Fantasy Baseball Today - 2025 Starting Pitcher Part 1! Pitching Landscape, Strategy & Top-12 ADP! (2/13 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Pitcher injuries continue to rise in baseball (3:13)! ... Injuries are pretty unpredictable (13:16). ... How do you approach pitchers returning from injury (19:50)? ... Innings are down across baseball (26:52). ... How are league-wide stats trending (31:32)? ... What is our starting pitcher strategy this season (34:07)? ... Let's get into starting pitcher ADP, beginning with Paul Skenes (46:35)! ... Tarik Skubal is coming off a Cy Young season (51:05). ... Is Zack Wheeler undervalued (53:49)? ... Logan Gilbert is a deserving Top-5 SP (56:40). ... Corbin Burnes signed with the Dbacks this offseason (1:00:45). ... Chris Sale is coming off a Cy Young season (1:05:40). ... Garrett Crochet is a high risk, high reward play this season (1:10:27). ... Cole Ragans had a successful first season with the Royals (1:16:37). ... Is Dylan Cease a SP1 (1:19:22)? ... George Kirby is more of a SP2 (1:25:02). ... Are you OK with the Blake Snell experience (1:28:45)? ... Gerrit Cole has a wide range of outcomes this season (1:33:32). Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. Best for last. It's time for pitching previews.

Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today. On Thursday, February 13th, I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you suggesting we're not doing a relief pitcher preview? Is that what you're telling me right now? Spoiler alert. That's why I wrote pitching previews, Scott.

Oh, you sneaky devil. Three starting pitcher previews and then one relief pitcher preview, which we will get to next week. That's all it deserves. Yes. But today is part one of our starting pitcher preview. Before we get into ADP, there is a lot to talk about. I really kind of went down a rabbit hole here. I wanted to try and figure out every aspect that people could think about when drafting

starting pitchers. So we have injuries, innings, yearly trends, our strategy, just the state of pitching, every possible thing that I could think of. And I'm sure I probably still left some stuff out. And then we'll get to the top 12-ish starting pitchers in ADP. Again, we're doing three pitching previews, starting pitcher previews, so we have some time to to get to all those names. Starting pitching is unequivocally

the most polarizing part of current baseball and fantasy baseball. And let's start with injuries. MLB released a report this offseason highlighting injuries to pitchers. No surprise. The general theme was that pitchers chasing max effort velocity and stuff is driving

this increase in injuries. The average four seam fastballs have jumped from 91.3 miles per back in 2008, up to 94.2 miles per hour in 2024. Last season, Major League pitchers collectively spent over 32,000 days on the IL. That is the most in MLB history. And interestingly enough, most injuries are now happening before the start or at the very start of the season.

So sometime between spring training and the first couple of weeks of the season is when we actually get the most IL placements. And it's like a dagger in the heart. I remember Shane Bieber, Yuri Perez, and Spencer Strider in quick succession last year. And to be clear, this is true not just of pitchers. This is true of all baseball players, headers and pitchers. It's true in football. It's true in basketball.

Every sport. I don't know hockey that well, but I assume it's also true there. The first month or so of the season is when by far, the most injuries happen, which makes sense. Guys are going from not playing to playing a bunch. That's when injuries are most likely to happen. So it's not just a pitcher thing at the start of or before the season where injuries happen.

That's just an injuries thing. Yes, that's an injuries thing. But the point remains that pitcher injuries are up a ton over the past couple years. Pitcher injuries happen more often. So they happen more often in April and March. Yeah. That is your reminder, by the way, to schedule your fantasy draft as close to opening day as humanly possible, which this year is March 27th. With those three high profile cases last year, it wouldn't have mattered because it seems no...

Shredder was what the seventh day of the eighth? I think it was a Friday. It was like they were all within like their first two starts, I think. Yeah. And it was... Yeah, I remember writing an article about it where I was basically just whining, whining, commiserating. Let's use that word. We're going to have someone next week out for the season.

That's just, Evan Phil. We get a lot of injury news when players report for spring training. Yeah. I actually think I just saw Trevor McGill has some kind of undisclosed injury and he's delayed at the start of spring training. So there you go. Hopefully it's not that serious.

But without giving away your full-on strategy here, Scott, because we'll talk about that more later. How have pitcher injuries affected your strategy, if at all, with the rise? the game. Yeah, I mean, a lot. And this has been, it's happened so gradually, I don't even think about it as a conscious change. But, but, you know, one of the things I, I'm sure listeners out there have heard me harp on is I don't trust in this era of max effort pitching. I don't just assume that anybody can take on a big ace workload until they've proven that they can take on a big ace workload,

which, okay, if they've piled up 180 plus innings for a few years in a row, you could argue that raises their injury risk too. I understand it's a double-edged sword there, but I'd rather know that it's within their capabilities because some people's arms just can't hold up to that. And so it comes into play this year with Paul Skeens and why, look, I don't want to draft a pitcher in the first two rounds anyway, but why I have Zach Wheeler ranked ahead of Paul Skeens,

Skines was the hardest throwing starting pitcher in baseball last year. And he got to 160 innings. So I know he can do that much. Can he get and exceed 180 innings like I would want a first or second round pitcher to do? Probably, but it's probably enough for me to invest that much in him. I would hesitate. And again, I'm probably not taking a pitcher that early anyway.

I think of it as a filter. It's not like I get that like more innings means more wear on your arm. but it also means you have shown that you can, that your arm can handle that. Like Scott said. And so there are some pitchers who are just going to get filtered out at every stage of the process. And Paul Skeen's is relatively far through the filter, right?

Like college pitchers are used. They only pitch once a week, but they're per game usage tends to be pretty nuts. Paul Skeens, I don't think, was throwing like Quinn Matthews numbers in college where he was throwing like 140, 150 innings, but he was probably going 100 plus pitches more often than he does as a pro. And so I think Skeens has relatively few questions.

It's just until you've shown you can do it, you can't just assume they can. And he's a big strong guy. He has a deep arsenal so he doesn't have to rely on the fastball so much. As pitchers who haven't thrown 180 plus innings go, I'm more confident in Skeens than most. Another example who's not going quite as high, but pretty high, is Garik Rochay, who has pretty clear injury history. Yeah, see, that's when I'm just not at all. Sure, can throw 160 innings. He has probably top three upside at the position, and he's going in the top 10.

And I'm fine taking him in the top 10, but it's not, I wonder if people are giving the, the innings question enough credit for him with him. Yeah, Gary Crochet, I think he threw as many innings last season as he had in like every season combined since 2019. We can talk more about. Yeah. 153 from 2019 through 2020. That's five seasons where he threw 150 combined innings. So yeah.

Yeah. It's a much bigger question mark. And that's even with the White Sox slowing away down in the second half. to kind of consider some other angles here as far as the pitching injuries go. If you look at a roster resource right now, every team's lineup page on roster resource, like half of them will show a six-man rotation. I actually pinged Jason Martinez, who runs roster resource. I pinged him about this, and he said it wasn't so much that he expects them to have a six-man

rotation as it's not clear who their top five are. But, and he pointed this out too, what has become common in this era of high, of max effort pitching is you, you get, uh, you get a team playing seven games in a row, six games in a row, uh, no off day interrupting it there. They will likely, almost certainly insert a six starter for those stretches in the season. So, you know, normally it was kind of standard practice and fantasy.

A team has a seven game week. Okay, they're going to have two two star pitchers. And as somebody who made out two star pitcher rankings all last year, I found not as many, not nearly as many made two starts as it seems like it was going to because they would insert a six starter. Just think about the Braves,

who never really had a six-man rotation last year, but they found a way to have Chris Sale and Rinaldo Lopez almost never make starts on four days rest. So that is more normal than not these days, I would say. It's not like, then you have the Dodgers who are going to have a true six-man rotation and are probably just going to keep everyone on and every sixth day or every sixth turn schedule. Maybe they skip some guys and Blake Snell pitches on, you know, four days rest every once in a while. But for the most part, that's not going to be, we'll just throw a guy in there. It's going to be we have six starters and they're going to pitch every six games. Yes, I was going to bring up the Dodgers because I feel like they're taking it to another level,

as is their want to do with as many resources as they have. Of course, they have a lot of high profile pitchers. All of them have health concerns. Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glassnow, Shohi Otani. But they have like 11 or 12 pitchers that we expect to make starts for them at some point. So they're probably going to be on a regular six-man rotation, them and a few other teams have been mentioned as possibilities the Mets.

