The Change — Creating Pitcher Tiers

Before I try to do this in a (slightly) more scientific way, let me say that you can easily create tiers via the sniff test. Take a look at the pitching pool and try to assign groups labels, like ‘ace’ and ‘front of the rotation’ and ‘mid-rotation’. It’s what we do when we are trying to talk about prospect pitchers and where they might slot in later, it should come fairly naturally, and it will help you make sense of your specific player pool. It’s a worthy exercise no matter how rigorous the background work was.

Now let’s try to apply a more reasoned approach to the matter.

If you were to graph tiers, what would they look like? If the y axis was auction value, and the x axis is a pitchers’ rank, then you’d be looking for a straight horizontal line. That’s a group of pitchers with the same auction value but a different rank — a group of pitchers separated by cents, not dollars.

So I made that graph, using our auction calculator and regular 12-team mixed settings.

I looked for big vertical gaps between markers, and put my tiers in there. For the most part, the slope before the tier is horizontal, and then there’s a little vertical moment, and then there’s another horizontal part. It’s not necessarily precise, but it’s backed by the idea that the slope of the line changes in these places, and notifies of a gap in value.

The nice thing is that this approach produces about five tiers for mixed leagues, and that lines up well with how we think of major league rotations. Of course, there’s the Human Caveat, Clayton Kershaw. He’s so far above and beyond the rest of the pack that he’s one of those single-tier players. Let’s not draw a line for him and him alone, though. That’s not, by definition, a tier. There are no other players that are comparable that can live in his tier with him.

Another nice thing is that you see — even if you quibble with where exactly I put my lines (the $10 line should be a bit further right, maybe) — that we have the $30 pitcher, the $20 pitcher, the $10 pitcher, the $5 pitcher, and the $1s. If you’re making a plan and want a pitcher from each tier, there are your budgets for each of those slots.

A major part of the tier system is finding comparable players. Let me update my rankings from last week with tiers that generally follow the plan from above.

Eno’s Ranks (With Tiers)

Eno Sarris	Player	RG RK	Diff%	Tier
1	Clayton Kershaw	1	100	1
2	Max Scherzer	2	100	1
3	Chris Sale	3	100	1
4	David Price	4	100	1
5	Jake Arrieta	5	100	1
6	Jacob deGrom	11	183	1
7	Madison Bumgarner	8	114	1
8	Zack Greinke	12	150	1
9	Matt Harvey	9	100	1
10	Stephen Strasburg	10	100	1
11	Jose Fernandez	6	55	1
12	Corey Kluber	7	58	1
13	Chris Archer	17	131	1
14	Carlos Carrasco	14	100	1
15	Gerrit Cole	16	107	1
16	Noah Syndergaard	19	119	1
17	Felix Hernandez	13	76	1
18	Danny Salazar	24	133	2
19	Johnny Cueto	20	105	2
20	Jon Lester	18	90	2
21	Dallas Keuchel	15	71	2
22	Sonny Gray	27	123	2
23	Masahiro Tanaka	23	100	2
24	Cole Hamels	22	92	2
25	Adam Wainwright	26	104	2
26	Michael Wacha	36	138	2
27	Tyson Ross	21	78	2
28	Michael Pineda	29	104	3
29	Francisco Liriano	25	86	3
30	Garrett Richards	28	93	3
31	Jeff Samardzija	30	97	3
32	Yordano Ventura	40	125	3
33	Marcus Stroman	31	94	3
34	Raisel Iglesias	43	126	3
35	Yu Darvish	38	109	3
36	Carlos Martinez	37	103	3
37	Drew Smyly	50	135	3
38	Jose Quintana	33	87	3
39	James Shields	39	100	3
40	Lance McCullers	48	120	3
41	Steven Matz	56	137	3
42	Luis Severino	54	129	3
43	John Lackey	47	109	3
44	Taijuan Walker	42	95	3
45	Wei-Yin Chen	44	98	3
46	Patrick Corbin	49	107	3
47	Hisashi Iwakuma	32	68	3
48	Justin Verlander	41	85	3
49	Carlos Rodon	60	122	4
50	Jake Odorizzi	34	68	4
51	Collin McHugh	46	90	4
52	Scott Kazmir	35	67	4
53	Jordan Zimmermann	45	85	4
54	Mike Fiers	59	109	4
55	Kevin Gausman	66	120	4
56	Jaime Garcia	69	123	4
57	Shelby Miller	62	109	4
58	Anthony DeSclafani	68	117	4
59	Eduardo Rodriguez	74	125	4
60	Jason Hammel	61	102	4
61	Gio Gonzalez	51	84	4
62	Kenta Maeda	76	123	4
63	Aaron Nola	63	100	4
64	Julio Teheran	55	86	4
65	Anibal Sanchez	64	98	4
66	Joe Ross	71	108	4
67	Andrew Cashner	52	78	4
68	Ian Kennedy	58	85	4
69	Nathan Eovaldi	78	113	4
70	Kyle Hendricks	57	81	5
71	Hyun-Jin Ryu	75	106	5
72	Clay Buchholz	53	74	5
73	Rich Hill	65	89	5
74	Rick Porcello	70	95	5
75	Andrew Heaney	77	103	5
76	Alex Wood	85	112	5
77	Nate Karns	86	112	5
78	Jerad Eickhoff	105	135	5
79	John Lamb	99	125	5
80	Brett Anderson	67	84	5
81	Jimmy Nelson	72	89	5
82	Mike Leake	80	98	5
83	Jake Peavy	88	106	5
84	Jesse Hahn	87	104	5
85	Hector Santiago	101	119	5
86	Trevor Bauer	91	106	5
88	Derek Holland	73	83	5
88	Marco Estrada	79	90	5
89	Kris Medlen	102	115	5
90	Rubby de la Rosa	97	108	5
91	Phil Hughes	81	89	5
92	Erasmo Ramirez	92	100	5
93	Chase Anderson	134	144	5
94	CC Sabathia	121	129	5
95	Robbie Ray	83	87	5
96	Edinson Volquez	94	98	5
97	Kyle Gibson	103	106	5
98	Matt Moore	90	92	5
99	Ervin Santana	98	99	5
100	Drew Hutchison	118	118	5

