Time to address the elephant in the room.
You may have noticed through some of our columns or maybe podcasts or videos that our attitude toward starting pitching, both collectively and certainly me individually, has changed this time around.
For years, high-end starting pitching was thought to be Siren's song of the early rounds, derailing your efforts to build a formidable, well-rounded team.
"Hitters are safer than pitchers," you'd hear while subjected to catalogues of the damage wrought to elbows and shoulders. Also, "you'll find more breakout pitchers than hitters in the middle rounds since it's a high-turnover position."
I couldn't even tell you how many times I've said it myself.
But the game is changing. Correction: The game has already changed, and slowly but surely, we're catching up to it.
This table sums it up nicely:
| | ||
| Runs per game | Home runs per game | |
| 2014 | 4.07 | 0.86 |
| 2013 | 4.17 | 0.96 |
| 2012 | 4.32 | 1.02 |
| 2011 | 4.28 | 0.94 |
| 2010 | 4.38 | 0.95 |
| 2009 | 4.61 | 1.04 |
| 2008 | 4.65 | 1.00 |
| 2007 | 4.80 | 1.02 |
| 2006 | 4.86 | 1.11 |
You see there? Offense cratered in 2010, beginning what we not-so-elegantly refer to as the "post-steroids era," and as an offshoot of that, pitching improved. The number of trustworthy starting pitchers increased, yes, but so did the standards for starting pitchers as a whole. Just like that, a strikeout rate of 7.5 per nine innings became subpar, a mid-threes ERA the minimum expectation, a 1.25 WHIP a liability instead of an asset, and ... well, you get the idea.
Then, this happened:
| Runs per game | Home runs per game | |
| 2015 | 4.25 | 1.01 |
That's right, offense actually improved last year. Not anywhere close to what it once was, but enough that we at least noticed it in the home run totals. Try this table out for size:
| | |||
| 40+ | 30+ | 25+ | |
| 2015 | 9 | 20 | 41 |
| 2014 | 1 | 11 | 27 |
| 2013 | 2 | 14 | 30 |
So, naturally, starting pitching must have gotten worse, right? Well ...
In case it wasn't obvious, we just had an epic Cy Young race in the NL. Jake Arrieta ultimately won even though Zack Greinke became the first pitcher since Hall of Famer Greg Maddux in 1995 to have less than a 1.70 ERA and Clayton Kershaw became the first pitcher since Hall of Famer Randy Johnson (along with should-be Hall of Famer Curt Schilling) in 2002 to have more than 300 strikeouts. Those three pitchers' numbers were so historically significant that Max Scherzer, a former Cy Young winner who was coming off arguably the best season of his career, was a complete afterthought.
Together, they delivered four of the 10 lowest WHIPs of the last 40 years (minimum 200 innings).
And it wasn't just them. Observe this fun table:
| | |
| 2015 | 19 |
| 2014 | 13 |
| 2013 | 12 |
| 2012 | 13 |
| 2011 | 11 |
| 2010 | 12 |
This data includes only the previously defined "post-steroids era" -- when 2015 was one of the best years for offense, remember. And that 19 count doesn't even include Jose Fernandez, Stephen Strasburg or Noah Syndergaard, who all missed the innings cutoff for one reason or another.
So while offense as a whole improved in 2015, the best pitchers still got better, which can only mean one thing: The disparity between the best and everyone else at the position is greater than ever.
Have you seen my latest starting pitcher tiers for this season? Oh, what the heck ... I'll just transplant them here:
That spells it out for you. I count 17 ace-caliber starting pitchers heading into this season -- The Elite plus the extra-special Clayton Kershaw -- which is far and away the most since I began devising tiers, but then look at the two tiers thereafter: a total of 12 pitchers between them.
And Jon Lester, Cole Hamels and Syndergaard are kind of borderline, having all qualified for that group of 19 from earlier (at least in terms of ratios -- Syndergaard didn't have the innings, remember). Make it 20 ace-caliber pitchers, meaning the kind you have to draft early if you're going to draft them at all, and that leaves only a nine-pitcher buffer before you reach the also-rans at the position, when you're just praying you uncover a breakout.
It's a thin margin for error -- one that could disappear within a round or two of a standard mixed-league draft and one that's critically important given the number of studs that are available before it.
Maybe by the end of this year, we'll realize that 2015 was just an aberration, but it took something so drastic to drive home the point that having more aces in the game today should only increase your incentive to draft said aces.
I know I had it backward at first. "Oh, more good pitchers means I can wait even longer to draft mine." Not so.
You could afford to wait back when only a handful of pitchers were capable of what those 17-to-20 are today, because hey, you weren't the only one to go without. But these days, you would be -- and probably twice over. And with only nine possible fallback options after the true aces are gone, it's not like you can make up for a lack of quality with quantity. If every team you face has two aces and a near-ace, your little Jordan Zimmermann-led staff will be buried in the standings by the time the best of the Luis Severino, Carlos Rodon and Lance McCullers class have distinguished themselves, assuming they do for you and not someone else.
I understand that a case to draft starting pitchers earlier is lost on a certain percentage of our audience. I see the average draft position data for our Head-to-Head points leagues and know that the first two rounds for that format are comprised largely of starting pitchers. And that's about as crazy as drafting quarterbacks first in a Fantasy Football league just because they happen to outscore running backs and wide receivers. Everybody knows better there, but for some reason, the majority of Head-to-Head leagues haven't come around to drafting the way we do in our mocks. So I guess, then, this column is directed more toward Rotisserie owners who may actually have the choice to pass up a top-tier starting pitcher for a second-tier hitter early.
But the takeaway is the same for both formats: To compete in this front-loaded pitching environment, you need two of the top 17 starting pitchers or, at the very least, two of the top 20. Ideally, you wouldn't have to dip into them until Rounds 3, 4 and 5, but if your league forces you to do it earlier, so be it.