I think there's a third one that are probably just going to be on a six-man rotation all the time. But the Dodgers, Roki Sasaki obviously has health concerns also. they're probably going, they're going to be on the six-man rotation and they're probably just going to, you know, teams do a lot of this health tracking

kind of stuff now. I don't remember what the precise term is for it, but where they kind of like monitor their biometrics and determine how likely they are to have an injury. And I imagine with this much pitching surplus and the health history of those pitchers

and the fact they're a shoe in, for the playoffs and really just want their guys healthy then. We're going to see a lot of Dodgers pitchers get shut down and have their innings curtailed in a more significant way this year, which diminishes the stock of all of them in my mind. I wasn't happy to see Roki Sasaki go there for that reason. I've been a little more hesitant to draft Blake Snell since he wound up there, to be honest. I think he's probably going to be as regular as any Dodgers pitcher, but I'm still not

sure how regular it's going to be. I have one more thought on injuries. Go for it. We don't know what can keep pitchers healthy. If any of the three of us had any idea, I promise you we would be making high six figures at minimum working probably for the Dodgers because they really need that answer. We have guesses. We have smart people who have done research and is the big innings increase from one year to the next a red flag? Research suggests, research suggests, maybe, but probably not a huge one. The biggest and best predictor future injury is always going to be past injuries. If you have not shown you can stay healthy, you're probably not a good bet to stay healthy.

But Zach Wheeler, you know, he was the poster child for a guy who couldn't stay healthy. And now he's probably the preeminent workhorse in baseball. And Garrett Cole was the complete opposite, Chris. Yeah. It's all guessing, you know, to a certain extent we're all guessing. And I think there is something to the idea that if we don't know, just assume everyone has significant injury risk. I think some people take that too far, but I think there's some logic to it. Velocity certainly seems to be a big part of it.

And also how often a pitcher pitches at their peak velocity. There's a really interesting Justin Verlander quote, I think last year, maybe the year before, where he talked about, and there was a graphic where he talked about how his average, fastball velocity has stayed pretty steady throughout his career, but he has had to really chase it throughout his career. So when he was 27 and he was averaging 95, 96, he could max out at 101, right? Now, I mean, now, now, 2023, when Justin Verlander was good, it was like, he can still average 95. He's maxing out at 97. And he's getting, he's pushing the RPMs all the way up, every time he throws.

And that seems to be a big correlation to it. There also does just seem to be like every pitch type, but especially breaking balls, if you throw them harder, they seem to lead to more injuries. Here's the problem. It's better to throw the ball harder. And so when you say,

I'm just not going to draft anyone who throw anyone in the top 10 in Velocci. I'm not going to draft. It's like, well, who you drafted? Right. Like, you got to draft. someone good, right? Like, these guys do break down, but pitchers break down. It's an unnatural.

Our arms did not evolve to throw the way we throw a baseball. You think of human evolution. We were throwing like spears and chasing animals. That's a football motion. A baseball motion is much more difficult on your arm, on your shoulder and on your elbow. That's why Tommy John's surgery has a much lesser problem among football players and his baseball players. So it's just to a certain extent, it's unknowable.

But I do suggest avoiding the most. Like, I'm not avoiding Garrett Crochet. I'm not taking Garrett Crochet as the number five SP, which is where he's going right now. Like that, that to me is just like what we can know says that that is like a terrible decision. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think he has top three upside. but Corbyn Burns, Logan Gilbert, they are aces. They don't have quite as much upside,

but I feel more confident given their history that they're going to deliver the volume I expect, and it'll be ace results. So that's why I rank them ahead of crochet. I will also say to your point about, we don't really know where the injuries are going to happen. We just know all pitchers are susceptible to injuries. And probably the elbow.

That's why I have a hard time bringing this back to fantasy strategy. I see what you do there. That's why I have a hard time getting on board with like the Pocket Aces strategy or the put it all on one high-end arm strategy. I understand they're less risky, but they're still risky. And I would rather spread the risk among several pitchers, if particularly in a shallower league where you can come about that very, volume without sacrificing too much hitting.

All right, let's take a quick break before we do that. Just a programming update. We will not be live on Thursday night. There's no mailbag that's coming out tomorrow. Players we love on Valentine's Day. We'll actually record that during the day. That'll drop on Friday. So keep a lookout for that.

And thanks to everyone for watching us live right now. Make sure to hit that like button and subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven't already. Let's take a quick break. We'll be back right after this. Welcome back in Fantasy Baseball today. starting pitcher preview part one. I know we've already spent 17 minutes on injuries here. I do have a few other things I just want to quickly ask.

And more so pertaining to pitchers returning from injury, right? Like, especially a second surgery. You know, sometimes it's a second Tommy John or just a second elbow surgery, not really telling us what it is. But Jacob de Grom is coming back from his second T.J. Shane McClainahan coming back from his second T.J. Spencer Shrider. coming back from an internal brace surgery,

expected back late April. Shohei Otani had Tommy John back in 2018. He had an elbow surgery in September of 2023. It sounds like it was an internal brace, yeah. And Sandy Alcantra had TJ in October of 2023. So how do you approach these players? Is it just an avoid? I mean, obviously it'll be like at the right cost, but...

I don't think there I can give like this overarching philosophy. I think it's really a case-by-case basis. I've gotten burned by it before. I've gotten great values by investing in the pitcher coming back from injury before. So you just have to consider the risk, consider the reward, consider

the cost, and take your best shot. Jacob de Grom, it seems like he's getting he's going, what, is the top 60 pick, basically everywhere, top 50 in NFBC. Like there's almost no accounting

for the injury risk when he might be the biggest injury risk of all given that he hasn't even thrown a hundred innings in five years and i think him going max effort with his fastball has contributed to that so i don't plenty of reward there but i think the risk is too high at the cost spencer strider on the other hand it's risky of course he missed all of last season with elbow surgery and he will miss at least most of april but he's about the hundred twenty-two-year-old the fifth player off the board after being the top pitcher off the board last year and may lead the majors and strikeouts from the point he returns so i i tend to think the reward is worth the risk

in that case uh at least you know maybe not in a 15 teamer but certainly in like a 12 teamer the one thing with strider this is the one that we just really don't know like we I think initially we reacted to him not having his UCL reconstructed in a typical Tommy John surgery as a good sign that it wasn't fully torn. There was just less damage than they thought and they did the internal brace procedure. The problem is we just don't have much of a sample size at all of pitchers coming back from the internal brace procedure. So we are, we're still kind of on the, the frontier here in terms of what it means for their production, what it means for their ability to stay healthy. I'm hopeful. And at the price, I agree, he's probably worth the risk.

It's just, we just don't have any kind of robust sample size to say pitchers come back X percent of the time and they come back, you know, X percent as good as they were before. It's a really small sample size of guys. I understand what you're saying. I think that sample size has been pretty successful, but I understand what you're saying. What I understand about Strider's situation specifically is it was more of a preventative measure. It wasn't to repair damage.

It was this bones per kind of stretched out the ligament a little, and they just want to do this bracing procedure to give it extra protection. and that makes me feel pretty sanguine about it to break out that word. As sanguine as I can be anyway for a pitcher coming back from a year-long elbow injury. I think it's probably a similar answer to everything you guys just laid out, but we also have other pitchers that dealt with arm injuries in the past year who are not returning from surgery, right? So I think with these guys, it's probably you don't want too many of them on the same team

just because, you know, they just had an elbow or forearm or shoulder injury in the past year. But some names that I'll throw out there, all of these going in the top 40 starting pitchers in ADP, Garik Cole last year with an elbow, Yamamoto with a shoulder, Max Fried with a forearm, Hunter Green with an elbow, Tyler Glass Now with an elbow, Gray, Gray, Forearm, Joe Ryan, shoulder, Justin Steele, elbow, Kodi Isanga, shoulder. And that's only inside of the top 40 starting pitchers. And then everyone else who might be returning from surgery, like DeGrom and, and, strider. I didn't even mention those guys. So yeah, I don't, I don't know if you have Chris as your

approach change from those players compared to like guys returning from surgery or does it just don't draft too many of them. I think it also depends on the guys like Garikuls 34 and he's basically still being drafted as the top 12 starting pitcher. That feels a lot riskier than a 26 year old Yoshinobu Yamamoto who as far as I know had never really had any kind of. of shoulder injury. So even that, like I compare Yamamoto to Kodi Senga, who came back in June or July, like late July from his shoulder surgery or shoulder injury. That wasn't the issue. He had that calf injury, but it's still, he had a history of shoulder issues in Japan. He missed time his last few years there as well. So I'm more concerned about that. I think it's just

the history, right? Like if you've had one injury in your past, I think it's okay to not write it off entirely, but to give a benefit of the doubt. But like Hunter Green, that's a Tommy John guy who missed time with a forearm or an elbow strain last year. And I think he's mistime with a shoulder injury in his major league career as well.

So that's just that one feels a little bit like a ticking time bomb. And then you've got like Max Freed, who pitches deep into games, has only missed more than five starts once in the past four seasons. or six seasons, but he's had forearm issues multiple times in that stretch.

He's had multiple hamstring issues. I don't worry too much about that, but the forearm stuff, it's worrisome. Like he keeps getting up off the mat. How many times can he do that, though? That's, I think it depends.

