If you ask a serious fantasy player what’s the quintessential pitching stat you look at there’s a good chance they’ll say Strikeout-to-walk Ratio, or K/BB. It’s not that deep of a stat as far as advanced analytics go, simply comparing how many strikeouts for every walk a pitcher allows. It reveals a good deal about a pitchers performance, however. Two of the true outcomes are unveiled in one easy to reference ratio. We obviously want high strikeouts and low walks. Looking at them as a single metric helps jumpstart your research process.
Below is a table of the current top 25 in K/BB. I’ve included Strikeout Percentage minus Walk Percentage, or K-BB%, as it’s a good reference point to see in case a very low walk total due to few batters faced is driving a low K/BB.
Some of the players exhibiting strong a performance by both measures: Zach Eflin , Yonny Chirinos , Jacob deGrom , Blake Snell , Joe Musgrove , and Carlos Carrasco . A few of those are elite names and I would expect them to stay atop this leaderboard all season. The others are intriguing early performances that warrant a possible stash.
We can also take a look at the other end of the spectrum and see who’s lacking command so far.
Chris Stratton , Ervin Santana , Shelby Miller , and Yu Darvish have not been finding the strike zone or fooling hitters. Michael Wacha and Robbie Ray also have worrisome numbers for their given skill sets. If these trends continue you may want to cut bait or avoid them in DFS.
K/BB makes for a decent early season barometer for where a pitcher is at. If you don’t have the time to dig quite as deep or are looking for a good starting point to consider an add or DFS starter consider using these K/BB numbers. They’ll get you headed down the right path more often than not.