Now that the 2014 regular season is in the books, we know that Major League Baseball has achieved its second straight season of offensive decline. Run-scoring was down again just as it was last year, and it's the seventh time it has fallen in the last eight years. Just about every conceivable rate stat for pitchers -- from K/9 to BB/9 to ground ball rate to ERA -- has improved.
The steady tilting of the game in favor of pitching means that the benchmarks for Fantasy relevance keep getting ratcheted up. In a 12-team mixed league, a pitcher with a 3.50 ERA and 1.25 WHIP probably did your team more bad than good, while the opposite was true just two years ago. Similarly, a K/9 ratio of 8.0 was above average for a standard mixed league pitcher in 2012, but this season, it was slightly subpar.
A number of high-end Fantasy pitchers, like Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale and David Price, achieved their highest K/9 ratios as starters this season. While each increase represents some level of improvement for the pitcher, it also reflects the increasingly favorable environment in which pitchers operate. Specifically, hitters are swinging more often and making contact less often.
A pitcher who is maintaining his stats is actually losing ground, and one who is declining a little is decidedly falling behind the pack. The fact that Adam Wainwright falls into this latter group gives me concern about his viability as a potential keeper or early-round pick in 2015. Even if Wainwright's nagging elbow issues don't scare you, his strikeout trend should worry you at least a little bit.
Though Wainwright remains very good at pitching with control and avoiding hard contact, he is allowing too much contact altogether. This season, his K/9 rate fell from 8.2 to 7.1, as his swinging strike rate dipped from 10.3 to 9.7 percent. Again, those may not sound like large declines, but in an era in which standing still means falling behind, Wainwright is in danger of failing to keep pace with other Fantasy studs. While he finished 2014 as the fifth-ranked starting pitcher in standard Head-to-Head and Rotisserie formats, he did so with help from a .271 BABIP and 78 percent strand rate that he probably won't match in 2015.
If we assume that Wainwright doesn't increase his K-rate but does experience BABIP and strand rate regression, there won't be much that separates his 2015 stats from Julio Teheran's 2014 stat line, other than the possibility of a better won/lost record. With 4.3 runs of support per nine innings this season, Wainwright was fortunate to post a 20-9 record, given the Cardinals' generally lackluster level of offensive production.
Wainwright still does enough things extremely well to warrant consideration as a No. 1 starter, but given his trajectory, I think he is more likely to perform like a solid No. 2 starter than like a true ace. He's far from the only Fantasy stalwart who has failed to keep up with the increasing pace of strikeouts, though, so here are a handful of other pitchers who may have less value next season than their 2014 rankings would suggest.
Julio Teheran: Wainwright may only be the equal of this season's version of Teheran, but that's a standard that Teheran himself could have trouble meeting in the future. The good news is that he will still be just 24 next season, but without improvement in a 16 percent called strike rate, he can't be counted on for strikeouts.
James Shields: Shields still munches innings, but since 2012, his K/9 ratio has dipped from 8.8 to 7.7 to 7.1. Innings and quality starts should keep Shields among the top 20 starters in points leagues, but in Roto, he's in danger of falling out of the top 30.
Doug Fister: Though Fister's first season with the Nationals had all the appearances of a career year (16-6, 2.41 ERA, 1.08 WHIP), owners shouldn't overlook a K/9 ratio (5.4) and swinging strike rate (6.7 percent) that were his lowest since 2010. His 84 percent strand rate masked the effects of contact pitching, and it eclipsed his previous career-high rate by nearly 10 percentage points.
Sonny Gray: Not a big strikeout pitcher in the minors, Gray surprised many owners in 2013 by notching 67 Ks in 64 innings. In his first full season in the majors, Gray posted a 7.5 K/9 ratio that could be a better indication of what's to come. He was able to maintain a lower-than-average ERA (3.08) and WHIP (1.19) because he allowed only 15 home runs over 219 innings, and a 58 percent ground ball rate helped him keep the ball in the park. He still allowed his fair share of deep flies, allowing the average flyball to travel 282.5 feet, according to FanGraph's Interactive Spray Chart Tool. Despite his ground ball tendencies, Gray could see his HR/9 ratio rise along with his ERA and WHIP. Both Gray's strikeout and walk rates were subpar for standard mixed leagues, and without improvement, he could wind up being a borderline option.