It's different for everyone. Like Tyler Glass now, he's just, he's not going to stay healthy. He's just not going to give us more than 130 innings. He can be really good with those 130 innings. I think he finished close to a top 24. pitcher last year, but it's different for everyone. I'm more willing to give a Justin Steeler,

Yoshinovi Yamamoto, the benefit of the doubt because they're in their prime, they're not old, and they've only had the one issue. Same with Grayson Rodriguez, but like Tyler Glass now Hunter Green, I pretty much expect issues for them. All right. So let's talk about innings now, because again, with all these injuries adding up and velocity and all these things have, happening correlated with that is the fact that innings have come down. So 175 is basically the new 200. If you take a look at the past three years starting in 2022, eight pitchers with 200 plus innings, 35 with 175. In 23, it was 5 with 213 with 175. And this past season 4 with 200, 32 with 175. So pretty consistent, obviously trending down the past couple of years. Just to put

that in perspective, 10 years ago in 2015, there were 28 pitchers with 200 plus innings. So 28 with 200 plus versus 32 with 175 this past season. Again, 175 is the new 200. Scott, all that said, quality innings in bulk are harder to come by. Is it a priority for your SP1 and or your SP2 to be a proven workhorse, someone that has given you those big innings before? It is a priority.

like I said, I'm ranking Zach Wheeler ahead of Paul Skeens for that reason. I'm ranking Corbyn Burns ahead of Garrett Crochet for that reason. I don't think it's the top priority. The top priorities, I want them to be good at getting strikeouts. I want them to be good at limiting base runners, have a good whip. Those are stats that you really need from your early round pitchers, certainly in a categories league, a standard roto league, because it's much harder. we talk about how hard batting averages to get later in drafts among hitters. Well, strikeouts, whip, that's harder to get among pitchers in a roto league.

So that, especially since there's an element of randomness, I don't know if that's the best word to use, but unpredictability with who gets injured and when. I wouldn't say that the workload issue is the number one issue. there are certain pitchers who we know can be dominant on a per inning basis that we also know just aren't going to give you six innings at a time. And those are kind of out of the ace conversation. I think we're better. We've gotten better about ranking them in recent years. So we just know not to consider the ACEs.

Yeah. So they're not even really in the conversation at this point. Chris, you brought up innings jumps earlier on. And I think that's a pretty big theme, at least early on, in the starting pitcher pool. We have, I mean, the Cy Young from last year, Terrick Scoobel, he went from 95 to 2111 innings. That's a 122% increase. Garrick Crochet, almost a 500% increase in year-over-year innings. Cole Regens, 58%, Spencer Schwellenbach, 160%.

These are five pitchers going inside the top 25 in ADP. They're all really talented. but does something like this maybe scare you off of them in fantasy this year? There's no one right answer to this. I'm a little less scared of a Terrick Scuble than I am a Garrett Crochet just because last year wasn't the first time that Terris Scoobel stayed healthy for a full season. Like he had done that before. He did it in 2021 when he made 31 appearances, 29 starts, only 149 inns, but he didn't get hurt.

2019 he made 24 starts 122 innings at the minor league level I don't know but that sounds like pretty much a full season at the minor league level so that's another one that I'm pretty willing to give him that so like his was the one injury in 2022 not downplaying it not saying it doesn't matter but outside of that one he has mostly managed to stay pretty healthy

Garrett Crochet has just never been able to do it Last year was the first time, and he had a half season where he wasn't really pitching at full strength or full go. So it depends. I would say Scuble, he's my number one pitcher. So obviously, I'm less concerned about him. I think it's less of an unknown for him than the other guys. But like, you know, Michael King did it last year, right? 185 innings.

That's a lot more than what we're talking about from Crochet. it's more than what we're talking about from Schwellenbach. So I think it's just, it comes down to if I was ranking them by how likely they are to their 180 innings, I would probably rank them by how close they got last year. Let's take a look at yearly statistical trends. And taking a look at the past four years, league-wide starting pitcher ERA has kind of alternated. So 2021, it was 434. Home run rate was up that year.

It was our first full season back from the COVID shortened season. 2022-405. It was a huge drop. In hindsight, it looks like maybe the baseball might have been deadened. Home run rate was way down in 2022. In 23, 445 ERA, the first season with the new rules in effect, promoting more offense, steals, et cetera, plus home run rate bounce back up. And then in 2024, last season, a 415 ERA. So back down again, home run rate, Babbitt, batting average. They all came down. They were closer to 2022. Scott, Obviously, we cannot predict the future. We don't know what 2025 holds.

But do you have a takeaway from the past four years that with ERA kind of bouncing up and down and home run rate kind of bouncing around as well? Is there any takeaway? I mean, the answer could just be no. But is there anything that you use from the past four years to kind of project forward into 25? I mean, the only thing I would say is don't tailor your whole approach to how the ball played the previous year. because I think it's going to continue to fluctuate. 2022 and 2024 were the two hardest, the two years in the last nine where it was hardest to hit a home run,

2022 and 22 and 2024. And then right in the middle there, 2023, plenty of home runs were being hit. And it may have always been this way. I know people get pretty conspiratorial-minded when the subject comes up. I don't know. Maybe there's a conspiracy. see, but what the research has shown is that tiny, almost imperceptible changes in seam height can make a huge difference in how the ball travels.

And it's all within the allowable range. And these balls are all manufactured by hand. So there's a human element applied for every single one. And I just wonder if there's this collective neurosis just because we know that now. And maybe it was always the case. So I'm moving forward, I'm going to try not to fixate it on so much, fixate on it so much. You know, maybe paying some attention to how it's playing in the moment. But even then, I mean, we've seen shifts within a season.

So it's probably better just not to get hung up on it. All right. Well, given everything that we've talked about, I feel like we've covered a lot of bases so far. Let's just talk about our general starting pitcher strategy for the upcoming season. you wrote a very detailed article a couple weeks back highlighting the starting pitcher Dead Zone

in fantasy baseball drafts explain to the people what that is and how it might shape your strategy this season. Yeah, so this has, I've done this research in the past and I updated it here.

I went through the last 10 years of drafting, taking out 2020. We can't, the further we get from 2020 the better because I can just remove it from any data that I look at.

It just doesn't tell us anything. So I looked at the, the past 10 years, minus 2020, looked at pitchers who were drafted in each round range, what they returned based on, I used the fan graphs auction calculator, but it's going to be the same, whether, you know,

whatever version of it you use. And what I found was, unsurprisingly, pitchers draft in the first round are better than pitchers draft in the second round. Pitchers draft in the second round, better than pitchers draft in the third round. The interesting thing, though,

is once you, get to the fourth round, over the past 10 years, there has basically been no difference in quality between pitchers in the fourth round and pitchers in the 10th round, which is surprising because you would think it would be a fairly linear drop-off, and that's not what you see. So what that means, of the pitchers in the first round over the last decade, 50% of them were worth at least $20 that year. In the second round, it was at least like 42% were worth at least $20. Third round, about 22%. Pretty big drop off. Fourth round, 11%. Fifth round, around 12%. Sixth round, around 12%. Seventh round, around 10%. And it's really flat starting in the fourth to 10 round. And that's

why I call it the SP Dead Zone, because this is a theory that has been talked about a lot on the football side. it hasn't quite made it over to baseball, but I think it's very similar things at play with SP and RB. They're very fungible. They're very volatile. They get hurt and they are more dependent on their context than the other players are drafted. Better team, more wins, better ballpark, better defense, all that stuff.

There's stuff outside of their control. And what I think happens is that the pitchers we know can give us 180 innings of ace level production, go in the first. three rounds. After that is when we start to push guys up. That's when we're like, yeah, but think about how good Garrett Crochet can be. And like, yeah, Gary Crochet could be good. Historically, there's probably a pretty low chance that it's actually going to work. And so the way to put this in action for me is you got two options, I think. I think you should take an anchor ace. I think that's a Zach Wheeler, a even if it's like a Frambervald does.

One of those like projectable innings eater types, maybe there are other sexier options with more strikeouts and more projectability. But having that anchor like Grochet, those are the guys we talk ourselves into. And then you should just walk away from the starting pitcher pool until the 8th, 9th, 10th round. And then you jump back in because what the data suggests. And if you want to look at the median or the average return on investment for starting pitchers in that range. It's also the same. The data all suggests that once you get to around the fourth round, they just aren't good investments. And so that's the way I think. And this has proven fairly, because I think the first time I did this analysis was in 2021, which was a very different

offensive environment. And yet it has remained very consistent. And so I think you either take that ace and then you don't take another pitcher until like the seventh, eighth, ninth rounds, or you don't take an ace at all. And you really load up starting in the seventh, eighth, ninth rounds. And that's where it's not that you shouldn't draft pitchers early on. It's just you've got to know when the pitchers are historically the right values. And look, every year is different. This year could be the one that's different, right?