Diff% = RotoGraphs Rank / Eno Rank * 100, where higher numbers mean Eno Rank higher
Tiers for 12-team mixed leagues.

If Noah Syndergaard or Felix Hernandez are my aces, I’m fine with that. If I waited till the end of each tier and came out of the 12-teamer draft with Noah Syndergaard, Michael Wacha, Justin Verlander, Joe Ross, and Jerad Eickhoff as my staff — all players that I’m relatively high on versus the crowd — I’d do the happy dance and go ogle my strong starting lineup, most likely.

My tiers don’t perfectly line up with the graph. I see more aces, for one. I see the fewest true number twos, which makes sense to me intuitively — a number two is good enough to have the track record and the stats to sit at the top of your rotation, but not good enough to be an ace. That’s rare. I might not own a ton of twos. And if you look at the graph, there’s as good an argument for moving the $10 line left as there is to moving it right. Maybe there are really only ones, threes, and fives, generally speaking.

But my tiers agree with the ranks in a very important place: 50. Around the 50th-ranked pitcher, there’s a lurch downward in the values. As much as I like Carlos Rodon, I can’t yet put him in with the threes, who are either veterans with established track records or young pitchers that haven’t struggled as much as Rodon so far. Your Lackeys and Severinos.

And, really, I think there’s no such thing as a number four. That four/five grouping melds together, and I’ll probably be finishing up my bullpen and getting some bench/utility hitters with upside instead of trying to get the best fours and fives. As much as I love Carlos Rodon and Anthony DeSclafani — and you know I love the latter — I love Aaron Nola and Andrew Heaney and Jaerad Eickhoff about as much. At least enough to go zigging while the rest of the league is zagging.

So there you have it. Not really scientific in the end, but at least a slightly more rigorous undertaking. On my ranks, since I don’t project each player, I couldn’t find the tiers by science. But I could look at the general population for trends, and apply those to my own ranks. Which is something I suggest that each of you do going into the draft. You’ll find a road map to the draft in your tiers.