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Sometimes I use opening paragraphs of off-season content to remind myself what I was doing at the time of writing it.  It’s hard to say when this stuff will come out so I like to treat these like that YouTube guy did with himself.  Sky, this is me from the past!  Are you falling asleep to Jeopardy now?  Do you have dentures?  Are you, by any chance, dead?  If so, can I have your stereo?  Sorry, you just never know when these posts might go live.  Maybe if I pass along the way, this post could become a piece of art reveled by many…or it could just be another one of my crappy posts.  Yeah, prolly one of those!  Oh well, if you’re not famil with the series, take a look back at Top April and Top May pitcher posts from earlier.  The premise is pretty basic.  We’re slowly looking back on the 2014 Fantasy Baseball season in month sets of data just to see how much value you got from drafting a high end pitcher compared to what you could’ve gotten late in the draft or from your free agent pool.  As you may or may not remember/know, we were chirping ‘#PitchingIsSoDeep’ earlier in the year so here’s us – well, me at least – trying to see if that was truly true.  So without further ado, let’s begin anew…sorry, got caught up in rhyming.  Let’s just get on with it. Anyone want a peanut?  Here’s the top June pitchers from last year to see what we can gleam for 2015 fantasy baseball…

Overview:

So what the heck am I looking at, you might ask yourself.  Well, unfortunately, the names I gave those secondary columns just won’t cut through so I gotta give you some breakdown.  The first column labelled simply ‘$’ is Rudy’s formula for evaluating streamers.  I can’t share the secret formula, though I have been told if used in the kitchen it makes some great baked beans.  The column to its immediate right is what I simply called ‘Minus Wins.’  It’s Rudy’s numbers minus the impact of wins on their value.  Clearly it knocks a few bucks off the top for everyone, but it does go to show whether a guy pitched well or if it was the wins that pushed them through the gate.  The third and final column is ‘Win Value Difference.’  This is simply to show the separation between their value when counting wins vs their inherent value without them.  Some are drastic, some are not and some may be misleading.  Also notice the spreadsheet itself has two different tabs to peruse: ‘June With Wins’ and ‘June W/out Wins.’  I don’t think this needs further explanation.  If it does, please refer to Appendix I-IV.  Hint:  there is no appendix.  PS, if this looks familiar from the previous posts in this series…it is!  It’s a breakdown of what you’re looking at, I don’t see a reason to recreate the wheel.  Unless the original wheel were inefficient, of course.  Maybe it needs spikes?  YES!  Back to the drawing board we go!  JK, moving along…

First Impressions

Preseason Top 20 Pitchers For 2014 Fantasy Baseball in top 25 for June with wins: Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, David Price, Yu Darvish, Chris Sale, Adam Wainwright – 6 total

Preseason Top 20 Pitchers For 2014 Fantasy Baseball in top 25 for June without wins: Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, David Price, Chris Sale, Yu Darvish, Adam Wainwright, Julio Teheran, Madison Bumgarner – 8 total

Largest Positive Win Value Difference: Clayton Kershaw (26.2)

Largest Negative Win Value Difference: Jake Odorizzi (-5.1)

Pitchers outside top 25 without win category: Bud Norris, Jarred Cosart, Tanner Roark, Henderson Alvarez

Pitchers inside top 25 without win category: Chris Archer, Homer Bailey, Jake Odorizzi, Julio Teheran, Madison Bumgarner

Not overly obvious free agent pitching pickups from the lists: Jake Arrieta, Jesse Hahn, Danny Duffy, Bartolo Colon, Roenis Elias, Bud Norris, Jarred Cosart – 7 total

Second Impressions

Jake Arrieta – I <3 u, bae.  I don’t even have to look at the data, I’m sure he was top 10 pretty much the rest of the way and probably the best FA arm most picked up in the regular season.

Chris Archer, Jake Odorizzi, and David Price – How bad did the Rays have to be offensively to have only one of these three in the top 25 for wins category in June but three in the w/out wins section?  Rhetorical.  Epically bad.

Bartolo Colon#NeverForget.  Big, fat Bartolo Colon had a 2.57 ERA and a 0.98 WHIP in the month of June.  His ERA and WHIP for the year were 4.09 and 1.23, respectively.  So a month’s worth of Cy Young-type ratios from a guy who looks like a retired offensive lineman who now is an unpaid spokesperson for Kentucky Fried Everything.  Makes sense.

Jesse Hahn – Despite only pitching 27.2 IP, Hahn snuck into the top 25 in wins because he went 4-1 in June and into the w/out wins because he faced anemic offenses in that stretch either at Petco or in generously pitcher-friendly ones elsewhere (@NYM, @SFG).  Of course, the 11.7 K/9 didn’t hurt either but you know what did?  Your ERA when you held him too long.  Oops.

Injuries – They cleared up from the previous months and the stats showed with Clayton and Felix along with Darvish anchoring the pitching ranks again.

28% – The amount of top 20 pitchers in the top 25 for the month of June.  I do believe it’s the most successful month yet.  I also do believe that’s not saying much.  I see your Felix Hernandez and raise you a Jake Arrieta, good sir.

Aftermath:

Season-long trends have begun to establish themselves at this point.  I would say by the numbers of who you could find out on the FA pool reasonably, June has been the weakest month yet.  Of course, my metric for that will be hard to gauge as we roll these out.  Did everyone hold onto Homer Bailey when he struggled early or did they move on and give others a chance to swoop him up?  It’s doubtful but still it would make sense that as the months roll along, seeing less of these types of FA pickup options would make some sense given how trends settle in.  Let’s also not forget how reluctant we as humans – yes even if you play fantasy sports you’re a human.  Don’t let your mother tell you any different – tend to be in letting go of the past even when the present is mercilessly beating our ratios senseless.  Psychology is a huge part of fantasy sports and it’s hard to quantify it so…uh…I’m not gonna.  But I WILL keep going with this series.  See ya next time!

You can follow Sky on twitter @Sky_Razzball and in your most sweetest of dreams