Jacob de Grom in the fourth round could throw 170 innings and be the best pitcher in baseball. But I think a data-driven approach will suggest that a stars and scrubs or a whatever you want to call it, Hero SP is the term I've used, is the most efficient way to draft pitchers. And this is all for 12 team leagues, by the way. Okay. Yeah, I mean, the other side of the coin is that there's also a draft. drop off happening within the hitter ranks. And to me, it's clearer to see from the individuals involved. Hitters are more predictable overall, and you can see when the studs run out,

and you're either settling for second-tier options among the hitter positions, or you're shooting for the moon with a Lawrence Butler type. So I think that right now, the current state of pitching, and I talked about it throughout the off-season, Deeper, deeper than I can ever remember being. Deeper in what I consider to be legitimate talent, guys who can actually miss bats, guys who are going to be good even if it's a more hitter-friendly environment. You know, it's not like there was just a bunch of low ERA guys who you could see getting squished

if balls started sailing out of the park more. The way I've put it is 15 to 50 practically. those aren't exact numbers. The 15 to 50 in my starting pitcher rankings, I have a really hard time putting them in an order I feel confident in. And so last year I was talking about the glob, this kind of massive pitchers who just weren't very exciting and they made up so much of the position.

Now it's like a good glob of genuinely exciting pitchers that I really want to take advantage of. And so I am finding that the more I draft, the longer I'm waiting, really, at least four rounds. That's the bare minimum that I want to just stick with hitters and then hit pitchers pretty hard after that. But sometimes it is more like round seven, round eight even when I take my first pitcher. And obviously I have to hit pitcher even harder at that point once I do take them. but it's rare that I come out of a draft saying, oh, I didn't get enough pitching.

And again, these are pitchers I legitimately feel good about it. I actually think the talent is there for them to potentially deliver high-end results and certainly to remain a critical part of my team all season. So that is, that's my approach. I guess there's a little bit of overlap there with Chris in my approach. It's just I'm less likely to take a pitcher in the first three rounds, probably, but the idea of waiting in general and potentially even longer than I would feel comfortable recommending, just like you're taking your first pitcher in round eight.

That seems crazy. But yeah, I think it's a viable option this year. For what it's worth, I think the player pull is different every year. And so what happened from 2015 to 2024 will not necessarily be the same. thing that happens in 2025. And what we've seen on the football side is people have gotten smarter about how they draft running backs. And so those guys who used to get pushed up into the running R.B. Dead zone in the fourth round don't anymore. And so what you've seen is that the RB Dead Zone has kind of gone away.

And maybe we're seeing a shift in baseball where there's a flatter landscape and it's okay to wait. But I mean, who were the top two pitchers drafted last year? Garrett Cole and Spencer Stride. Yeah. I mean, they got, yeah, that, that was not great. But over the 10 years we're talking about, hitters drafted in the first eight rounds. Each of the first eight rounds on average return an average of $10 in value

are worth $10 the following year. That is only true for the first three rounds at pitcher. Yeah. So part of that is hitters can contribute in five categories. Pitchers can't. part of that is there are more hitters, but the biggest, the smallest gap between the average hitter and average pitcher

is in those first two rounds historically. The hitters are still better. They're still, the average hitter in the first round is like a $27 player. The average pitcher is around a $23 player. But that gap gets way bigger once you get to the fourth round especially and then stays pretty big for the next six.

round. So there are a lot of different ways you can approach it. I've found a lot of success with my pitching staff with this approach. Yeah. That's what I'll say. By the way, and this isn't meant as a as a counter to you at all, but just on those, in those instances where I've waited to like round eight to take a pitcher in a 12 team league I'm talking about. That pitcher was like Max Fried. Well, yeah. That also, yeah. It wasn't, it was a pitcher that was a pitcher that was. We've mostly regarded as an ace or a borderline ace over the years. That's how much depth there is its starting pitcher. That's the caliber you can get that late in the draft.

Just fill in the blank. Give me some numbers here. I want blank of my top blank starting pitchers. For me, it's if I can get four of my top 40, I think I feel pretty good with that, which kind of ends with like Jack Flaherty and Hunter Green and some other guy. But that range of the rankings, four of my top 40 is what I want.

four of your top 40. Yeah, it's like probably two of my top 20 and then also like two of my top 30 and then maybe two of my top 35 and then like four of my top 40. So you really like that 36 to 40 range. That's really where. I don't even know who's in that range,

but that's the range. I'm going to say six of my top 50. All right, fair enough. You have waited long enough. Let's talk about some individual players But first, we'll take a quick break, but we'll do that right after this. Welcome back in Fantasy Baseball today. Starting pitcher preview part one.

We are diving into ADP. We're using Fantasy Pro's average draft position minus ESPN, and we are using CBS position eligibility. Up first, your SP1 is Paul Skeens. With an ADP of 12.8, the number one overall pick in 2023, took the league by Storm, 196 ERA, 0.95 whip. All of his ERA estimators were 2.6.7. seven one or better big strikeouts lots of ground balls suppressed hard contact six different

pitches including a huge fastball and he was a workhorse six plus innings in 16 of that should probably say 22 starts i wrote 12 but say 22 23 something like that 16 out of 23 but that 23 includes the victory lap start at the end of the season where he only threw two innings. So 16 out of 22. And Paul Skeens did get up to 160 innings if you combine the minors and the major. So assuming health, I mean, I think him getting 180 plus this season is doable. It's just a big price tag here. So Scott, going ahead of Terrick Scoobel and Zach Wheeler is Paul Skeens.

What do you think? I mean, I'd rather have Scoobel and Wheeler. But again, I'm not drafting a pitcher in the first two rounds. So I'm not getting any of them in all likelihood. I suppose Wheeler, there's an outside chance I could get him, but definitely not scooble or skeins. I prefer scoble, but the longer this goes on, the less convicted I am about that. I totally get skeins going number one. He still got to 160 innings last year.

You mentioned how much scubel's innings total went up from 2023 to 2024, and you actually understated it because he didn't include the postseason. Tigers win the postseason. So scuba went from having 85 in 2023 to 211 in 2024. So, you know, he got the big workload last year, but we haven't seen that he can repeat the big workload. So there are durability concerns there for him as well. I think if we're just assessing starting pitchers on upside,

and kind of leaving out the already injured guys like DeGrom and Strider. It's scoble, it skeins, and it's garret crochet. And so I really, other than crochet, I wouldn't have a problem taking any of those three number one. Yeah, I don't have any problem with like the talent. I think Paul Skeens is Uber talented. That's not the question here. It's just at his high velocity, can he maintain this over a full season? And just, I think my drafting strategy is kind of a lot like Scots where, you know, the first three, four, five rounds, I'm really looking to take hitters.

So it's just, I don't think I'm going to have the opportunity to take Paul Skeens. But it's not like a talent thing with him. I'll also just point out, like the Pirates won, what, 10 fewer games in the Tigers and 20, 19 fewer games than the Phillies. Wins matter. As much as they are annoying and random, your chances of winning a game are better. on a better team. And Paul Skeens is clearly on the worst team of these three. And the pirates have done literally nothing to improve their team this offseason.

I think the best player they signed is Adam Frazier. They traded for Spencer Horowitz and he's out for six weeks or something. Don't get me started. We got a lot to talk about. But the pirates are stupid. And I hate the way they've approached this off season. But like this is probably going to be absent Paul. all skeins, a not very good team.

And even with schemes, they're trending towards average at best. And so if you think, I think it's pretty close to a tiebreaker between these three. I agree with Scott. The more the offseason has gone on, the closer the three have gotten in my rankings to the point where just today, I made it 21, 22, 23, scuba wheeler schemes. That is, I am not going to express a. a strong desire for any of the three over the other. I'm much more likely to draft Wheeler

because he goes later than the other two, but I have no problem if you want any one of those three at the top. It's just nobody seems to want Zach Wheeler at the top, which I think is kind of dumb. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about Terrick Scoobel, the reigning defending, undisputed AL-Syung Award winner, ADP of 14 here.

He finishes the SP1 and Fantasy last year, returned $37 in 12-team Roto Leagues, a 239 ERA, 0.92 whip, the most strikeouts in baseball, incredible walk rate two years in a row. He was a legit workhorse, six plus innings innings, innings innings, the only potential red flags I see here, the velocity jumped up, one mile per hour year over year, and the innings jump, which we already mentioned, going from 95, all the way up to 211 innings, is a pretty big jump. The ADP here, Chris, is at 14, when you said 21, that was in your overall rankings, right? Yes.

That means in most drafts, based on ADP, you probably won't get scoble, right? Yeah, I'm kind of pushing myself out of the scuba and schemes range, and it's basically just means I'm going to draft a lot of Zach Wheeler this year, and I'm totally fine with that, but we'll talk about that in about a minute and a half. Would you guys like a fun fact about Terrick Scoobel? Oh, yeah. All right. Well, Frank, you get a fun fact.

