Young Openers or Middle Relievers?
There have been some really exciting starts from young pitchers so far this season. On Sunday, Michael Kopech pitched five innings, faced 18 batters, and struck out 10 of them. When I saw that he was starting in place of Lucas Giolito on Sunday morning, I totally rolled the dice and got lucky. Adding a young pitcher who I’ve been rooting for over the past few years and it paying off was great. But, I’ll admit, it made me feel a little empty inside.
As I stared at the tv and excitedly encouraged whiff after whiff I slowly began to realize that a win wasn’t going to be possible. I knew Kopech would be on a pitch count and I knew he wasn’t going to suddenly become a rotation mainstay, but I went for it anyway, dropping a set-up reliever in order to gain some strikeouts. I felt oh-so-sad when Tony La Russa effectively looked into the camera and told me not to get used to it. Monday morning had me reflecting, was it worth it? Which is better to roster, low-pitch count starters like Kopech or middle/set-up relievers?
To get a sense of what my categories would come out to if I had gone with one or the other, I collected data and followed some very specific parameters. First, for young starters, I looked at all pitchers under the age of 26 and their stats from starts only. Kopech has pitched in relief a few times this season, but I’ve only used his starts for this analysis. The same goes for all the other young hotshots on this list.
Next, I took those young starters and filtered them down to include only those with 10 innings or less. Brent Honeywell Jr. had 10.1 innings as of Tuesday afternoon and therefore was left off this list. Lastly, I sorted by ERA and looked at the top 10 performers. To make this drill down even more whacky, I took the top three and the bottom two from that list. Why? Well, you’re an informed fantasy manager and you pick the top talent, but having the freedom to claim picks 1-5 on the waiver is unrealistic, so I took some from the top and some from the bottom. Here they are:
| Name | Team | W | L | SV | G | GS | IP | ERA | Age | WHIP | BB | H | ER | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luis Patino | TBR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.2 | 0.00 | 21 | 0.38 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Ryan Weathers | SDP | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 9.1 | 0.00 | 21 | 0.54 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 9 |
| Michael Kopech | CHW | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 8.0 | 2.25 | 25 | 0.75 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 14 |
| T.J. Zeuch | TOR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 8.0 | 4.50 | 25 | 1.25 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| Tanner Houck | BOS | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 9.1 | 4.82 | 25 | 1.39 | 1 | 12 | 5 | 10 |
Next, the relievers. This one is much more simple, don’t worry. I looked for relief pitchers who have pitched at least 10 innings as of Tuesday and removed those who are either closers or committee closers. I did the same ERA sort and plucked out the top two and bottom three.
| Name | Team | W | L | SV | G | GS | IP | ERA | Age | WHIP | BB | H | ER | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J.P. Feyereisen | MIL | 0 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 11.2 | 0.00 | 28 | 0.94 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 11 |
| Garrett Whitlock | BOS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 11.1 | 0.00 | 25 | 0.53 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 14 |
| Tejay Antone | CIN | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 13.2 | 0.66 | 27 | 0.73 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 20 |
| Tyler Rogers | SFG | 0 | 0 | 2 | 14 | 0 | 14.2 | 1.23 | 30 | 0.89 | 3 | 10 | 2 | 9 |
| Yusmeiro Petit | OAK | 3 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 14.1 | 1.26 | 36 | 0.84 | 2 | 10 | 2 | 9 |
Finally, I took each group and calculated their totals and ratios to see which group Smalls’ S’mores (team name, never changing) would benefit from the most. The results seem pretty clear-cut:
| GS | W | SO | SV | ERA | WHIP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-Closer Relievers | 0 | 4 | 63 | 2 | 0.71 | 0.82 |
| Low Pitch Count Starters | 9 | 1 | 39 | 0 | 2.72 | 0.96 |
*Non-closer relievers with at least 10 IPs
I’ve essentially cherry-picked the best relievers and young starters and assumed each player listed would be on my fantasy team. That’s not practical in most deep leagues where competing owners have had Kopech stashed for 3 years now. In addition, none of these relievers have been blown up in one inning yet, I chose those with the lowest ERA. Any one of them could come into a seventh or eighth inning and have a meltdown. One bad inning makes for bad ratios, but that can just as easily happen to a young starter.
This little experiment leads me to believe focusing on those low inning relievers could be more beneficial than the young exciting starters. The daily Bullpen Report and the awesome work Jason Martinez is doing with the closer depth chart will tell you each day which closers may need rest, giving you the opportunity to stream a set-up man and possibly adding much-coveted win or save.
Though Kopech’s incredible pitch movement had me greedy for more and more strikeouts and Luis Patino’s 75% slider whiff rate made me like —-, I’m leaning towards the numbers presented by these high-performing relievers, than the young blood.
Agreed on the relievers, but a lot of them take their lumps eventually. Craig Stammen comes to mind, where he’ll give you 1-2 K’s easy each outing but, just when you start seriously thinking about whether he should be the closer or not, he blows up. Repeatedly. One has to really luck out and get guys they’re comfortable throwing out there often enough.
I would also be more comfortable setting and forgetting a solid reliever against a tough offense than throwing a rookie arm against someone like the Dodgers or Padres. That would be 5-6 innings lost for the week, whereas a good reliever will get his 4-5 innings regardless.
I’m looking for a good way to find followers, as they will likely have a good win rate per innings pitched.
Is this analysis affected by an innings cap? Your 5 young SPs have thrown 37.1 innings, while your RPs worked 65.2. I think that still favors the relievers, but I’m curious
Two things seem off here.
1- It’s kind of reductive to say past performance in ERA lends to future results. (i.e. you don’t get credit for the outcomes achieved if you use that outcome achieved to make your pickup decision) As such, it may have been hard to tell before the fact who were the pickups that would get the inning totals you are expecting and it’s likely you don’t land on that bucket of 5.
2- Reliever values seem way too good, compared to starters. How did you get to 2 “bottom” candidates with an ERA of 1.23 and 1.26? Where’s Craig Stammen (2.76), Scott Barlow (2.40), Sal Romano (7.63), Lucas Letege (4.31)
For #2, they aren’t there because of rule #1 – you cherry-picked top 10 in ERA ahead of time, when I am guessing your sample of starters is MUCH smaller than your sample of relievers. So when you confined to top 10, you got a much lower quality pitcher of 8-10 in the first set than in the second set of relievers.
In reality, within the multitude of relievers, they blow up often without rhyme or reason (just a bad day at the office). If you could somehow tell me who the top 10 relievers (lets say there are 6 active non-closing relievers * 30 teams = 180) are going to be for the NEXT 21 days by ERA, then sure this works for me. But if you could do that, you’d already be making a killing and would never need starters 🙂
Finding good middle relievers is not actually terribly difficult. Depending on your league rules, they may very well be more worthwhile than throwing darts at unproven young starters.
The problem is that they tend not to accumulate decisions, so you have to weigh their benefits in good innings against their drag on Wins and Saves in the context of their cost to your team in terms of roster spots used up or innings cap approached.