| |  | | Thursday, February 15, 2024 | | 2023 was not a great year for starting pitchers. The offensive environment changed pretty dramatically, and we definitely felt it in Fantasy Baseball – the average ERA for all pitchers in CBS Fantasy league lineups last season was 3.96, up from 3.81 in 2021, for example. | | But we don't have to take a high-level view of the league to see the effects; we can just look back at least year's ADP and see how many players let us down. According to the FanGraph's Auction Calculator tool, three of the top 10 starting pitchers in ADP provided negative value in 2023 – five out of the top 12 and six of the top 15, too. Here's how that compares to previous years: | - 2023: 6 of the top 15 in ADP provided negative value, $3.7 average value of the top 15
- 2022: 4/15, $9,5 average value
- 2021: 4/15, $9.5 average value
- 2019: 5/15, $10.3 average value
- 2018: 4/15, $13.9 average value
| | Note: We're leaving 2020 out of this analysis, given the small sample size of the shorter season. | | | Yep, that's right, the elite pitchers were worse in 2023 than they were in the height of the juiced ball era. Injuries, of course, played a big part in that, with Jacob deGrom, Brandon Woodruff, Shane McClanahan , Max Scherzer, and Shane Bieber all missing significant time among the first 15 starters drafted. But there were also a handful of guys who just flat out busted: Sandy Alcantara, Aaron Nola, and Dylan Cease all stayed healthy, they just weren't good, dragging their teams down with big innings totals and ERAs north of 4.00. | | Now, of course, busts happen at every position, and they've always been more prevalent among pitchers, for fairly obvious reasons – pitchers get hurt at a higher rate than the rest of the player pool, but they are also more dependent on their teammates for their Fantasy value, both on defense and offense. But last season was an especially bad year for the highest end of the position. The question now is, was that a one-year blip, or was it a reflection of a new offensive environment? | Well, that's the question, isn't it? And you'll get different answers, depending on whether you read Scott White's Starting Pitcher Strategies column or my Starting Pitcher Preview. Me, I tend to think it was probably more of a blip, at least among the high-end pitchers. The environment changed, sure, but I don't see much reason to think it should dramatically change how you approach the position. As for Scott? Well, you can read his own words to see how he's approaching things. | | | | | | 2024 Starting Pitcher Preview | | "What this time? | | After the juiced ball era had us selling out for aces, the de-juiced ball was supposed to bring about the return of the middle class to this position. And it looked that way in 2022, but what followed was a year of volatility throughout the pitching ranks that forced us to question all of our prior assumptions while learning to live with a phenomenon known as The Glob. | | The Glob is what happens when the league endeavors to generate more baserunners (via the so-called shift ban) and more base activity (via the so-called pickoff limits), all while introducing a pitch clock that forces pitchers to maintain a certain tempo when things begin to snowball. And snowball they did, for every class of pitcher, all season long. | | It led to an erosion of the ace class, by which I mean today's aces aren't as dominant as yesterday's aces, but even more afflicted were those comprising that so-called middle class. So vulnerable were they to the vicissitudes of any given start that they became almost like random number generators, their ERAs fluctuating as wildly as their fortunes. | | Or at least that's how things played out last year. Maybe a year of exposure has better equipped these pitchers to navigate their new environment. Maybe the distinctions will return. | | But for now, I only know The Glob, and what The Glob tells me is that once we reach that stage of the draft, the only thing I can trust in is strikeouts. The Glob is mostly an affliction of ERA and WHIP, of pitchers putting runners on base and failing to strand them there. It doesn't change their ability to miss bats, and in fact, missing bats is a valuable skill for preventing baserunners in the first place. | | But ideally, the bulk of my pitching staff will be formed outside of The Glob, and it begins with those we generally regard as aces." | | | | Offseason Recap | | | Okay, I think that's everything. And it is, obviously, a lot. I can't get into everything, but you can check out our offseason tracker story, where we talk about pretty much every single significant move that has happened since the end of last season. It's a lot. | I'll just highlight a few moves I think are especially interesting. First of all, we've gotta start with the Dodgers, who acquired arguably the three top arms on the market in Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Glasnow. Of course, Ohtani probably won't pitch this season, Yamamoto is unproven in MLB, and Glasnow has no track record of staying healthy; hence the signing of Paxton. They may go with a six-man rotation for stretches of this season, and their ultimate goal is going to be to have as many of their top arms available for October as possible. That's going to mean limitations for at least some of their top arms, including Walker Buehler, who is not expected to be ready to pitch by Opening Day as the Dodgers try to manage his innings coming off a second Tommy John surgery. The Dodgers have an incredibly talented rotation, but there are so many questions here that it's reasonable to just apply an across-the-board discount on all of them. | | Burnes is, I think, the clear No. 3 starter in Fantasy after his move to Baltimore, which represents both a signfiicant park and offensive upgrade. He might just be my pick for the AL Cy Young. | | | | | | | - Spencer Strider, Braves
