The Value of Followers in Fantasy Leagues: Part II

In Part I of this journey (and it is a journey), we discovered that:

• There are very few followers
• There are even fewer predictable followers
• There are even fewer predictable followers who put up numbers obviously good enough to be trusted in fantasy baseball

You could be forgiven for walking away now, muttering under your breath, “Why is he still writing? What more do I need to know?” But we ended with a caveat:

There are some guys worth using when they follow if you happen to roster them, but there aren’t many of them, and even they aren’t really sustainable or predictable enough to roster them specifically as followers, with rare exception.

Those exceptions have less to do with the pitcher’s involved and more to do with your league structure, which is what we’ll cover in part II.

And you can’t end on a cliffhanger like that, right? I introduced eight questions in Part I and answered the first three. Today we are on to the next three.

How Does Scoring Format Impact Followers?

The evaluation we did of followers in Part I was based on 5×5 results, and not all leagues are 5×5. The math changes in points leagues. In roto leagues (even non-5×5), rate categories make it so volume isn’t always good. Especially for pitchers who are low K/9 (true of almost all of these guys), going a few innings with a bad ERA can hurt more than it helps.

But in points leagues, most innings are positive. Not all – a pitcher can be so bad that they get negative points on the day – but most. That expands the universe a bit here. If you need volume and don’t care about rate stats, there may be some gain in followers.

Let me give you an example. Last time we discussed Griffin Canning, who followed regularly posting really bad numbers as a starting pitcher and almost-as-bad numbers as a follower. In a roto league, his poor rates hurt you and his low K-rate meant he wasn’t doing much to help there, either. If you used him, he made your team worse.

But in ESPN points leagues, he put up 100 points in 88.1 innings over 30 appear for 3.3 points per appearance. That isn’t particularly good. In fact, it is pretty bad. There were 205 starting pitchers who had a better per-appearance average in ESPN points leagues in 2026. Some of those were in small samples and can maybe be ignored, but the reality is, using Canning instead of someone else was probably bad.

But it didn’t make you actively worse. In that format, if you found yourself with Griffin Canning on your roster and an open lineup spot and no one else to fill it, you might as well use him because 3.3 points is better than zero points. And if he was following, you could expect slightly better per-inning numbers, so he might even be better than that 3.3 point average suggests!

But there is a catch – your choice often isn’t Canning vs. no one. It is usually Canning vs. someone and how that someone is defined depends on league rules.

How Do Innings or Games Started Caps Impact Followers?

This is a big one and we can continue to use Canning as an example. Generally speaking, there are three types of pitching caps: innings pitched caps, no cap at all, or games started caps. We’ll take them in that order because that sorts them from worst to best for follower value.

Innings Caps

I tend to prefer my season-long leagues to have an innings-pitched cap. I don’t enjoy streaming and IP caps are one way to limit the value of streaming. They can provide good balance since streaming is still possible but the bar for a streamer is raised, because any inning you throw today is an inning you can’t throw later.

If you have a cap of 1,700 innings (my FanTrax dynasty league has this cap), and you have a strong rotation and bullpen that will get you 1400 between them, you can stream those last 300, but you only have those 300 to work with and you don’t want to waste them on poor performances.

Ottoneu leagues use a cap of 1,500 IP, which prevents teams from using the 40-man rosters to go out and start five guys every day, piling up thousands of innings.

This limit on streaming also applies to followers (and not just because, as we discussed in Part I, you basically have to stream followers if you want to use them). In a league with an innings cap, Canning’s positive-but-poor point output goes from “why not” to “no way!” Your choice isn’t Canning vs. no one, it is Canning vs. whoever else will throw those innings. That might not be today, but if he goes 3 IP as a follower and gives you 3 points in ESPN or 9 points in Ottoneu, you have now used up those innings when there is probably a replacement-level pitcher available that you could have used some other day who would have done better.

In the roto analysis we did in Part I, we noted that followers as a whole were pitching below replacement level. Innings caps raise replacement level.

No Cap At All

If you play in a league with no pitching cap at all, then followers are bonus innings. This is especially important in points leagues. If you are in a points league with no cap on pitching, a positive outing is a positive outing. This is the Canning vs. No One case – three points is three points and you have lost nothing using him.

Maybe you should have had someone better on your roster, but it is very rare in a daily league (remember, we noted last time that weekly lineups don’t really work well with follower-chasing) to have all your pitching spots filled with active pitchers and grabbing a follower to slot in is better than nothing.

Games Started Cap

My ESPN H2H and my Ottoneu H2H league both have weekly caps on games started, and in these formats, followers can have huge value. Those leagues are both points leagues and in both formats, pitchers going three or more innings are very likely to score positive points, as discussed with the Canning example.

If you are capped at 12 starts (as I am in ESPN), slotting in a follower can be a huge benefit. Even if a follower pitches poorly, as long as the outing is positive, you have turned a likely empty lineup spot into points.

In the finals of my ESPN H2H playoffs, on September 23rd, I picked up Erick Fedde for a follow. He went 2.2 innings and got me 4 points. That is an objectively bad performance. But those were free points. If I didn’t start Fedde, I couldn’t have used a SP instead – I was already going to hit my games started cap anyway. I could have slotted in a reliever, but available free agent relievers were putting up 5-6 points per appearance and there was something like a 60-70% chance they wouldn’t pitch that day. Fedde wasn’t a lock to pitch well, but he was a lock to pitch.

That means for that spot, I was choosing between a 35% chance at 5.5 points (roughly 2 points expected) or Fedde. Fedde got me more than that! That’s a win! Without a cap, I could have streamed a starter instead of Fedde and gotten more production. But in this case, I couldn’t do that.

When games started are capped, followers give you the certainty (or near-certainty) of a scheduled starter and more volume than a reliever, without using up one of your precious, scarce games started. That’s big value.

Conclusions So Far

Last time, we found that there are not many regular followers and most aren’t effective enough to be fantasy-relevant, making chasing followers both difficult and low-impact.

Today, we dug deeper into how roster shape and league formats impact things, and learned some new things. First, if you are in a league with a GS cap, followers can be a great source of uncapped volume, because they are more predictable than other relievers and throw more innings per appearance. The counter to that is that leagues with IP caps raise replacement level and make it harder for a follower to have value.

We also found that followers are more valuable in points formats or any structure where volume is king. Most roto leagues, however, you risk tanking your ERA and/or WHIP, so you can only use followers good enough not to hurt you there.

Summarizing, this is how I am thinking about followers, in general:

In Part III, we dig into followers in Ottoneu specifically.