2020 MLB Draft Guide: Hurler Workload Concerns

Fantasy baseball season will soon be upon us, and it is incumbent for the prepared owner to begin the process of evaluating pitching talent to draft in March and perhaps for late-starting leagues, early April. You need to determine which round is the proper time to add starting pitchers and relievers to your rosters, or for those of you participating in an auction format, how much of your budget you need to set aside to allow you to populate your starting rotation and bullpen. Part of the evaluation process with regard to pitching requires an understanding of which pitchers are likely to provide season-long production. That is, unless you enjoy scrambling throughout the course of the season, sifting through the options available on the waiver wire, or floating trades to your fellow owners that hopefully will not deplete your hitting ranks dramatically. Naturally, MLB teams will promote young starters and relievers throughout the season, promoting arms from the minor leagues to replace injured pitchers in the rotation or the bullpen. Having the ability to snap up these rookies or pitchers with limited experience will task your talent evaluation skills, demanding that you peruse the daily transaction reports, as well as having the requisite waiver wire priority or maintaining a sufficient FAAB balance to enable you to strike before your opponents act.

Even assuming that you draft well, buy your pitchers for great values during the auction, or manage to add valuable pitching options during the season, you will still need to keep in mind a basic premise that MLB general managers and team managers rely upon when building their pitching staffs: Having a dependable, durable pitcher who will not spend the bulk of the time between April and October on the IL, or even worse, be lost for the remainder of the season following surgery engendered by a serious injury. It is difficult to think of a more disappointing experience for a fantasy owner than to spot a news report that his top starting pitcher has been pulled from an appearance in the early innings of a game because of a twinge in his elbow, or an issue with his knee, shoulder, ankle, or some other body part necessary to effectively toe the rubber. Or for that matter, a similar situation with regard to his or her closer, set-up guy or middle reliever. Therefore, one axiom that fantasy owners should embrace is draft, buy, or pick up pitchers that have not demonstrated a history of suffering injuries over the course of their careers, including their time spent being transported in buses between minor league parks. Naturally, any player can be hurt playing the game at any time, or for that matter, working out or warming up before or between games, but in this age of internet access, data about player injury histories is available for those willing to spend the effort to dig in and do the research. Always keep your eye on the prize, however, and that prize is to make certain that you possess pitchers that are as close to a guarantee as possible to give you extended innings over the season, and that those innings are productive in terms of producing fantasy points.

There was a time when it was considered a positive thing that a pitcher had undergone Tommy John surgery (TJS). That line of thinking reasoned that since he had already suffered the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) tear, and had it repaired, a pitcher’s arm was if not exactly as good as new, at least it was unlikely that he would suffer through the same situation again. Then came a limited rash of players that had to undergo a second TJS procedure, among them such once promising young arms as the former Atlanta Braves starting pitchers Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen and journeyman starter Edinson Vólquez . The ability for pitchers to return to action as useful members of a major league pitching staff following a second UCL reconstruction is not particularly inspiring, and the best advice is to avoid those who are double TJS recipients when putting together your pitching staff in fantasy.

Even those pitchers who have a single TJS procedure frequently return to action at less than their prior level of proficiency, which is understandable as they have to relearn how to pitch with a tendon replacing their ligament in their throwing arm. Still, many pitchers have returned to action following TJS, and served as adequate middle-of-the-rotation arms. The worry about another injury is always on the horizon. And again, these pitchers are not the arms to build around, nor should they be relied upon as workhorse starters since their managers often limit their workloads to avoid overtaxing their arms. Plus, their diminished effectiveness on the mound results in them tossing for shorter stints in their appearances, which naturally, causes a decline in their fantasy stat lines.

It should also be noted that there is a growing trend to try to avoid TJS through the use of stem cell procedures and other regenerative treatments to prevent the injury requiring surgery and maintain arm health among pitchers. In fact, the number of TJS incidents peaked in 2013, took a big dip in 2014, but then rebounded in 2015 before starting to gradually decline over the past few seasons.

It is a common complaint among fantasy baseball owners that starting pitchers are not pitching as deep into games, due to the conviction among baseball people that enforcement of pitch counts is beneficial to promoting longer careers for starting pitchers. To see a starting pitcher still on the mound in the seventh inning (let alone the eighth or ninth inning) is the exception in baseball these days. Many pitchers do not make it through the entire fifth inning in many games, whether because of pitch count limits or general ineptitude on the hill, effectively forestalling their ability to provide a win in the stat column for their owners. For that matter, even the Quality Start (QS), consisting of a six-inning starting effort where the pitcher allows no more than three earned runs, is beginning to become a rare item for those fantasy leagues that have either entirely foregone the use of Wins, or added the category as another counting stat. Thus, the fear of over-extending a pitcher’s stint on the mound past a set pitch count makes it difficult to rely on any but the top level of starting pitchers when assembling your fantasy rotation. Certainly, it is well nigh impossible to stack your pitching staff with starters that can be counted on to provide 180+ innings in a season. The number of starters that offer 200+ innings in a season has been declining over the past several seasons, with the number dropping from 33 in 2014 to just 15 in both 2016 and 2017, then falling again to a mere 13 in 2018. However, that number rose a little bit to 15 such MLB starting pitchers providing those innings last season, effectively returning to prior year echelons. Below is a chart containing those starting pitchers that threw over 150 innings in 2019, whose ERA was sub-4.00. The chart also shows the number of batters faced and total number of pitches thrown during the season.

