Fantasy Baseball: Early season pitching category leaders

In most formats of Fantasy Baseball, we are all chasing category stats. Let us have a quick look at the top performers in the main pitching categories.

In real life and fantasy baseball, pitching is far more volatile that hitting. We have already lost Madison Bumgarner to the DL, and it is possible that Noah Syndergaard will follow. Add to this David Price, Aaron Sanchez, Rich Hill, Zach Britton, Felix Hernandez and you can quickly see that there is a lot of luck needed in assembling a successful fantasy rotation.

This article is not meant to encourage any knee-jerk reactions; we are only 24 games into a 162-game season, but it is interesting to see some of the surprising and not-so-surprising category leaders.

We will focus on standard 5×5 pitching categories

Wins
Strikeouts
Saves
ERA
WHIP

Batting category leaders are featured in a separate article. You will see that we have also included an extra section specifically for points leagues and a reminder of the category leaders from April 2016. Can you remember who won the most games last April?

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WINS

The season is not yet one month old, but already 50 pitchers have started five games. Interestingly, no one has won all five. There are three players with a 4-0 win-loss record and another two at 4-1. In most formats, it is only Pitcher Wins that we are chasing. Losses usually only hurt in points leagues.

Ervin Santana has started 2017 going 4-0 with the most successful stretch of starts in his 13-year career. He was the 81st pitcher drafted with an ADP of 285, and now he getting results like a first rounder.

Dallas Keuchel has also started the season 4-0. Like Santana, Keuchel’s 3.73 FIP is way above his 1.22 ERA, pointing to the likelihood of regression. His strikeout rate of 6.57 SO/9 is the lowest since he reached the majors in 2012 but the left-hander is inducing ground balls at the highest rate of his career.

If you loaded up on late round starting pitchers and drafted Jeremy Hellickson (the 90th starter off the board with an ADP 313), then you might be having a great start to the season. Taking Phillies pitchers is not the obvious choice when chasing wins.

There is no surprise that Clayton Kershaw is also a four-win pitcher. Perhaps the only surprise is that he has been taken deep four times when he only allowed eight home runs in 2016.

Wily Peralta is showing one of the advantages of pitching for the team that features Eric Thames. He has given up 15 runs and allowed 11 walks in just 26 innings but still has secured four wins.

We all know that wins is a notoriously difficult category to predict. With three, Orioles’ reliever Mychal Givens has as many wins this year as Chris Sale, Noah Syndergaard and Gerrit Cole combined.

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STRIKEOUTS

Everyone loves a strikeout artist, but maybe no one loves him more than when he is on your fantasy baseball team.

With 52 strikeouts, there is clear daylight between Chris Sale and the next best pitcher with 39. Sale is enjoying life in Boston with a career-high 37.4% strikeout rate, up from 25.7% in his last year in Chicago.

Unsurprisingly Clayton Kershaw is among the leaders with 39 strikeouts. Although his 29.1% strikeout rate is lower than the last few years, he has a remarkable 13:1 strikeout to walk rate.

A popular preseason sleeper, James Paxton also has 39 strikeouts and looks like an early season contender for the Cy Young Award. He has a 31.5% strikeout rate and interestingly has a higher ERA than FIP.

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Also tied with 39 strikeouts is the Cardinals’ right-hander Carlos Martinez. The strikeouts are great for fantasy, but the 25-year-old is issuing walks at a damaging rate of 4.40 BB/9 and allowing home runs at a career-high of 1.26 HR/9. The Cardinals have been outscored by 88-96 which has contributed to Martinez starting the season with a 0-3 win-loss record.

As expected, Corey Kluber (37 strikeouts) is dominating with his curveball, but it is his changeup that his getting a career-high swinging strike rate.

Astros’ right-hander Lance McCullers is living up to his billing as a preseason sleeper. The 23-year-old has used using his devastating stuff to rack up 36 strikeouts over 29 innings. If he can stay healthy, 2017 will be a special year.

Danny Salazar also has 36 strikeouts and is proving a value pick for fantasy owners who were brave/foolish to draft him despite the forearm tightness that impacted his 2016 campaign.

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SAVES

There were four elite closers to draft this season. Kenley Jansen (ADP 50), Aroldis Chapman (ADP 52), Zach Britton (ADP 63) and Mark Melancon (ADP 78). None of them feature in the top-5 closers for April.