Scott, I'm going to remove you from the stream. Okay. If Terrick Scuba allowed one fewer run and seven fewer hits last season, he would have led the majors in wins, strikeouts, ERA, and whip. That is how close he was to pulling that off. Okay, Scott, you're allowed. What did I miss? You'll never know.

He was absurdly dominant. The idea that like there is a significant gap in town. or projected production between Terrick Scuba and Paul Skeens, I think is a little silly. If you think they're just going to throw the same number of innings, then it's fine to view it as a coin flip. I mostly view it as a coin flip. I think Terrick Scoobel's upside is pretty ridiculous, though. And I think the way people are drafting Paul Skeen's implies that his upside is a level of ridiculous above Terrick Scubal. And I'm not sure that that's fair. Terrick Scuba is the only concern is whether his elbow can hold up.

You mentioned the control there, Frank, and I think that gets lost and just, oh, yeah, he's great at missing. He's an elite control guy, too. 4.6% of walk rate. Yeah. The talent for Scuba was so obvious that some people were predicting October, September, 2023 that he'd win the Cy Young Award next year. Some people were. Yeah, some people. I don't know anyone in this podcast who would have done that.

That's kind of crazy, but yeah, for whoever did that, shout out to you, man. Territ's cool. You got it right. Let's talk about Zach Wheeler. There seems to be a consensus top three starting pitchers this season. We've already kind of alluded to it, but that top three is rounded out by Zach Wheeler an ADP of 20.5. He finishes the SP2 in fantasy last year.

He returned $33 worth of value. Remains incredibly consistent. Has had an ERA below 285 and a whip below 105 in three of the past four years. reliable workhorse, only pitcher with 200 plus innings two years in a row. He went six plus innings in 26 of 32 starts. If I'm nitpicking on Zach Wheeler, he's turning 35 in May, his ground ball rate is trending down. He allowed a career high barrel rate. His ex-FIP and Sierra were almost a full run higher than his 257 ERA.

Scott, do any of those things that I just mentioned worry you about Zach Wheeler? Not really. I mean, yeah, you could find. things to nitpick and you said you were nitpicking. He also struck out more than 10 batters per nine innings for the second time. So he became a better strikeout pitcher. He introduced a splitter to his arsenal that was pretty effective, kind of abandoned it in the second half.

I don't know why, but like he's, it seems like he's getting better. And yeah, he's at an age where it could end. But any pitcher, it could end any year for any pitcher, given how common innings are. And as we've already said, I'd rather bet on the guy who's shown he can handle the workload year after year, which Wheeler has. He's kind of the elder statesman at the position with Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw aging out. And he just feels as reliable as it gets when you're looking for an ace. He has an ERA below three and four of the past five seasons. and he has at least as many innings in four of the past six seasons as Terrick Scoubles career high.

And he's viewed as the boring option among the aces. I think Zach Wheeler is probably the best value among the aces. I think there's 240 strikeout upside. I think the ratios are going to be great. He's going to win a lot of games. I'm going to be drafting and building a lot of pitching staffs around Zach Wheeler this season. And of the top three that we've mentioned, Zach Wheeler and the Phillies are clearly the best team of the three.

So the Tigers and Pirates and the Phillies. So yeah, I mean, 16 wins last year for Zach Wheeler. He should be in position to win a lot of games once again. I do want to correct something I said. I said, Zach Wheeler 200 plus innings two years in a row. It's been 190 plus two years in a row. I was looking at his regular and postseason innings combined. for the past two years when I brought that up.

Let's continue on. We get past the top three, and we get to Logan Gilbert with an ADP of 30. Last year finished as the SP5, returned $24 worth of value. Would have been higher if the Mariners would have helped him win more than nine games last year. Not really.

Logan Gilbert's fault, unfortunately. But took a nice step forward. He tweaked the pitch mix. He lowered his fastball usage, made the slider his most used pitch last season. Splitter was downright nasty. 50% whiff rate on that pitch. And overall, Logan Gilbert's 14.9% swinging strike rate led all qualified starting pitchers.

And he also led all pitchers in the innings. So Chris, I mean, when you look at those things, you got a bunch of innings. You get potential strikeout growth here. It's a good, great ballpark to pitch in. I really like the growth that we've seen from Logan Gilbert. And I think he's totally worthy of being a top five starting pitcher drafted. Yeah. I think he's absolutely worthy of being a top five starting pitcher drafted.

I agree with that. And I don't even know if there's a knock against him. It's elite control. Strikeout rate got up to 27%. The quality of contact in the past has not been that great, but the cutter, the splitter seemed to help in that regard. So I don't really think there's any knock on him. Even like I was doing some research today trying to find some evidence of

Logan Gilbert ever having been hurt going back to college. And the only thing I found was he had shoulder muscle soreness for a few days last two years ago and had to have a start push back like three days. That's the only injury I can find for Logan Gilbert. He's massive. He gets a ton of extension, which helps the stuff play up even more. I think he's kind of Zach Wheeler, just slightly less proven. but at this point, you know, we're talking 32 starts three years in a row. Really good park.

I just, I think the ERA is going to be a little higher. The RAs relative to the other guys here, you know, the career best is 320. I think that's probably the only knock on him. But if even that, it's going to come with an elite whip, which is underrated. We haven't said that so far this podcast, but that's a big deal. whip is the hardest thing to make up for because you can find guys who we did say that this podcast but we should go ahead continue the thought reiterate it we should say it again because it's important because you can find a spencer schwellenbach who will get a bunch of strikeouts and put up a good er a run

those guys tend to have higher whips it is harder to find whip help and logan gilbert is was the best in baseball last year. So I think he's going to be really good again. So I don't have, yeah, Logan Gilbert, a top five pitcher, but he's going, actually, I think I am sixth. I have him sixth, then he's going fourth, right? Is that the, so, you know, it's quibbling. But I think the reason I have him a couple spots lower is if he, if we do have a year

where the ball is carrying better, even with him being in a good. pitchers park. His ERA could jump over 350 again. He allows a lot of fly balls. They could hurt him on the road. That's a possibility for Logan Gilbert. He went nine and 12 last year. And you could look at that two ways. Oh, look how valuable he was even for having a nine and 12 record. But part of it's like the Mariners offense is kind of a problem. And I think the park contributes to that. But he can he can, he's one of those pitchers who can have a lot of bad luck losses. even pitching deep into games. A lot of luck is tied to that,

and he could have his win-loss record could be total reverse this year, 12 and 9. But he does have, I think, less of a chance of winning 15-plus games than some of the other pitchers we've talked about. All right, next up we have Corbyn Burns, who signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks this off-season an ADP of 33.8,

and I think he's a pretty interesting one for Fantasy. Finish as the SP-9 last season. He returned $21. of value, still delivering strong ratios over a lot of innings, but the strikeouts continue to trend down for Corbyn Burns. Over the last four years, K-per-9-9, has gone from 12.6 to 10.8, 9.3, 8.4 last year. During that same stretch, swinging strike rate, 16.6%, 15.1, 12.2, and then 12.9. So it actually went back up a little bit last year, despite the overall strikeout rate coming down.

The ERA estimators all say that Corbyn's Bairns deserved a mid to high threes ERA that's been the case two years in a row. He did make some adjustments towards the end of last season. Scott, is that enough for you to buy in on Corbyn Burns as a top five starting pitcher? Yes, it is. I'm buying into the explanation,

and I am not really holding his reduced strikeout rate against him because that explanation makes perfect sense. What went wrong for him last year and what he did to fix it? So basically he was overthrowing, as in throwing his cutter too hard, getting too much spin on it. It wasn't cutting as much. That's his best pitch. He didn't really have his cutter last year, but he was able to make do without it for four months,

put up close to ace numbers apart from the strikeout rate. But then it kind of caught up to him in August. He had a really rough month, and he decided he needed to make more of an effort to fix that cutter. He took the spin off in September. He threw it a mile per hour and a half, I think, slower. And he started to get more whiffs for that final month, six starts, 129 ERA, 0.94 whip right out of K per inning. So it wasn't like he was back to being a huge strikeout guy,

but it was better. It was better and it was clear the cutter was better. And I think he's been so reliable over the years, even with some fluctuation in the strikeouts there, that I think he's as safe of an ACE as you'll find. I'll also just point out this is an example of a time when, especially in a small sample size, K percentage is better than K per 9.

