Slider Throwers Against Slider Whiffers (AL and NL)

Streaming pitchers is an art form in the fantasy baseball community. Analysts making streamer picks are daring and brave when it comes to putting their picks out there for the world to see. It’s not an easy game. Streaming a pitcher who blows up my ratios is one of the most frustrating aspects of fantasy baseball in my humble opinion, but it happens (don’t act like it doesn’t). But, taking the time to deep dive on a pitcher before streaming can limit the likelihood of having your ratios inflated like a grocery store helium balloon. Here’s how you can take some time with our pitch-type linear weights.

I’m using qualified rookies for this analysis because sorting by pitch value is otherwise going to give you a bunch of great pitchers who were drafted by your competitors before the season ever started. Rookies and prospect starting pitchers are volatile, but playing the matchups based on pitch type values could give you an edge. I also differentiate between AL and NL because this inner-league play occurs more often. Finally, I’m using standardized runs by pitch (wSL/C) because they, according to the glossary page, “represent the average amount of runs that hitter produced against 100 (sliders) thrown.” These values use average run expectancy from one count to another to quantify how well the pitcher utilizes a specific pitch. While this descriptive stat is not predictive, it can be used in conjunction with statistics like CSW%, which is predictive. With all that in mind, here are the top rookie pitchers and worst team performers against the slider in the AL:

Using the same technique but on the batter’s side of things, I used wSL/C to see which teams in the AL have performed poorly against the slider. That list goes like this:

1. TBR (-0.85) 2. DET (-0.66) 3. SEA (-0.51) 4. BAL (-0.48) 5. TEX (-0.34)

Using the splits leaderboards, I looked at how these pitchers have performed thus far when going up against these poor slider-hitting teams.

The same analysis can be conducted in the NL, taking qualified rookie starters and sorting by wSL/C presents us with a top-five list:

1. MIL (-1.31) 2. SFG (-1.16) 3.COL (-1.15) 4. PIT (-0.92) 5. ATL (-0.87)

It is noted on the pitch linear weights glossary page that these values are susceptible to small sample sizes and Tucker Davidson’s appearance on this list proves that. He is yet to pitch against any of these bottom five performing teams. Another thing to note is that these pitch values won’t tell us how much confidence these young pitchers will have in their sliders going into their next start. If they don’t have it and can’t find it and rely on other secondary pitches instead, then this analysis won’t help us at all. However, this deep dive is not meant to have you running to the waiver wire + button, but maybe it will have you adding these players to your watch list and perhaps streaming them when the time is right.