WEEKEND UPDATE
The Red Sox signed Liam Hendriks to a two-year deal. Hendriks is coming back from TJ last August, so he’s unlikely to see much if any playing time this season. Reports are that the Sox are looking to deal Kenley Jansen because he’ll be a free agent next year. I’m assuming they aren’t going to get enough of an offer in the preseason and will end up trying again in July.
Randall Grichuk has been a good hitter against lefties in his career, and passable verus righties. He signed with the Diamondbacks and looks to be the weakside platoon-mate with Joc Pederson in the D-backs’ lineup.
The Blue Jays added Eduardo Escobar and Dan Vogelbach recently. They are non-roster invitees and it’s hard to see paths to fantasy relevance for either of them. Vogelbach is a pretty good hitter against righties and owns a first baseman’s glove, which gives him a better shot than Escobar at having a role. Escobar has more defensive flexibility and is better against lefties, but not as good against righties.
TOP OF THE HEAP
There are no absolutes when it comes to fantasy baseball team construction. It is possible to do almost anything and win in any given season if you happen to pick the right players. But a close look at what winning teams do is a strong argument for what I’ve been calling The Perfect Pitching Staff.
In a nutshell, buy an ace, buy a closer, and fill in the rest of your staff with cheap starters. The goal is to spend less on your pitching staff so you can buy more offense than other teams, and if you get a little lucky with your cheap starters you’ll have a superior team.
There is reason to believe that you will get lucky. Here’s last year’s list of pitchers who earned $10 of profit or more:
Only four of them cost more than $10. Three others cost between $6 and $10.
Not all of them will hit, of course, but since you haven’t paid much for these lottery tickets it should be easy to let them go. There is solid evidence that guys who get off to an unexpectedly good start tend to do well all season, while the opposite is also generally true. If one of these lottery tickets gets off to a bad start on the season, he’s unlikely to turn it around.
Here are the cheap pitchers who had strong April’s last year:
Here are the cheap guys who got off to a bad start:
Kyle Bradish and Michael Wacha are the exceptions who prove the rule.
So, getting lucky isn’t just about getting lucky, it involves playing the odds. If you can pick up a couple of those fast starters you can ditch your bums and rotate in waiver wire pickups and middle relievers/closers-in-waiting all season long. This isn’t a guaranteed way to win, but if you’re playing against strong competition there isn’t a guaranteed way to win. Your best hope is to put yourself in the best position and then improvise off of that.
To put yourself in the best position you should buy an Ace.
Who is an Ace? I’d say the main thing about Aces is that they strike out more than most and they walk fewer than the rest. Here are my current $20+ starters with their NFBC draft positions and their projected (by Steamer) K%-BB%.
The guys who have a number higher than .17 who don’t make this list are Freddy Peralta (23, 61), Tyler Glasnow (24, 45), Eury Perez (29, 85), Grayson Rodriguez (31, 72), Jesus Luzardo (40, 89), and Joe Ryan (36, 96). The first number is my rank, the second is their NFBC ADP. The 19 in the list above plus these six add-ons are the total of starting pitchers in the NFBC Top 100 picks.
In many recent years, there were a handful of guys who sat atop these lists who were clearly the best. Names like Scherzer, deGrom, and Kershaw come to mind. But these days the list of Aces is a little more ragged.
I think Gerrit Coles sits atop the list because of his consistent health and solid performance over the years.
The NFBCers favor Spencer Strider, with his impressive ability to miss bats. Still, I worry about him because he throws two (admittedly excellent) pitches 93 percent of the time. So far it’s worked out.
My read on Yoshinobu Yamamoto is that he’s going to dominate from Day 1. If he’s going in the third round he’s going to be on my team.
It’s hard not to rank Corbin Burnes up here, near the top, but he slipped last year, striking out fewer and walking more than he ever had before.
Zack Wheeler doesn’t strike out as many as some of these guys, but he walks fewer than most. He ranked sixth in MLB last year in fewest walks allowed per nine innings. Ahead of him were George Kirby, Zach Eflin, Logan Webb, Logan Gilbert, and Miles Mikolas.
The NFBC likes Kevin Gausman best of this next bunch and I don’t have an issue with that. He and Tarik Skubal are the last two on my top list with K%-BB% of .20 or greater. Two also-rans, Freddy Peralta and Tyler Glasnow, also top that threshold.
Tarik Skubal is at the bottom of the top list because he pitched so little last year, but he finished the year so spectacularly hot that I’m bumping him up to $23.
As for Freddy Peralta and Tyler Glasnow, both are terrific pitchers when they pitch, but it has been a problem for both. Peralta made 30 starts last year, but allowed a lot of homers. Maybe that was unlucky, but he was generally hit harder than ever before. Glasnow is famous for getting hurt. He set a career best in innings last year, with 120. On the Dodgers, he’s going to be babied, so maybe he’ll set a new personal best this year. It’s a big risk to take him at the end of the third round.
DEAR READERS
One casualty of the mad race to get Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024 to the printers was the editor’s letter and Why We Did sections.
If you would like to read them (for free) click here to download.
HOUSEKEEPING
After the signature, below, you’ll find behind the paywall links to the Position X Position lists, which are seeing small adjustments as I go through them.
You will also find a link to the Excel spreadsheet with projections, prices, position stuff, and prospect lists. If you don’t like Excel and would prefer a different format (Google Sheet? Excel Online, other) please let me know.
When Will I See You Again Dept.: Tuesday, more Starting Pitchers, and also a look at how prices differ in OBP Leagues.
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