Usually they tell the same story, but you said only a strikeout per inning. Well, the whip was so low in the month of September. And I know the swinging strike rate was a lot better too. Yeah, the swinging strike rate was better. It was like 13%, I think. But the K percentage was 27%, which is a little higher than it was in 2023,

even not quite when he won the Siyang. I don't think he's going to get back to that, but he has had two IEL since in his career. 2019, he was on the IL for two weeks with a shoulder injury. It's five years ago. And then 2020, he had no bleak injury on the left side. That doesn't worry me at all. I think Corbyn Burns is about as projectable for health as any pitcher can be.

and even if the strikeout rate only gets up to 25% like it was in 2023. He's got a great lineup backing him up. It's a pretty good park, especially for limiting home runs. That Diamondback's team looks good. Yeah, it looks like a really good team. And if he gets that strikeout rate back up to 25%. I think you're talking about 200 strikeouts. I think you're talking about about as projectable,

190 innings as you'll find. I think he's on probably the second best team of the pitchers, we've talked about so far. They were led the league and runs scored last year. So this could be a 20-20-game winner if everything goes right for Corbyn Burns. I am finding that Corbin Burns sometimes comes at a little bit of a discount. Like, I'm usually not looking, really thinking about starting pitcher until round five. And sometimes Corbin Burns is there in round five in a 12-team league.

So of the pitchers we've talked about so far, this is the first one that I realistically. have a chance to draft because some people are just kind of scared away from that strikeout rate. His ADP in NFBC leagues is 38. That is such a good value. 15 team league, 12 team league, I don't care. If I can get them in the third round in a 15 team league, that's amazing. If I can get them in the fourth, if I can get Corbyn Burns in the fourth round,

then the SP Dead Zone starts in round five. Yeah, look, I was going to echo the same exact things. I've noticed drafts that I've done. I did an NFBC draft early in the off season. Corbyn Burns wasn't signed yet, but I got him in the fourth round, a 12-team league. And sometimes he does slip a little bit in those 12-teamers.

So he's really the first one where if he's there in the fourth round, I might actually pivot off of hitting and go ahead and grab Corbyn Burns as my SP1. Let's move on down to just after Burns. Chris Sale, an ADP of 35.8. So going right at that 3-4 turn. Incredible bounce-back season. for sale, a 238 ERA 101 whip.

He was first among qualified starting pitchers in K-per-9 and K-minus walk rate. He led all pitchers in Fangraph's War, won the NL-Sai Young Award, so all in all just... You know, pitching triple crown. Fantastic season for Chris Sale. But it's a career that has been riddled by injury,

some more fluky than others, but he has dealt with some armed stuff in his career. Last season, 177 and two-thirds innings were his most since 2017. and he ended the season hurt due to back spasms. They were apparently bad enough that he couldn't pitch in those final games that were really important. He couldn't pitch in the post season. Yeah.

And critical weeks. Like the Braves barely got into the playoffs and sale wasn't. He couldn't pitch down the stretch when they needed him. They couldn't pitch in the playoffs when they needed him. So he was in pain for sure. Yeah. Look, his ADP has jumped 90 picks year over year. I hate to sound like a broken record.

I keep saying this for every player that's risen. But it's just, to me, last year was the year to draft Chris Sale when his ADP was outside the top 120. Now you have to use a third or a fourth round pick on him. It just doesn't seem like that wise of an investment. So I think I'm out. I think his price is fine, more or less. I have trouble actually clicking it when the time comes.

That's where I'm at. It's not really that I dislike Chris Sale. It's just that it's easy enough to see how things are wrong. Like last year was pretty much, I don't know, there's a poker term like runner, runner or something where you get all the cards you need in a row and it works out perfectly. And like, that's what happened for Chris Sale. And he still broke down at the end. And it's like, well, it didn't happen until the end. so he only really missed like one start in the regular season.

So it's not that big of a deal. But does that necessarily mean that this time it won't happen in June? That's the thing that we can't guarantee. It's just among the pitchers we've talked about, I do think there is a drop off here. Not in terms of talent because I think the next group of pitchers are incredibly talent, but in terms of projectability. Projectability with everyone that we,

talked about it's like there's just a elipsis if they stay healthy at the end and with everyone starting now pretty much for i don't know like 10 picks it's kind of a if everything goes right more so you know yeah pulling an inside straight is that what you were i think that's that's that's the term yeah so i have chris sale as a bust for this year because i don't want to pay the price for I think there are pitchers with comparable upside going a round or two later. But sort of like Corbin Burns, this is one that I find slip sometimes. And yeah, I don't want to pay the third or fourth round price tag for Chris Sale. But if he's there in round five, and sometimes he is, often he is in a 12-team league,

I'm almost certainly taking him. It's still true. The case I was making for Chris Sale the past couple years, And it's the same case Alex Anthopoulos made for him when the Braves traded for him was that most of the injuries, yeah, there was the Tommy John surgery that kicked it off. But there were like freakish things that happened a lot of times not even having to do with them playing baseball and like broken bones and a lot of freakish things for Chris Sale that it seemed more like bad luck than bad biology, you know? and back spasms, yeah, the timing of it was unfortunate, but it's even that, it's not like it's a, it's a sort of thing that could happen to anybody.

And it's just one of those nagging injuries that is just frustrating. You know, it's not, it's not really like a structural thing usually. So all of that still applies. It's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility he could have a healthy season again. and be an ace. And is it any less likely than Garrett Crochet doing that? I mean, I don't know. And I wouldn't say there's a huge difference in how likely they are to stay healthy.

So if I can get sale in about that same range that Crochet is going or sometimes even later because people are so excited about crochet's upside, then I'm willing to do it. All right. Well, after Chris Sale, we do get to Garrett Crochet, one of the biggest breakout pitchers from last season, his ADP 37.5, so an early fourth round pick. He's a fun one to evaluate for fantasy. Among pitchers with 140 innings last season, Crochet ranked first in K per 9,

first in K minus walk rate, swinging strike rate, ex-fip and Sierra from a skills perspective. You can argue that he was already the most dominant pitcher in baseball. But there is a lot of unknown. He has a lengthy injury history. His innings jumped from 25 all the way up to 146 year-over-year. And we just don't know how his arm is going to respond to that. Thankfully, Crochet was traded over to the Red Sox,

which is like night and day compared to, you know, the White Sox team that he was on last year. Chris, to me, this is a big risk, big reward. I totally get why people are drafting him here. I just don't think it'll be me, unfortunately. I'm psyching myself out. I wanted, I started out the offseason pretty high on Garer Crochet relative to the consensus.

and then as the consensus has started to climb, I think I've talked to myself out of it being such a good idea just because there is just no track record here. Like even last year where he looked like the best pitcher in baseball on a per inning basis, that was three months basically. And then the last three months of the season just basically didn't count. He didn't throw more than four innings in any start after July. Four, like it was just.

completely non-competitive pitching. And I don't hold that against him that he was like that he had a seven ERA in the month of August. But it's also like the time in which we can look at what Garret Crochet did and say, this is an ace level pitcher is April, May, June of 2024. Other than that, like, he was a highly drafted player, but he wasn't a hugely productive player in college. part of that is not his fault.

The year who was drafted was 2020. I think he made one start. He didn't pitch in the minors that year, all of that. But then he got hurt. Once he became a pro, he threw, I think the number I said earlier was 153 innings combined between 2019 and 2023. So it's sort of like Lawrence Butler. I think more emphatically, like the way Garrett Crochet pitched last year was more emphatically dominant. but it's three great months.

And he's the number six pitcher, number seven pitcher in ADP. That's just I can certainly see how it goes right. But one, it's actually, it's a big team upgrade. It's a big parkdown grade too. Yep. If he's as dominant as he looked last year, that won't matter. Like if he's really a 35% strikeout rate guy, then it doesn't matter where he's pitching. But if he's Chris Sale going to.

the way as happened. But Chris Sale was a lot more proven. Oh, for sure. When he made that. I'm not saying that's what you were saying. Yeah, I get it. I'm surprised there haven't been more detractors for Garrett Crochet. I thought when I think I initially ranked him 10th or 11th and I thought I was being

bullish on him by doing that. Because I thought people would look at the fact he didn't have a five-inning start in the second half by design. The white sucks smartly. put him on ice and just preserved his trade value because that's that was the most valuable thing they could do with their second half. But he didn't have a five-ending start in the second half. His ERA jumped to 358 during that time is what he finished with. And I thought people would look at that and have some questions. And in a way, it's a credit to the way fantasy baseball evaluation has progressed that people know to look past that kind of surface level stuff. And at the fact

he had the best strikeout minus walk, great in baseball. As you mentioned, Frank, he also had the best ex-fip and Sierra among pitchers with 100 innings was just ahead of Paul Skeens in both. So like in many of the categories we look at closest, crochet was number one or number two. And so it's encouraging that people pay such close attention to that,

that they're able to overlook the 358 ERA. And I'll add that the underlying numbers, even though the ERA kind of spiked on him the second half. He still had the dominant underlying numbers, I think just small samples, a couple innings got away from them and skewed the ERA. But when everybody else is giving him a pass for that, then it's like, well,

somebody has to bring up these other points, right? And so I don't want people who are just jumping in, A lot of people are just jumping in right now to fantasy baseball. I'm listening to this podcast. This is like their cram session on starting pitchers. I've said a couple times, Garer Crochet, probably is top three in terms of upside at the position. And so if you want to take them as even the fifth starting pitcher off the board,

