The Perfect (New) Recipe for Drafting Pitchers

Last season around this time I wrote an article showcasing a recipe that would help select starting pitching in drafts. I queried the heck out of a dataset containing 2022 end-of-season pitcher data and 2023 projected data, slicing and splicing the list down to an interesting group of pitchers, each having done or expected to do the following:

• A SwStr% in 2022 of at least 11%. (2022 MLB SP average – 10.7%)
• A K/9 projection (steamer) of eight or better. (2022 MLB SP average – 8.18)
• Positive pVals (Pitch Info) on at least two pitches in 2022.
• An ADP greater than 100.

Heck, I even got two articles worth of content out of those bullet points in “Thinning the Herd” part 1 and part 2. But looking back I have to say, it did not go well. Like a decent chef experimenting with too many ingredients, the recipe brought me the following:

Ouch. Bad. I did bad. Why even bring this back into the light? Well for one, it goes to show you how much of a crapshoot selecting pitching can be in late rounds. I mean, Nestor Cortes was friggin’ great in 2022! Springs and Rasmussen went out on injury very quickly into the 2023 season, and Garcia, Montas, and Wright joined them as pitchers who threw less than 50 innings, stopping them from even registering on the auction calculator’s 2023 year-to-date setting. The collective innings pitched amongst these 12 pitchers was less than 1,000 at 939.

Like any chef who makes his dinner guests hide portions of his dish in their napkins while giving the rest to the dog under the table, I simply won’t put my knives away. I sharpen them! I’m back with a new recipe baby! When are you and the family free to come over for dinner again?

This year, after reading Ron Shandler’s Fantasy Expert, I’m reminded of a simple strategy in Shandler’s LIMA plan. I’ll use LIMA for a dash of old-school and Stuff+ for a pinch of new-school. Here’s my new recipe:

• LIMA: K%>=25%, BB<10%, HR/9<1.3
• Stuff+ Fastball (FA, SI, FC) >=100
• Stuff+ Secondary (SL, CH, KC, CU, FS) >=100
• A called strike rate (CStr%, SIS) >12%
• Pitched at least 50 innings in 2023

Here’s what we end up with:

Rather than show individual pitch model scores, I’m using the aggregates. I also used a smaller threshold for called strike rate than the league average (16.4%) because it opened the pool up. This may be a fool’s errand because one look at the list of pitchers above leaves any drafter saying, “Duh.” Yet, the presence of a few, such as Bryan Woo, Hunter Brown, and Michael King should raise some eyebrows. I would certainly like to have one and maybe two of these pitchers to establish a strong foundation though I would be very careful about the combination.

The relievers that fall in this query create a longer list. Going into 2024, some are sure shot closers while others may be given the chance to compete for a closer role. Others still might be the next man up. The highlighted red cells point out a warning, yet there’s certainly room on fantasy rosters for these skilled relievers:

Last year’s recipe had its flaws, particularly in its usage of pVals as a predictive metric. Now that we have Stuff+ available on FanGraphs the substituting of the two seems right. Remember that these are projected skills, mixed with last year’s results. These pitchers will tweak arsenals, arrive at spring training in shape and out of shape, and will likely end up on the IL at some point during the season. The best we can do is draft pitchers who have shown great skills in the past and are predicted to show them again in the future.