The increasing reliance on middle relievers to take over for starters with limited pitch-counts is another factor to acknowledge when dealing with the general decline in available starters contributing useful fantasy baseball pitching stats. While there are a finite number of middle relievers that are effective in a majority of their trips to hill, it has been an ongoing trend for major league managers to increasingly turn to their bullpens to keep the game close when a starter falters and allows too much activity on the base paths. The strict enforcement of pitch counts as discussed above is additionally a huge factor in the growing use of middle relievers on the major league scene. Having pitchers available that can be summoned from the bullpen to shut down a rally and/or keep the contest close has made it much more amenable for teams to pull a struggling starting pitcher, whether that be the team’s ace, or its fifth starter. Then there was the new approach of employing an “opener” in the first inning a la the Tampa Bay method that started a couple seasons ago (and continuing and expanding to other franchises last year), relying on a reliever to pitch the first frame or two before turning things over to another pitcher beginning in the second or third inning. Below is a chart showing the relievers that pitched more than 50 innings in 2019 without notching one start. In compiling the chart, those relievers who are primarily used as closers have been eliminated, as well as those whose ERA resided at a level of 3.70 or higher. These 34 relievers also appeared in 49 or more games, demonstrating their usefulness during the course of the season, and indicating how dominant middle relievers can affect the use of starting pitchers in baseball these days.

Another current trend that is resulting in a limitation of inning usage among starting pitchers comes from the trend to employ six-man rotations by certain teams. Teams are not rushing out to add another arm to the rotation where the five-man rotation has dependable arms to roll out every fifth day, but as more starting pitchers fall into a back-of-the-rotation type of status, as opposed to being reliable SP3 or SP4-grade pitchers. This trend is likely to grow. In the coming season you should keep an eye on younger pitchers being groomed to step into the starting rotation, such as Jesús Luzardo and A.J. Puk with the A’s, Jose Urquidy of the Astros or Mitch Keller in Pittsburgh.

The changes to the injured list (IL) rules that took place in 2017 were also responsible for the decline in starting pitcher workloads, with the 10-day IL option making it much more palatable for teams to sideline their pitchers for a start or at worst, two starts. It was feared in fantasy circles that the shorter IL time limit would result in pitchers becoming unavailable on and off throughout the season. These concerns certainly have come to fruition over the past couple of years. Last season, there was a decrease in the number of IL placements for pitchers, with just 313 injury list trips as opposed to the recent high of 340 such incidents in 2018, but certainly still exceeding the 288 instances where pitchers headed to the IL in 2017. To be sure, that represents a substantial increase in IL placements over the 240 DL trips that pitchers made in 2015. Teams are becoming more careful with the valuable assets that they employ to get batters out, and with that more cautious approach, pitcher workloads continue to diminish.

It is essential for fantasy owners to target healthy, dependable pitchers to populate their pitching rotations and relief corps. With the growing decline in 200+ inning starting pitchers, as well as the growing dependence on middle relief by managers at the first hint of trouble during a game, it is becoming much more difficult to find starters that can be considered workhorses, at least those who provide useful performance statistics for fantasy purposes. As demonstrated by the second chart above, however, there exists a good stable of middle relievers that can be used to provide both counting and ratio stats that will bolster your roto totals, and allow you to avoid simply rostering starters that drag down your team’s performance.

To wrap up, below are two list showing projected starting pitchers and middle relievers that mimic those pitchers populating the two charts inset above, to aid in your upcoming drafts. Please note that both sets of players are roughly ranked pursuant to some very early projections. And if you have further questions, send your query to ia@fantasyalarm.com

Starting Pitchers: Stephen Strasburg , Justin Verlander , Gerrit Cole , Jacob deGrom , Jack Flaherty , Max Scherzer , Yu Darvish , Lance Lynn , Charlie Morton , Patrick Corbin , Zack Greinke , Luis Castillo , Walker Buehler , Lucas Giolito , Hyun-Jin Ryu , Sonny Gray , Aaron Nola , Shane Bieber , Mike Soroka , Clayton Kershaw , Zack Wheeler , Marcus Stroman , Mike Minor , Kyle Hendricks , Anthony DeSclafani , Madison Bumgarner , Jon Gray , Eduardo Rodríguez , José Berríos , Jeff Samardzija , Jake Odorizzi , James Paxton , Sandy Alcantara , Aníbal Sánchez , Dakota Hudson , Julio Teheran , John Means , Mike Fiers , Zach Davies , Wade Miley , Brett Anderson , and Marco Gonzales

Relief Pitchers: Seth Lugo , Giovanny Gallegos , Nick Anderson , Tommy Kahnle , Aaron Bummer , Ryan Pressly , Tyler Duffey , Michael Lorenzen , Chris Martin , Oliver Drake , Yusmeiro Petit , Pedro Báez , Zack Britton , Scott Oberg , Adam Ottavino , Will Harris , Amir Garrett , Junior Guerra , Sam Dyson , John Brebbia , Trevor May , Craig Stammen , Brandon Kintzler , Adam Kolarek , Steve Cishek , Kyle Ryan , Jarlin García , Reyes Moronta , John Gant , Yimi Garcia , Francisco Liriano , Nick Wittgren , Evan Marshall , and Yoan López