I don't have a real problem with it. I'm just saying you've got to be aware of the risks too because there are some safer options you can take in that range. It's a little like what we talked about with L.A. Cruz on the shortstop preview where if you take Garer Crochet as your ace, I do think you need to be more conscious

about how you approach the rest of your pitching staff. And that means you've taken your risk already and you've taken like the biggest risk you possibly can. So now it's time to like focus on Frambervaldez. And like when you get to 140 or whatever it is,

you're taking Seth Lugo, not Spencer Shreder. Spencer Shrider. Yeah. Like, you got to be more, more thoughtful about how you build the rest of your, your pitching staff because it's just going to be, it's too volatile to take additional unnecessary risks. All right, after Gary Crochet, we're into the fourth round where we find Cole Regens and Dylan Sees going right next to each other, ADP of 42.3 and 42.5, respectively,

Cole Regens. Strong first full season as a starter. he finished SP 16. He returned $16.5. Of value, 314 ERA, a 114 whip. He was top six in strikeout rate. All of his ERA estimators were under 350 last season. He has three different pitches with a whiff rate over 33%, including that nasty changeup from the left-hand side.

However, he's another one. The innings have jumped from 124 all the way up to 196 with the postseason included there. And in the second half, I will point out. His walk rate went up and his velocity dropped a little bit. Scott, does that worry you at all about Colregans, who does have an extensive injury history? I believe he's had two Tommy John surgeries, right?

I believe Nick Pollack says it's 1.5. The second one was fixing the first one from what I understand. So he calls it 1.5. Yeah, there is that injury history. And yeah, I noticed the same thing. because what made Cole Reagan such an attractive breakout was the big jump in velocity. So for him to lose a couple points off that in the second half,

raised an eyebrow in me for sure as it was happening. But it didn't really change the production. During those 15 starts with the diminished velocity, Cole Reagan's had a 326 ERA-113-1-13 whip 10.5K per 9. So it's a concern, but it's not a big enough to connect. that it changes the way I draft him. And, you know, this was another big win for me last year in the prognostication department. I think I ended up with only one share of Cole Regans because I talked them up so much.

People who were drafting against me kind of, they wanted to do that vindictive thing where they took them just so I couldn't take them. Like if I could always get him at his ADP, I would have had him in every league. but it only worked out once for me to do that. I'm pretty sure he had a big spring too that caused the ADP to rise some more. Yeah, that's probably true. But hopefully all of you out there got to enjoy Cole Reagan's last year. And I do view him as a true ace going into this year.

Are you guys okay just paying the price, 42.3 mid-fourth round on Cole Regens? I mean, I'm probably not taking a pitcher in round four. If he happens to fall into round five, I'll probably take him. Okay. I have him higher in the SP rankings, but right there in my overall. All right. Let's talk about Dylan Sees, who finished SP 11. He returned $20 of value, very strong first season with the Padres.

And it might be his last. More on that, I guess throughout the next coming days. 347 ERA 107 whip, 224 strikeouts were tied for third most in baseball for Dylan C's. How did he do it? He lowered the walks. He increased the velocity on his fastball last season. I don't know why, but Cease just doesn't feel like a fantasy ace. Maybe it's just the inconsistency we've got from him over the years

where it's like one really strong year, one really bad year, one amazing year, three years ago. And then, like, he was just kind of mediocre before that. He also could get traded, kind of alluded to that. But, Chris, do you find yourself targeting Dylan Cece here in this similar range, fourth round, right next to Cole Regens? Yeah, when I saw the Padre signed Nick Pavetta, my initial thought, I was at a concert and I texted you guys immediately when I saw it.

And my initial thought was basically like get ready to learn Boston, buddy. Like that he's going to get traded to the Red Sox or the Mets or somewhere, either him or Michael King. One of them, it doesn't really matter. It'd be a park downgrade, but probably a lineup upgrade around him. I generally think the move with Dylan Seas is draft him coming off the bad year and fade him coming off the good year. and this is a relative good year. So that's more or less where I'm at. I rank him around here,

but it's in the range of the draft where I don't really want to take a starting pitcher. And you can see why with a guy like Dylan Cs, who, to be fair, never misses a start. Literally has not missed a start at least since 2019. Yeah. I mean, there might be some discont. comfort in the ERA and WIPP department,

depending how things play out for him. But you can pencil him in for 220 strikeouts. He doesn't go deep into games very consistently. I believe over the past four years, it's sub 40%, going at least six innings. So like, that's how you get 33 starts per year, basically. And he's never hit even 190 innings.

Yeah. But the strikeouts are great. The whip, we'll see. You probably need to pair him with a George Kirby or someone like Or Billing had a career best walk rate last year. We did have a career best walk rate. He got that whip to one. But it did get much worse than the second half.

He wasn't able to sustain that. It was really good the first half of the season and then was more typical. So I think he's fine here. If that's the route you want to go. It's just not a route I'm going to go with. And Frank, like you said, I think this is ceases a guy. that you probably, if it's not George Kirby, it's Joe Ryan or Bailey Ober or Shoda Imanaga,

but the problem there, and this is the problem with Dillon Csies, is the whip specialist that you can get later to help insulate that have real ERA risk. Dillin Cis also has real ERA risk. So you are potentially drafting Shota Emanaga and Dillon Cis with two of your first eight pick, a lot of strikeouts, whips should balance out, they might both be four ERA guys. And it wouldn't be like that shocking

if both those guys had a four ERA. What about in a points league where Dylan sees his strikeouts are going to be less valuable in a points league? The fact that his starts sometimes run short of six innings is going to be a bigger problem in a points league. Yeah.

I think he gets down. Grated a little bit, yeah. Like someone like Framber Valdez, I probably would just take over CIS in a points league straight up. Yeah, I don't know that I would. I mean, CIS did end up with more innings than him last year. I think Framber had a IL stint, but he's been pretty durable outside of that. I'm trying to remember, I don't have my document here with the point per game production,

but maybe I can find it real quickly. Valdez was 17.02. Cease was, oh, 14.97. That's a difference than I thought. Come on, scat. Come on down. And what was Framber's injury last year? I forgot he had elbow soreness in April.

But I guess, I guess my point was just, even though we think of CIS as more of a categories guy, the downside risk is less in a points league for him. But that's kind of true for every pitcher. When it goes wrong, it goes less wrong in a points league. Sure. Yeah.

And I did just want to point out, Despite the year-to-year inconsistency for Dylan Seas, his last three years combined, it's a 340 ERA-19 whip, 10.9K per 9. Again, like, you're going to have to pair him with a better whip, but, you know, past three years still are near-Ace production. You're getting near-Ace production there from Dylan Seas. After Seas, we dropped down a bit to the four-five turn, round four-five turn, where we have three names going right next to each other.

George Kirby with an ADP of 48, Blake Snell 48.3, and Garrett-Ceast, Cole at 49.5. George Kirby, what's up? They're all basically the same guy. It makes perfect sense that they're all going in the same range. Yeah, it's definitely. Couldn't be more similar. George Kirby and Blake Snell. Definitely an interesting group here. George Kirby finished SP 18 last season. He returned $16 of value. Another solid season. He's been pretty consistent the last two years between a 335, 353, ERA between a 104 and a 107 whip. He's got great control. Strikeouts clearly leave something to be desired.

He's under a strikeout per inning. Feels like he's still searching for that secondary whiff pitch, but nothing has a whiff rate over 30%. So I don't feel comfortable projecting that's going to happen for George Kirby. But he's durable. He's reliable. He's somebody you draft for a high floor. Just feels more like an SP2 than an SP1.

I agree completely. I think people were pricing in a step forward, mainly in the strikeout department for him the past couple years. But I think they know better than to do that now. And I'm saying they because Chris and I, Chris may be even a little louder than I than me, was saying that this was always the case for George Kirby, that he's more of a rotation stabilizer, a number two type option in fantasy than a. perspective ace. He's going to eat a lot of innings. He's going to have a low whip. But the strikeout rate's going to leave a little bit to be desired,

and he gives up enough hits and enough home runs that the ERA might be higher than ideal, too. Last year, I think it got skewed a little bit at 3.53. I would project lower than that. But that is within the realm of possibility for Kirby, given his profile. And so you have to weigh that in. and I just think it's pretty unlikely he's going to deliver ace numbers, but he should be a very strong option for you.

I think what's clear here is we are past the point of rotation anchors. And now we are at the point where I feel a lot better about everyone we're about to talk about if I've paired them with a guy with, with opposite strengths who complements them well, where if I have Corbyn Burns, that's the guy,

I'm okay, just not worrying about pitcher until the eighth round, like I was talking about. If I waited and got Chris Sale or Dylan Sees or one of those guys as my ace, that's where I'm probably thinking, I need to take another pitcher in that range. And I don't love that.

