Pitching by the Numbers: Tiering up

The assumption in fantasy baseball is that we need to project players in order to find hidden value beyond last year’s stats. Because, of course, any idiot can just pay the freight for the players’ prior-year numbers when they have similar roles and health.

This is especially believed to be true with starting pitching. Given that pitchers are so volatile, why not look at the history of players, even going back to their minor league careers, to try to figure out who is likely to pitch much better or worse?

Because I don’t think it’s necessary. And I also don’t believe it’s wise to look back to large samples with pitchers as if they are hitters.

There’s general agreement that the most powerful pitching stat is some variation of strikeouts and walks. Mine is “(strikeouts minus walks) divided by innings pitched.” I do it this way so you can look at game logs and stats without having to worry about figuring out how this relates to a percentage of batters faced.

What this list (below) tells you is who should have been good or bad in fantasy last year, depending on their performance in this statistic. It does not predict how they are going to perform in the statistic in the upcoming year. But note that walk rates and K rates are our most bettable statistic, though of course we lose some projectability when we combine them. Plus, as I say repeatedly in this column, pitchers are very volatile in both directions based on a much greater number of variables than are possible for hitters. But just because some stat is the best doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

The great thing about this list is that it allows us to bet on actual 2014 performance in 2015, often cheaply because some elite performers don’t have big names or, less often, some elite stat performers somehow performed poorly in the numbers we count, especially ERA. I use a minimum of 50 innings and require that most games were as a starter. This leaves off some guys, like Carlos Carrasco. And Matt Harvey who missed all of 2014 (and who I think is going to be top five in stat performance) also does not chart. So THIS IS NOT A CHEAT SHEET.

[Baseball 2015 from Yahoo! Fantasy Sports: Join a league today!]

Not to sound glib, but this list is designed to be dumb. Not that way, wise guy. I mean we are tiering guys in the stat performance, not based on their role in 2015 or their health. Be sure to check that before your draft. This list is expressly designed to shock us into thinking: “I had no idea this guy was that good” or “I thought he was way better.” Name value is completely discounted. So is career history and minor league history. The tiers are even dumb: they are all  within +.05 to -0.5 in (K-BB)/IP.

This list goes hand-in-hand with the “wait for starting pitching” strategy. Check my archives for full details. In summary, you ideally want two dominant closers and all hitters in the single-digit rounds. Sprinkle in the starters after that. Drafting one stud starter is fine, but use this stat to be certain you are getting what you are paying for. My complete list is here. But we’re going to focus on the sweet spot here, the pitchers who are in the third and fourth tiers (overall starting pitcher rankings 10 through 37 last year in my strikeout-minus-walk stat).

Hughes is overall pick 143 on average, or starting pitcher number 36. So fantasy baseball is just giving him to you. Again, he’s in a more friendly park and thus can pitch with confidence and scrapped his bad pitches, focusing mostly on a fastball. In short, a completely different pitcher. So forget about his 2012 season or any of the other ones, too. It’s the 13th round, too. How sorry can you end up being?

Salazar burned a lot of us last year, early. But he was great later. He has control and command fleas. But he is also very talented, clearly, and available 100 picks after Hughes.

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Shoemaker is 191. I’m not using civilian ADP. These are FantasyPros ranks. So, please, no, “My room is so smart they’re going to like all these guys because they’re so obvious.” No. They won’t. That’s also a fact that you have to build into your fantasy strategy: your league mates will not like the same starters you do. They will, however, probably like the same hitters you do. And the same closers. So, what does that tell you about where we have to find profits?

Hammel, Greene, Hutchison, Odorizzi, McCarthy and McHugh are generally big bargains, too. Tomlin is only worth a flyer only in AL-only formats for now given his incredible rate of allowing homers, which are probably half luck, half lack-of-skill. But at best watch him in mixers, understanding that of course there will be some exceptions to every rule.

And don’t forget that, inversely, I don’t believe that Bumgarner, Greinke, Cueto and Hamels are true aces either. They’re good, no doubt, but not much better than way cheaper guys. See the full list or who are really elite and actually not even good relative to their way-too-high ADPs (like Sonny Gray).

Aside from Tomlin, who I just don’t want to tether myself to, consider the pitchers above more or less equally in their tiers. Of course, some of these pitchers will be great and some will be bums. But that’s the same way it is with conventional projections, too. But we do know that all the guys I’ve highlighted in this text will be way cheaper than how they actually pitched just last year. A fantasy commandment you should tattoo to your brain is: “Respect the Stats.” Our objective here is to make sure you respect the right ones.