With nine saves, Greg Holland tops the list, which is a fantastic return for a player drafted as the 30th closer off the board with an ADP of 229. He has tied the franchise record for saves in consecutive appearances.

There is no surprise that the Red Sox’ Craig Kimbrel and the Pirates’ Tony Watson both have seven saves. Unusually for a closer, Kimbrel has good job security. The same cannot be said for Watson, who was expected to be on a short leash with Daniel Hudson waiting for an opportunity. It was partly for this reason that I drafted Sam Dyson instead of Watson in an important league this year. A decision that is still hurting now.

Two veteran closers are tied with six saves. Fernando Rodney was the 34th closer taken with an ADP of 246. No one wanted him, and despite the six saves, he is still getting no love from the fantasy community. That’s what 11 earned runs in nine innings will do to you. If the Diamondbacks had an obvious replacement, Rodney would be relieved of his duties.

Francisco Rodriguez also has six saves, and although his 6.23 ERA is significantly better than Rodney’s, there is a worry in Detroit about K-Rod’s loss of velocity. A DL-stint allowing a change of closer is a likely scenario.

The Angels bullpen is the example of why many fantasy teams refuse to pay for saves and instead aggressively play the waiver wire. Preseason, Huston Street was the closer with Cam Bedrosian widely acknowledged as the best pitcher in the bullpen and their closer-in-waiting. Fresh from a good finish to 2016, Andrew Bailey was the next-in-line. With all three currently on the Disabled List, ninth inning duties have fallen to Bud Norris. He was a non-roster invitee to Spring Training, and with four saves, he now has more than Edwin Diaz, Roberto Osuna and Sam Dyson combined.

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ERA

Only one starter has an ERA below 1.00, and it is not the pitcher anyone would have thought at the start of the season.

Ervin Santana has a career 4.09 ERA. This year it is 0.77. He has only allowed 13 hits in 35 innings with just three earned runs and two of those were solo shots.

If you own Santana, then the only advice is to SELL NOW. He has a 99% strand rate, and his FIP (fielding independent pitching) is 2.32 above his 0.77 ERA. The veteran has not gained velocity, and he is getting fewer swings and misses than last season. It is inevitable that significant regression will happen.

Chase Anderson is off to a great start with an ERA of 1.13. He is not a high strikeout guy, and the 22.9% strikeout rate represents a career-high. He is getting 10.2% swinging strikes (also a career-high), so there are reasons for optimism. His 3.8% HR/FB is unsustainably low, so regression back towards his career 13.2% HR/FB rate looks likely.

Chris Sale has been sensational in April with a 1.19 ERA. Bizarrely, since the move to Boston, he has suffered from a lack of offensive support. This has resulted in the left-hander only having one win in five starts. Even more bizarrely, Sale’s FIP of 1.11 is better than his ERA. He is a legitimate ace.

Astros Dallas Keuchel with 1.22 ERA and the Cardinals’ Mike Leake with 1.32 ERA, round out the top-5. Both are striking out less than seven batters per nine, and both are inducing ground balls at a career-high rate.

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WHIP

Although it is simply an arbitrary figure, there is something appealing about a WHIP of less than 1.00. With no one having made more than five starts, there are 19 starting pitchers with a WHIP of 0.99 or less.

Ervin Santana and his 0.66 WHIP lead the pack. Closely followed by Chris Sale with 0.77 WHIP. We mentioned both players earlier in this article, but it is interesting that Sale’s WHIP has been achieved without the aid of a low BABIP.

BABIP measures how often a ball put in play goes for a hit. In its basic interpretation, a low BABIP means that the ball found the fielder’s glove or the defense made a good play. Pitchers with a higher BABIP are likely to be suffering from bad luck with balls dropping in or plays not being made.

Sale’s BABIP of .278 is not much different to his pre-2017 career mark of .291. This is a long-winded way of saying that Sale’s start to this season looks a lot more sustainable than all of the other low-WHIP pitchers, with the obvious exception of Clayton Kershaw (0.79 WHIP, 0.239 BABIP)

Since 2010, in a period spanning 212 starts and nearly 1,500 innings, Kershaw has a 0.98 WHIP. The guy is in a different class. His 0.72 WHIP from 2016 was a career-high and makes his 0.79 WHIP this year look trustworthy rather than an anomaly.

