better results. His overall Location+ measurement brings him to 11th on the same list. That could be due to his filling of the zone with quality fastballs and that the home run issue is not being represented. Regardless, for a pitcher whose velocity has continuously increased throughout his young career, it’s hard not to see the potential.

One last point; Varland’s HR/FB rate of 21.1% was good for sixth worst among all pitchers that threw at least 60 innings in 2023. That could suggest he got somewhat unlucky, but we’ve already proven that he served up too many meatballs smothered in gravy. While his HR/9 is projected to decrease by Steamer, his BB/9 is not.

Keep or Cut?
Gosh, this is hard. I have to cut at the $7 price point. That is especially so given his role in 2024 is undefined. Google “Louie Varland”, click the “News” tab and you’ll find endless articles attempting to define his role for him. As of now, RosterResource lists him as the fifth starter in Minnesota, but it’s not enough for me to keep at $7. If he is a reliever, his fantasy value will drop tremendously as the back end of the Twins bullpen is stacking guys like Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, and Brock Stewart. Cut.

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Lance Lynn,
Salary: $14
Average Salary: $11.60
2023 P/IP: 2.62
Proj 2024 P/IP: 3.90

Let’s start with the very obvious concern, Lance Lynn’s increased home run rate:

Steamer is projecting regression but still is high, expecting 1.36 home runs per nine innings. That’s less than the 2.16 Lynn finished 2023 with, but it’s still close to one home run per game (.90) if you consider a game to be six innings. Home runs hurt in FanGraphs points leagues and I’m not excited about bringing in a lot of them to my starts. You may say, “Yeah, but his FIP (5.53) and xFIP (4.50) were over a point off!” and you would have made a good point. But even if he performed as should be expected, that 4.50 would have placed him among the worst 10 qualified pitchers according to FIP.

Keep or Cut?
Cut. I’m paying him too much already and it hurts too much to see negative points during the season. If I can get him for a few dollars under his average cost, I may give him another chance in a redraft as he will put up strikeout numbers and he typically goes six or seven innings per start.

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Cristian Javier,
Average Salary: $13.17
Salary: $14.00
2023 P/IP: 3.89
Proj 2024 P/IP: 3.78

The 2022 5.88 P/IP season that Cristian Javier had is worth $14. The expected 3.78 P/IP in 2024 is not. If this were a 5×5 standard roto format, the wins, and WHIP would be enough for me to stay with Javier, but in Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues, I’m just not excited about the 1.61 HR/9 projection. That mark is good for the 25th worst out of the 293 starting pitchers with Steamer projections. According to his baseball savant page, here are the three biggest metric changes, positive and negative, between 2022 and 2023:

Decrease: K% (-10.1), Whiff% (-3.3), In Zone% (-2.6)

Increase: Sweet Spot% (6.9), Hard Hit% (4.7), Out of Zone% (2.6)

If the two lists were flipped, Javier would be scaling up our draft lists like Preston Blake from Mr. Deeds. But Steamer’s projection seems to take the middle ground, predicting his 2024 to be a mix of his four seasons. It’s possible that 2022 was Javier’s peak and while he’s still a high-strikeout-rate kind of pitcher, he’s still a high-walk-rate kind of pitcher.

Keep or Cut?
Cut. Last season’s 3.89 P/IP was replaceable and the expectation this year is that it will be worse.

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Jon Gray,
Salary: $12.00
Average Salary: $7.84
2023 P/IP: 3.82
Proj 2024 P/IP: 4.00

For starters, I’m paying too much. His projected 4.00 P/IP is below replacement, but he’s worth rostering for a few dollars, given that he’s expected to be the number two starter for the World Series Champion Texas Rangers. That’s just not enough to be worth $12. But let’s not focus on this salary and let’s assume you have Gray for a decent price, somewhere a few dollars south of his average. The unpredictability of his fastball and slider should scare you away. The man, the myth, the legend, Nick Pollack (PitcherList) wrote:

Gray gets into a groove where he locates his slider and avoids contact on his four-seamer…until he hits a wall and loses it for a month.

and I think that’s right on the money. Look at how variable the combination of those two pitches has been in the past three seasons:

His slider has never really been a bad pitch in aggregate. But when it does not have a good fastball to support it, his overall numbers are hurt. He simply needs to be better with his fastball. He’s only recorded a positive fastball pVal in two out of his nine career seasons. One of those was in the short 2020 season and neither have been above 2.5. From a Stuff+ standpoint, Gray’s fastball measured 82, 37th among starters with at least 150 IP. Yet his slider was a 115, good for 18th. Though he has begun using his changeup more often in the past few seasons, and it has performed reasonably well, its CSW% (called strikes plus whiffs) is below average and he doesn’t use it in two-strike counts (PitcherList, 2-Str%) often enough. Instead, he uses it when he is behind and it doesn’t get strikes often enough one way or another for it to be effective.

Keep or Cut?
Cut.