Fantasy baseball | Pitcher draft strategy: Why do you hate pitchers, fantasy leagues?
For a couple years I’ve told fantasy owners to not draft pitchers early because they only pitch once per week. That, I’ve believed for as long as I can remember, makes them less valuable than hitters.
While pitchers are less valuable, the reason isn’t because of less playing time. It’s because pitchers are treated unfairly in fantasy baseball.
Let’s take a look at the playing time argument first.
Pitchers throw once every five games. Hitters play every one of those five games. However, it’s not as simple as that.
I crunched some numbers based on performances from several high-level batters and pitchers — we’re talking about picking pitchers in the first round — with different variables for innings pitched, games played, at-bats and batters faced.
Here are my findings:
- Top pitchers average about 7 innings or more (I got 7.42 innings in my sample) per game. They face about four batters (3.98) per inning. That means they face about 28-29 outcomes (at-bats) per game.
- Hitters get about four at-bats (3.93) per game. They play five games for every 7-inning game pitched per pitcher described above. That means they face about 20 outcomes.
- Even lesser pitchers who last only five innings and face five batters per inning get more “at-bats” (25) than hitters do on average.
But despite more opportunities to do good, pitchers have less value because they are treated unfairly.
In typical 5×5 leagues, pitchers have two categories that focus on negative statistics — WHIP and ERA. Those statistics focus on the number of walks, hits and earned runs pitchers allow. Meanwhile, hitters don’t have any statistic that focuses on negative outcomes. Batting average is the closest hitters get to a penalty statistic. However, it’s not named out percentage. It was clearly created with hits, positive outcomes, in mind.
Many progressive fantasy commissioners go beyond the 5×5 categories. They add total bases, holds and fielding statistics to shake things up. But for those of you still married to the 5×5 convention, you might want to consider adding a positive category or two to pitching stats and a couple negative categories to hitter stats.
My recommendations:
- Add strikeouts and caught stealing to hitters
- Add total batters faced, complete games and appearances to pitchers
That would make leagues 7×8, but in reality that would make for a more realistic comparison than any even number could. Starters and relievers, by the nature of their roles, will typically only accumulate statistics in four of the five 5×5 categories. You don’t expect a top-level closer to get 20 wins and you don’t expect an ace starter to get 30 saves.
The breakdown of positive and negative categories under my proposal above:
Hitters
- Postive: Batting average, home runs, steals, runs, RBI
- Negative: Strikeouts, caught stealing
Starting pitchers
- Positive: Wins, strikeouts, total batters faced, complete games, (appearances, saves)
- Negative: ERA, WHIP
Relief pitchers
- Positive: Saves, strikeouts, total batters faced, appearances, (wins, complete games)
- Negative: ERA, WHIP
It’s still not fair, but it’s a step in the right direction.
For those of you in standard leagues, keep picking those sluggers and 30-30 hopefuls. That ace you get in the third or fourth round is all you need.
What do you think? Do you play in leagues that go beyond the standard 5×5? What categories would you use if you were inventing fantasy baseball today?
