Not Your Grandfather’s Top 100 Starting Pitchers…
Overreaction is part of human and donkey nature. Recency bias is unavoidable. But in a world where those who adapt not only survive, but thrive, could the risks of overreaction be outweighed by the rewards of adaptation? Good question. You have a lot of good questions.
I remember a few years back when Grandpa-Donk smuggled a three pound rib-eye steak out of the grocery store under his shirt, even though he had $200 burning a hole in his pocket. Did my family overreact and make gramps come live with us? Of course not; we all had a nice laugh over some grilled rib-eye and went on with our lives.
But when Gramps-Donk caused a 12 car pile up on Dixie Highway, without a license, in a car he "borrowed" from his neighbor, that's when we knew it was time to make a move. So we did what any good family would do and threw the old goat into that nursing home from Happy Gilmore. Adapt and thrive.
I'll now relate this insensitive and poorly thought out analogy to starting pitchers in fantasy baseball. After a month of overreacting to mostly meaningless spring pitching performances, we finally have a two-start regular season sample for many pitchers; the March days of experimenting with drugs and new pitches are over, these guys are now trying their best to get hitters out. Two-starts may seem like a small sample, but in an age when most starting pitchers will only reach 25-30 starts, two-starts is actually 6-8% of their season. It's time to start reassessing.
Before getting into some of my early season risers and fallers, I do want to address the Bartolo Colon sized elephant in the room:
The re-juiced baseballs. Small sample sizes and that's what she said jokes aside, I fully believe we're headed for record power numbers this season. What does this mean for us as fantasy baseballers? I think it means the elite top tier arms are even more valuable than they already were. With a surge in power we can expect increased pitching rates across the board, meaning a guy who gives you 200 IP of sub 3.00 ERA can really move the needle. Just some food for thought as we monitor the ever changing landscape.
Thank goodness that first week of 2 start pitchers is over and done. Early season rain outs, 5th starters being skipped, 6th starters and openers being utilized, all played into the scheduling. It is important to remember early in the season that these 2 start guys may or may not make both starts due to any of these factors. However, the advantage of getting the extra start for the innings, strikeouts, and hopefully ratios, is generally to much to ignore. Plus, if they fail to be 2 start guys this week then you get them as 2 start guys the following week more than likely.
It feels like the Yasiel Puig hype has already died down, as his price is falling on FanDuel. After an offseason that saw his NFBC ADP rise to 57 by mid-March, Puig's price is down to just $3,000 on FanDuel. But does his price deserve to be so low after only three games? Puig is coming off of a season with an elite 150 wRC+ against right-handed pitching, and is batting third in a strong Reds lineup. He's in a fantastic hitter's park in Cincinnati and gets a great matchup against Jhoulys Chacin, who posted a poor 4.51 Deserved Run Average in 2018. If Puig was coming off of a random 1-for-11 streak in the middle of June nobody would bat an eye, so why do we care now? The Wild Horse is one of the best bets you can make on Tuesday.
[brid autoplay="true" video="397243" player="10951" title="Fantasy Baseball Mailbag Week 1"]
Hello, Genie, I have three wishes for this baseball season? My first wish is "No one I own get hurt." I didn't buy Kevin Kiermaier, Steven Souza or Troy Tulowitzki, so I made your job easy for you, great, powerful Genie. My 2nd wish is "Everyone I own do well." I drafted Trea Turner, Luke Voit, Enrique Hernandez, so, really, I'm doing much of the heavy lifting for this wish too. My 3rd and final wish is "All 3rd base coaches send runners home by doing The OA interpretative dance." Thanking you in advance, Genie. Wait a second, you're not a genie, you're Bartolo Colon in Blue Man Group paint. Damn you! So, we're off and running for another great season, just like the Dodgers' offense. Enrique Hernandez (2-for-3, 3 runs, 3 RBIs) hit two home runs. Ya know what, maybe Kiké does love me. Next up, Joc Pederson (3-for-5, 3 runs, 4 RBIs) hit two homers, as he hit leadoff. A double dong day from Wong and Joc? Baseball, do you stuff your pants? Also, Max Muncy (1-for-4, 2 RBIs) hit his first homer, saying, "Hey, don't forget Grey wrote a sleeper post about me?" Then Cody Bellinger (2-for-4, 2 runs) hit his 1st homer; he's not Cody Malinger! Actually, I'm convinced Dave Roberts could field any lineup and they would score more runs than their opponent for at least 90+ games, especially when they're going up against some of these teams. Wilmer Flores (1-for-4, 1 run) was the three hole hitter on the Diamondbacks. I love Wilmer and his ubiquitous tears like he's reading The Notebook, but there's a bunch of MLB lineups out there that just are not good. Also, in this game, Corey Seager (1-for-3) hit his 1st homer and Austin Barnes (3-for-4, 2 runs) hit his first homer, because BASEBALL'S BACK! Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Not Your Grandfather’s Top 100 Starting Pitchers…
It was established in the first edition of 2019 Top 100 Pitchers: starting pitchers are much like grandparents. Exciting when they’re young and healthy, disheartening when they’re old and feeble. No reasonable mind would dispute the likeness between our elders and dudes who grasp and thrust balls for a living. Please, blog, may I have some more?
Ryan Braun battled injuries once again (insert steroid/herpes cream joke). But, the Hebrew Hammer had the 14th best hard hit rate last season. His stats don't reflect this hard hit rate so we have to assume Brauny hit into some bad luck. He reportedly changed some things in his swing this offseason for the first time in his career. The goal of this is to elevate more balls to avoid that bad luck. Braun could be a sneaky fantasy asset this year if you're willing to roll with him missing plenty of games. He's currently coming off the board in the 16th-17th round which could prove to be a major steal...