So these are, this is the range where I'm, mostly out on the overall value, if I'm not necessarily out on the pitchers themselves. Conversely, I would say that more drafts than not, I still don't have a pitcher yet. I'm passing up even Kirby. I do have a Scott White special

that I want to throw out there for George Kirby. Two awful blow-up starts last year. Six-plus earn runs in less than four innings in each of those starts. If you eliminate those two, it's a $299 ERA and a 0.99. WIP. See, I, he might win the ALS.

I, saw young. I knew that 353 got inflated, but I didn't have, I didn't do all the math to figure out how it got. It was even worse, because I think one of those starts was like 11 runs, but yeah, four of them were earned or something. Yeah, they changed it. Like it was, it was the most disastrous start of the season, but then there was a scoring change that took like four or five earned runs off the board.

This actually could have been like a 370, right? By the end of the season for George Kerr. Kirby. You know, Chris, some of those pitchers you mentioned pairing up with Kirby, the next one up, Blake Snell. It makes a lot of sense if you just want to pair two pitchers together at this point in the draft. And, oh, Blake Snell, one of the most polarizing pitchers in all of fantasy baseball. He signed a five-year deal with the Dodgers this offseason. More on that in just a second. But it's always a wild ride with Snell.

Here are the facts. Last three years combined, 282 ERA, 116 whip. 12K per 9. If you can stomach it. He has exceeded 130 innings just twice in his career. Both times he won the Cy Young when he did that. And while the Dodgers will provide

a lot of run support, they're going to be a great team. There's no doubt. They're going to use a six-man rotation like we mentioned, which will limit volume, will limit two start weeks if they ever happen for any of their pitchers. So I'll throw it to Chris first, even though I think I know the answer. Do you have the stomach

for Blake Snell in the 4 or fifth round. There are two different questions in there. Yes, I have the stomach for Blake Snell. Blake Snell is predictably unpredictable. He is consistently inconsistent. I'm sure there's another pair of words I could throw out there, but I'm not clever enough to get to them. So we'll just stick with those. Can I shoehorn the numbers real quick? Well, just one more thing. Okay, go ahead. I have the stomach for it because I know going in what, the Blake Snell ride is. And that when he's great, he's never as great as he seems.

When he's terrible, he's certainly never as terrible as he seems. And at the end of the day, the number should be pretty good. The volume, not going to be great. But the number should be pretty good. But if you don't have the stomach for it, don't get on the ride. My wife has a lot of motion sickness issues. And she's like, if she's ever like, let's go on a boat ride. It's like, no, it's going to ruin the whole day.

We can't do it. That's, you got to, you got to know that with Blake Snell. You know, take some, uh, what's the, what's the motion sickness drug? You got to bring some of that. I mean, you got to bring some dramamine with you if you're going to draft Blake's now. I can't do it in the fifth round. I, I think that is bonkers, but more power to you if you want to, if you want to live

life on the edge. Bonkers. That's a big, bonkers. It's a, it's a telling word. Okay, so I had GROC calculate this for me. It took a little bit of haranguing. It wasn't being as literal. I found you kind of have to train the AI to take you the right way

because it's almost too smart for its own good. Anyway. I'm afraid I can't do that, Scott. If it's wrong, blame GROC. But Blake Snell over the past four seasons, April through June of 415 ERA, a 139 whip, 11.2K per 9. So really the ERA and whip we're looking at. April through June, last four years, 415, 139.

June through, I'm sorry, July through September, 256, 112. The K-per-9 is 12.5 in that case. So it's been a pretty clear pattern. It sometimes starts earlier some years. It sometimes starts later, but really rough starts. Like to the point he's unusable. And then it locks into place. And sometimes he's so dominant to close out the season like in 2023 that he's the

young winner. And frankly, he was more like that last year, too. It's just there were those groin injuries built in, so we got fewer starts overall. But the turnaround happened earlier in the year, which is why the final numbers were so good. When he's locked in, he is your MVP. I mean, that was my experience having Blake Snell last year. I didn't mind it so much. What it ultimately comes out to, I was given the stats from four seasons earlier.

Now it's going to be the last three seasons, a 282. BRA 116 whip 12k per 9. I mean, if you just saw those numbers in isolation, that's an obvious ace. Even if you're only giving them 140, 150 innings, that's somebody worth drafting among the top 12 pitchers.

I don't know that I want to do it in round four, and I might hesitate even to do it in round five. It depends what caliber of hitters are left. But sometimes he slides beyond that. And definitely better in a roto or categories league, because like Dylan sees, the inefficiency limits quality starts for those who play in a head-to-point league. So just keep that in mind with-place.

Has never averaged six innings per start in his career. I think he's only gotten to five and two-thirds innings once in nine years. Yeah. I mean, we'll see. He's a workhorse now, Chris, so things might change out in L.A. Let's wrap up with Garrett Cole, one of the best pitchers of this generation who comes with... It's going to be a 10-minute conversation, Frank.

Should we just wrap up? Should we just start to pick it back up tomorrow? No. I mean, we can. Let's squeeze him in. All right, all right. Well, the elephant in the room for Garrickal. He missed two and a half months with right elbow inflammation last year.

There are a lot of innings on that arm and on the surface. He was still solid once he returned 341 ERA 113 whip over a strikeout per inning. But his velocity dropped for a second straight year. And he threw his slider less than usual. Is that related to the injury? I don't know. I think it's maybe something to pay attention to in spring and early on in the season this year,

but it did happen. He is one of the toughest to rank, but Scott, given the injury concerns, the age, the velocity declining, the lack of slider usage, I'm out. What about you? Did Scott freeze?

I think Scott froze. All right, Chris. I'm out. How about you? I wasn't sure if it was just a pregnant pause. Yeah, I'm out at this price. He's SP 14 for me, but I'm really struggling with what to actually do with it. And I kind of think like, I look at, gosh, like 10 through, I don't know, maybe 12.

I don't know, 10 through 25. And I'm just, I kind of want everyone to be lower than they are. But I don't want to move the guys below them above them. So it's just kind of, it's not that I dislike them. I think there's plenty of talent here. but it's like a mixture of guys like Eric Cole on the decline and guys who aren't quite there yet. And I don't know quite how to handle it. And so with Cole, it's a 34-year-old whose velocity has fallen two straight years and has fallen two miles per hour on average in the past two years.

And a part of me just doesn't want to overthink it beyond that. on the other hand, like, Enosaros released his pitcher rankings today, and he said the stuff plus on almost all,

all of his pitches was basically identical to the previous year, a little lower, but not so much that it would make you think that he's completely lost it. I think the biggest key is,

can he throw the slider more? Because that went from being his clear number two pitch prior to last year to fourth in his arsenal. And it didn't really go up as the season went on. And even like he pitched well in the playoffs, but if I'm remembering correctly,

there were like no strikeouts in the in the playoff run that he had. Yeah, 22 strikeouts and 29 innings is pretty bad number. And so it was 6.8K per 9, a 10% K minus walk rate in the postseason. Yeah. So it's, I don't know,

part of me just thinks we should probably just expect him to continue decline, but the decline phase might be pretty okay. You know, like you want to Syung in 2023 despite the strikeout rate falling because he's gotten better at limiting hard contact. He's kind of pulling the Justin Verlander as he aged as well, but it just... There's a wider range of outcomes than we're used to. Like, I don't think, I wouldn't be shocked if he turns back into 2023, Garrickle and is like a top five pitcher for fantasy. That's within the... the range of outcomes.

I just, maybe I'm just being a Yankee pessimist, but it's just a lot of the signs that just point to like age, velocity, elbow stuff. Yeah, like as a top 12 starting pitcher in ADP, that's pretty scary. And it just,

look, he's 34, obviously, he's not as good as he was when he was 31, but it's just there are both more ways that can go wrong and the ways it goes right aren't as impressive, I think, is the range of outcomes for So I'm kind of just deferring to, sorry, Garrett Cole.

I'm kind of just deferring to the name Garrett Cole in ranking him as my SP 14, but that's a little lower than the consensus. And again, it's just kind of this range of pitcher I'm probably not going to draft too much of. Yeah, I don't know how many pitchers we actually revealed on today's episode that we want to draft at cost, but I'm sure you will get to some at some point. That's because we're at the heart of the SP dead zone, Frank. You might be right. You might be right.

Poor Scott, he did get disconnected because of his internet. That was a sign that we should have wrapped up before talking about Gary Cole. But I'm sure we'll get Scott's thoughts on Cole at some point this off season. We are going to wrap there for Scott and Chris. I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning into fantasy baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. And we will be back again tomorrow.

Goodbye. That is the end of today's podcast. Bye-bye. Mount Podcast. Thank you.