Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitchers: Championship Week

It’s championship week! Or, maybe 3rd place week. Or, if you’re like me in the RCLs, the continuation of 12th place year. LFG! This will likely be the last time I see some of you for half a year as the fantasy baseball season finishes up and I shift my focus to Razzball Fantasy Football. If you’re out of here for the winter — have a good one! If you’re still playing fantasy sports, check out Razzball Football, Razzball Basketball, and Razzball Hockey.

2021 RazzSlam Recap and Your Championship

Why should you trust my advice? I literally just posted that I finished dead last in a buncha RCLs. Am I insane? Nah, I just had a very busy year and had to prioritize my time. Should I try and beat Son or write articles for you? I chose you! And — AND! — I drafted meme teams in those leagues. In the Writers League RCL, I purposefully drafted all players that Grey hated. But, the league where I’m super happy with my performance? The RazzSlam!

Let’s cut to the chase: I finished 16th overall due to the cutline format, but my overall point allotment landed me in 6th place overall. So, a top 10% finish, which is really all I can ask for. And that’s why you should trust me. What does this have to do with starting pitchers, you ask. Because in the pre-season, I wrote like 20,000 words on why you shouldn’t focus too much on starting pitchers in fantasy baseball. Want to take a trip through time? Here are the articles:

In the RazzSlam, I didn’t draft a pitcher until like round 7. The RazzSlam winner similarly punted starting pitchers. But maybe the RazzSlam isn’t a good sample? What about the actual NFBC Cutline winner — what did their team look like? A start of Trevor Story/Rafael Devers/Luis Castillo. That third-round SP — a very Rudy Gamble-esque move — is a classic draft setup. But you’ll notice that these top finishes in the Cutline format all have something in common which helped to validate my pre-season writing: Don’t take a starting pitcher in the first round. And probably don’t take a starting pitcher in the second round, either. Third round? That’s where Rudy generally starts, but Grey and I continue to wait. It’s your team, and it’s your reputation or money — you draft that starting pitcher where you feel comfortable. But for me? I think I’ve established that the market for starting pitchers is too expensive for optimal roster composition in most formats.

Did I make mistakes in my 6th/16th place RazzSlam team? Yeah, I did, thanks for bringing up my imperfections. Here’s what I learned in retrospect:

Don’t draft injuries: I drafted Chris Sale and Luis Severino for a second-half surge. As you likely know, these pitchers were recovering from Tommy John surgery. Originally, they were due to return in late June/early July. When did they debut? Chris Sale arrived in August, and Luis Severino hasn’t pitched yet; Severino was a big fat zero on my roster all year. And now the competition is over. Ugh. Had I taken even the most menial middle reliever who lucked into some saves instead of Sale and/or Severino, I likely would have made the final cut and possibly finished in the top 5.
I was too confident in my team: Our good friend Derek Rhoads compiled a sweet dashboard for RazzSlam teams that calculated who had the best teams by projection system (Razzball, ATC, and BATX projections). Following the draft, I was the top-rated team for Razzball projections, and I finished in the top 20 for ATC and BATX projections. Given my overall finish of 6/16th, I guess this tool was pretty accurate. Thanks Derek! But, I also let the projections get to my head. When the FAAB runs came (and there are only 2 points in the season where you can add players), I thought, “My team is too good, I don’t need major changes). Yeesh. Somebody send me to North Korea for self-criticism lessons.
Blew my FAAB: Because I thought my team was really good, I spent 90% of my FAAB on the first run. And, I spent it on 2 players: Huascar Ynoa and Yermin Mercedes. In terms of process, these were good pickups — Ynoa was crushing batters, and Mercedes was making moonshots every night. However, real-life intervened. Ynoa punched a dugout bench and broke his hand, which caused him to miss most of the season. Mercedes got punished for hitting a homer off of position player Willians Astudillo and resulted in his demotion and brief one-day retirement from baseball. Thanks Tony LaRussa! When the second FAAB run came around, I had nickels and dimes to spend, and I opted to pick up some cheap bats to fill in around my team. Still, I should have managed my FAAB much more reasonably, and I would have done this if I was a bit less confident in my team.

I still don’t get why this matters for starting pitchers, you say. How’s your RazzSlam saga going to help me in my fantasy baseball championship?

Don’t be too confident. There. That’s it. That’s the moral of the story.

I got too confident and I didn’t make the adjustments needed to push my team into that final gear. I had all the data. I had Rudy’s work, my own work, and data from a bunch of other sites all wrapped up into my personal compendium of knowledge. But when push came to shove, I spent 60% of my FAAB on Huascar Ynoa, leaving me no room for movement with other pitchers. I fell victim to sunk cost fallacy with Luis Severino — my team was just so good! I thought, that I couldn’t possibly drop Severino. I kept Severino and took zeros from his spot rather than trading him out for literally healthy body that could have given me points.

And now you’re here in the last week of the season. Will you be agile? Will you be ready to start Joe Ryan? Will you sit Gerrit Cole if you have to?

What is it that you need to win your league?

Really, take a deep look. Not entirely at the data, though. Look at the pathways for victory and tell a story. What teams need a big performance from a pitcher to make the playoffs? Miles Mikolas has been fire over the past month and the Cardinals need him to win. But are you starting the oft-injured, soft-tossing Miles Mikolas in your fantasy championships?

You’ve got the resources: the Razzball Player Rater, the Last 30 Days Rater, and — AND! — the Streamonator and Hittertron in the Razzball Premium Tools (seriously, $6 to help your championships — go for it!).

Winning in fantasy sports is more about what you don’t know. You know that Gerrit Cole will probably throw a nice game coming up. You don’t know how Miles Mikolas or Elieser Hernandez or Josiah Gray or Josh Rogers or Eric Lauer will play.

So if you’re still in the hunt: be comfortable with discomfort, and start looking for the pitcher pathways that will lead you to your fantasy championship.

Good luck, and I’ll see you on the Football side!