The same cannot be said for Jeremy Hellickson 0.80 WHIP and Luis Severino 0.78 WHIP. Hellickson has the lowest strikeout rate (3.30 SO/9) of any qualified starter. Severino is striking batters out for fun with a 32.7% strikeout rate and has a career-high 55.6% ground ball rate. Neither looks like a good bet to maintain a low WHIP for the rest of the season.

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POINTS

Points leagues reward pitchers for their whole performance rather than a couple of aspects of their outing. All of the formats have different scoring methods, but CBS are the points league specialists, so we have used their system.

You gain three points for each inning pitched and a half point for every strikeout. One point is lost for each hit, walk, hit batsman or earned run. Wins and saves add seven points; quality starts three points and losses result in a deduction of five points.

Ervin Santana (135 points)
Dallas Keuchel (130.5 points)
Clayton Kershaw (123.5 points)
James Paxton (117.5 points)
Chris Sale (116 points)

Players that we have not yet mentioned in this article occupy the next two positions.

Gio Gonzalez (104 points)
Dylan Bundy (102.5 points)

Despite his 3-0 win-loss record, Gonzalez is ranked 30th according to Fangraphs’ WAR. The more advanced metrics of their calculations dislike his low strikeout rate of 7.02 SO/9 while walking nearly 3.00 BB/9 and an ERA that is 2.00 below his FIP.

Former first-rounder Bundy was drafted with an ADP of 253 (69th starting pitcher). He started the season in headline-grabbing form with an eight-strikeout, one-run win over the Blue Jays. The strikeouts have dropped off in the subsequent starts, but he has avoided allowing many runs, as shown by the 1.65 ERA.

Innings pitched plays such a big part in points leagues. Innings-eaters, even with uninspiring ratios, are far more value in this format than usual roto or categories leagues. It is not a surprise that Gonzalez and Bundy are both in the top-10 with more than 32 innings pitched this season.

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CATEGORY LEADERS: APRIL 2016

The figures below are slightly distorted as the information is based on a few more games but it is still interesting to see that Jordan Zimmermann with five wins was tied for the lead with eventual Cy Young Award winner Rick Porcello.

Wins
Rick Porcello (5), Jordan Zimmerman (5), Chris Sale (5), Jake Arrieta (5)

Porcello led the league in wins in April 2016 and went on to win the AL Cy Young Award. I bet we were all screaming “regression” and smug in the knowledge that it couldn’t last.

Strikeouts
David Price (46)

Followed closely by Chris Archer, Drew Smyly, Stephen Strasburg, Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez all with at least 40 strikeouts.

This season, Smyly is on the DL, Strasburg missed a start, Archer has seen his strikeout rate drop from 10.42 SO/9 to 9.00 SO/9 and Fernandez is a tragic loss to the game.

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Saves
Kenley Jansen (9)

Followed by David Robertson, Ryan Madson, Jeanmar Gomez, Jeurys Familia, Jonathan Papelbon and Shawn Tolleson all with eight saves.

This is an extraordinary list with more than half the pitchers no longer being their team’s closer. Jansen and Robertson continue to be elite ninth-inning options with five saves each this season.

ERA
Jordan Zimmerman (0.55 ERA), Jason Hammel (0.75 ERA), Joe Ross (0.79 ERA)

After his hot April, Zimmermann posted a 6.84 ERA for the rest of the season. Will the same fate befall Ervin Santana, Chase Anderson or Chris Sale?

WHIP
Chris Sale (0.68 WHIP), Drew Smyly (0.69 WHIP), Jake Arrieta (0.78 WHIP), Clayton Kershaw (0.81 WHIP) and Carlos Martinez (0.86 WHIP)

Martinez looks like a completely different pitcher now. He has transformed himself from a low strikeout (6.43 SO/9), low WHIP starter in April 2016 to a high strikeout (12.24 SO/9) and high WHIP (1.47) pitcher in April 2017.

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What can fantasy owners glean from these early season performances? We all know that you shouldn’t overrate or overreact based on very small sample sizes. It is difficult to be sure whether you should buy low, sell high or hang on to what you have. Last April, no one thought Jordan Zimmermann and Rick Porcello would maintain their level throughout the whole season. We were right about one of them and just kept expecting Porcello to regress.

Perhaps the only sure thing from looking at these first few weeks of games is that Clayton Kershaw is a stud.

Next: Early season hitting category leaders

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