- Gerrit Cole, Yankees ( The First-Rounders Tier)
- Zack Wheeler, Phillies
- Corbin Burnes, Orioles
- Kevin Gausman, Blue Jays
- Luis Castillo, Mariners
- Zac Gallen, Diamondbacks (The Also-Elite Tier)
- Pablo Lopez, Twins
- Tarik Skubal, Tigers
- Tyler Glasnow, Dodgers
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodgers
- George Kirby, Mariners
- Freddy Peralta, Brewers
- Logan Webb, Giants
- Framber Valdez, Astros (The Near-Elite Tier)
- Aaron Nola, Phillies
- Kodai Senga, Mets
- Max Fried, Braves
- Blake Snell, Free Agent
- Cole Ragans, Royals* (Scott has Ragans in the Near-Elite Tier)
- Logan Gilbert, Mariners (The Next-Best Thing Tier)
- Jesus Luzardo, Marlins
- Zach Eflin, Phillies
- Kyle Bradish, Orioles (The Fallback Options Tier)
| | As a general rule, I think I want to approach starting pitcher like this: I want two pitchers I feel very confident can be a true ace -- 190-plus innings, great ratios, 200-plus strikeouts. There aren't many guys you can confidently say that about, of course, but I think anyone in the top 16 mostly qualifies -- I'm unlikely to actually draft Tyler Glasnow because of innings concerns, but he's probably the biggest exception here. After I have those two guys? I'm probably sitting out the position for a long time. I've got some hitting to make up for missing out on with my two early-round pitchers, so I'm hoping those two big-inning guys can stabilize my rotation as I sort through a collection of high-upside-but-risky options after the first 10 or so rounds are done. | | FBT Starting Superlatives | | Sleepers | | | | "As I've pointed out already, the pitching environment we were introduced to last year isn't so conducive to aces, with the clearest differentiator being an ability to miss bats. That's something Rodon did in no small measure in 2021 and 2022, when he had a 2.67 ERA and 1.00 WHIP to go along with his 12.2 K/9. It made him a surefire ace then and gives him the capacity to be one now. | | The problem, of course, is that his 2023 was an out-and-out disaster and nobody trusts him anymore. That's fair enough, but before rendering a final verdict, it's important to understand why. And while I can only offer guesses along those lines, my biggest is that he suffered a forearm strain in spring training and was never quite right thereafter. There were signs of this even before he returned in July, his initially short timetable being pushed back by back issues, and it sounds like all the turmoil may have wreaked havoc mechanically. | | But Rodon still had the same velocity as the previous two years. He still had nearly a 40 percent whiff rate on his slider. He still has the building blocks of an ace even if they've been toppled a bit, and in this environment, having an opportunity at such upside so late is nothing short of a gift." -Scott | | Breakouts | | | | "You can't see it in his overall numbers, but the breakout already happened for Rodriguez. He struggled mightily, to the tune of a 7.35 ERA in his first two months in the majors, but after getting sent back to Triple-A to work on things, Rodriguez looked like the ace we've expected him to be for years. Over his final 13 starts, Rodriguez had a 2.48 ERA and 2.76 FIP, with 73 strikeouts in 76.2 innings. The strikeout number is, perhaps, a bit disappointing, but that might be a case of a young pitcher still trying to figure out which of his deep repertoire of pitches will be best for each situation. He had a whiff rate of at least 28% on his changeup, slider, and curveball, with very good results on balls on play on each, so he doesn't lack for putaway pitches. The slider might be the best pitch of the bunch, and throwing it more than 14.1% of the time might help unlock that strikeout upside. Rodriguez threw 163.1 inning last season across 31 starts, so innings shouldn't be a concern here, and he has already shown ace upside at the MLB level. This feels like one of the safer bets you can make among young pitchers." -Chris | | Busts | - Frank: Aaron Nola, Phillies
- Scott: Blake Snell, Free Agent
- Chris: Tyler Glasnow, Dodgers
| | "Aaron Nola offers a skill not many other pitchers can provide in today's game. He's a workhorse. Nola has thrown 1,065.1 innings since the start of 2018, second to only Gerrit Cole. He also gets a lot of strikeouts. Nola's 1,209 strikeouts during that span are third to only Cole and Max Scherzer. The obvious frustrating part is the inconsistency in Nola's ERA. He's coming off a 4.46 ERA in 2023, just two years after posting a 4.63 mark in 2021. What makes it even more frustrating is that the underlying numbers say he's performed like a Top-10 pitcher. Since 2021, Nola ranks eighth in SIERA (3.27) and eighth in K-BB rate (23.3%). | | My only explanation is that Nola isn't built the same as other "aces". His fastball averages 92.7 MPH. That means his margin for error is slimmer than those pumping mid-to-upper 90s. It kind of makes sense, too. When things go wrong for Nola, they go wrong. He gives up hard contact, allows home runs and struggles to pitch with runners on base. Usually, I put my faith in the underlying data but when we have a big enough sample of surface-level numbers telling a different story, I'll trust that instead. The fact is Nola has a 4.09 ERA since the start of 2021. If he does that over 200 innings, he's actively hurting your team and is not worth drafting as a top-15 starting pitcher." -Frank | | |  | |  | | | | | Every team, every player, every game. Get the latest high school scores, exclusive rankings, news and more in the MaxPreps app. Get the App
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