In last week's article, we went over top-50 players that we want to fade. For this week, we're going with players between 50-100 that we want to avoid. While these guys are much easier to fade, there are still noobs out there reaching on these players. Don't be that guy! Be the guy who walks out of your draft and has a wonderful day. There aren't many better feelings than walking away from a draft and knowing you killed it but we're giving you that opportunity here. Drafting any of these players with give you prom night-like regrets and we don't wanna go through that again. So, let's start with the ugliest girl at the prom, Kimmy.
B_Don and Donkey dig their hands and hoofs in the the starting pitcher sausage this week on the Ditka Pod.
What will they find as they sift through this years pitching mystery meat? Could Joe Musgrove be in for a breakout season?
Is Trevor Williams's beard top 5 in the NL? Will Chris Paddack be the best rookie SP in 2019?
Are Donkey Teeth's Top 100 Starting Pitchers pure nonsense? Are cucumbers better pickled?
What kind of a lazy intro just lists 6 questions in a row?
If you don't have time to listen to the podcast, the answers to those questions are: 1) You don't want to know
2) Yes 3) Debatable 4) Maybe 5) Definitely 6) No 7) Good Question.
On second thought, you should probably just listen to the podcast. Oh, and also check out our starting pitcher rankings below...
Not Your Grandfather's Top 100 Starting Pitchers...
Starting pitchers: You can't live with em, you can't win your fantasy baseball league and then use the championship trophy to score babes without em. I know, you won't be able to do that second part either way, but it's called fantasy baseball for a reason.
Starting pitchers remind me of grandparents. Oh boy, where's Donkey going with this one? Don't worry Grey's random italicized voice, I won't get into my James Shields pants peeing analogy.
When they're young, visits with gramps and granny are full of excitement and unexpected gifts; those times are as magical as a Walker Buehler vs. Jack Flaherty locker room sword fight. But as time passes, and our elders age, it's not all ice cream, pizza and 13 strikeout gems. Hips are fractured and ulnar collateral ligaments are severed. The pizza and ice cream is replaced by prune juice and fruit cakes, with a side of 8 earned runs in 2/3rds of an inning. And of course there's the erectile dysfunction, brought on by another Tyler Chatwood misfire.
In this biweekly top 100 starting pitchers column, I'll track developments of decreased blood-flow, fractured hips and, most importantly, those mythical GILFs (Grandmothers I'd Like to play Fantasy baseball with; what did you think it stood for?) as they rise across the fantasy pitching horizon. Here's a little GILF tease along with my preseason top 100 to hold all you grandmother lovers over...
NL West | NL Central | NL East | AL West | AL Central | AL East
I don’t pay much attention to Spring Training Statistics. You never know who the statistics are coming against. Baseball-Reference did, however, have an
amazing tool last year that attempted to quantify the quality of opposing pitchers or batters faced during spring training games on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being MLB talent and 1-3 being high A to low A level. This tool is great, but it averages all the Plate Appearances or batters faced. You would still need a deeper dive to see if your stud prospect smacked a donger off of
Chris Sale or off of your kid’s future pony league baseball coach. So what should we watch for in March when we’re starved for the crack of the bat? Ignore “best shape of their life” stories and Spring Training statistical leaderboards. Pay attention to injuries and lineup construction and position battles! Also pay attention to where
Bryce Harper and
Manny Machado sign… Note that those two signings can instantly eliminate some of the position battles detailed herein.
A couple of weeks ago, I returned to Razzball from my winter slumber and told you all about some early slow drafts I've been doing this season, starting all the way back over Thanksgiving weekend. I only mentioned hitters from these drafts, and am now ready to start discussing their pitching brethren. Since I've noticed that there is suddenly a lot more fantasy baseball content out there over the last few weeks in terms of rankings, ADP, etc., I'm ready to concentrate less on where guys were drafted in my leagues, and move on to looking at a handful of fellows who I'm already feeling at least mildly warm and fuzzy about. On second thought, these guys may not exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy, more like adding them to a roster will make me a little less sick to my stomach at the end of a long draft than some of the other names that will be out there. Since deep league fantasy baseball is my usual thing, I'm taking a very, very early look at guys who will be drafted in later rounds. I'm still contemplating strategies for how I'll draft (or purchase at auction) starters this year -- between the massive disappointments that many of my second and third tier pitchers (must take this moment for obligatory shout-out to my personal 2018 deep league-ruiners, Jose Quintana and Jon Gray) and the wacky "opener" hijinks that will no-doubt be prevalent again this year, I feel like I'm going to need a different strategy for every league based on its specifications. For now, though, I know that I want to keep an eye on a handful of starting pitchers that I can turn to late in a draft or auction, regardless of format, which brings us to today's list. Just to keep things deep-league relevant, all of these guys are outside of the top 225 in terms of current NFBC overall ADP, so anyone on this list is pretty much just waiver-wire fodder for most shallow, standard leagues. As we deep-leaguers know, however, one man's waiver-wire fodder...
[brid autoplay="true" video="377153" player="10951" title="2019 Razzball Draft Kit Starting Pitchers"]
With these top 100 starters for 2019 fantasy baseball, I’ve finished our (my)
2019 fantasy baseball rankings for positions. Still coming will be a top 100 overall and top 500 to see how all the positions mesh together like your mesh Redskins jersey that meshes with your burgundy sweatpants. Trust me, when you see how long this post is, you’ll be glad I kept this intro short. As always, my projections are included, and where I see tiers starting and stopping. If you want an explanation of tiers, go back to the
top 10 overall and start this shizz all over again. Anyway, here's the top 100 starters for 2019 fantasy baseball:
