Fantasy Baseball Today - The State of Pitching! Analytics, Scouting & Early Sleepers w/ Lance Brozdowski! (1/02 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Welcome to the podcast, Lance Brozdowski (2:00)! ... Lance tells us about working at Driveline Baseball (4:35). ... Let's take a macro look at the state of pitching (11:10). ... Which analytics does Lance lean on most when evaluating pitchers (19:25)? ... Could Yoshinobu Yamamoto struggle a bit at first (34:36)? ... What should we expect from Shota Imanaga (41:21)? ... Could we see more splitters in the coming years (48:15)? ... Could Justin Steele build off his breakout 2023 (57:00)? ... We wrap up with some of Lance's early 2024 sleepers (1:02:19). To display your continued support of the show, please vote Fantasy Baseball Today in the Sports Podcast Awards in the "Best Baseball Podcast" Category https://www.sportspodcastgroup.com/sports_category/best-baseball-podcast/ Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday 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 lead. Well, fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. Welcome into Fantasy Baseball today, and welcome to 2024. Hope everybody had a very happy and healthy new year. Today is Tuesday, January 2nd.

I am Frank Stamphill. Still no Scott White. none of the Chris's could be found. So instead, I figured I'd start the new year off with a bang. Joining us for the first time is a gentleman, but we've cited many times on this podcast. If you're passionate about fantasy baseball and pitching, you probably already know who he is.

Welcome to the show, Lance Brasdowski. Thanks so much for hopping on, man. Thanks for having me, man. This is a really cool moment. We were just talking off air about how I used to listen to this podcast and still do, but like listen to it intensely. Back in 2016, 2017, is one of the first famous baseball podcasts that I really ever listened to, so it's cool to actually be on it.

Dude, you and me are in the same boat. Again, we were talking beforehand. This was the first podcast I listened to when I was back in college, and then the next thing you know, 10 years later, I'm hosting it. So it's like still kind of surreal for me at time. So I'm happy we could do this together. And look, I consider you one of the best baseball minds out there. You are the player development analyst at the Marquis Sports Network with the Chicago Cubs. I know that you have a substack. You have a YouTube. channel. So just let everyone know where they can find all of your great work. Yeah, yeah, primarily on Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it now. That's been the biggest

following that I've grown has been on there. Recently started to realize that I needed to push into other mediums. That's when I, I've had the YouTube going for a while, but this year I think I'm going to really try to kick it in gear and get some growth there. A lot of the stuff that I post on YouTube is honestly me thinking through things and I'm just doing it on camera. So I hope it informs people. I know there's a lot of people that watch it and get a lot of value out of it. I started a substack earlier this year in 2023 that essentially every morning I wake up and I rip through pitchers and what they changed. And again, it's really like a thought process. I abide by that Rick Rubin idea of creating content that you like, you know, that you would

want. So I just, I love digging into pitchers. I love thinking about pitching. I love trying to figure out if I have an edge on a specific pitcher in a certain direction from the statistic side or any of the more advanced pitching stats that I imagine we're going to get it to in this podcast. Yeah, and it's incredibly helpful for us, the fantasy players, because while you're trying to find that edge, you're also helping us find that edge. So the things that you look into, you know, stuff plus and release points and grips and spin rates and all this kind of crazy stuff, we'll talk about that here today on the podcast. Again, make sure to follow Lance on Twitter. X again, I don't really know what we're doing now either, but it's at Lance Bras. That's L-A-N-C-E.

B-R-O-Z. You're also a former video editor at Drive-Line Baseball. So I did want you to quickly tell me about that, what you did with them, and how much fantasy players should actually pay attention to pitchers that go to Drive-Line?

Because it feels like the past couple of years, and even with hitters, because I know hitters are going out to Drive-Line now as well. We're very pick and choosy, right? Like, this pitcher went to Drive-Line and they had a great year, but then we might not talk about

the pitchers that went to Drive-Line that, like, didn't have a great year or didn't improve, right? So how much should we pay attention to that? And what did you actually do with them? Yeah, Drive line was a kind of an odd opportunity. I used to write a while back for the Hardball Times, just submitted some pieces and wrote some stuff.

And I had a conversation in a clubhouse with Luke Jackson, the reliever from the Braves at the time. I think he's on the Giants now. I might even be a free agent. He's running some injuries. But he always had a funky slider. So I talked to him, had a really good conversation in the clubhouse. And then I ended up circling back with his throwing trainer there,

who's now the assistant pitching coach with the. The Angels, the name's Bill Hazel. And Bill and I talked, and it was one of those conversations that you have that you learn a lot in such that you really want to continue having conversations with that individual. It's just everything clicked through a good chemistry. He had a really good way of explaining things. And I started to really understand what gyrospin was around sliders. I don't even remember the gear on this, but it probably was around 2018 or so.

So I ended up writing the story. And then I found out that drive line needed help with video edited essentially. Back in the day, they didn't really have anybody to stitch together. A trackman output, Rapsoto, which are two pieces. of technology that measure pitch movement and then edger track cameras, which are really slow motion, slow frame stuff you probably see on the driveline count all the time. So I was essentially a video editor who had stitched this stuff together. They're throwing trainers would be like, hey, we're working on getting this guy a different slider. Can you piece together pitch two and six as the bad ones to show

him what he's doing on his wrist at release? And then let's do 10 and 12 are the ones that we actually want, split screen them pause. So my video editing skills kind of turned into something that allowed me to capitalize on getting a lot of experience in that way. At the time, it was just cool to look at that stuff. Just cool to look at trackman outputs and kind of delve into that. And then I slowly realize that a lot of those throwing trainers I work with are now working for major league teams. So the true value in that job at the time was creating a network of people that I can now ask questions to and get smarter. So that's what I did with Drive Line. And, you know, applying it to fantasy, I do play some fantasy. I primarily play Rhodo. I don't really play too much points or anything.

So I don't know if I'd be able to speak to that much. And most of my stuff is on NFBC. I do a lot there. A couple satellite leagues. I usually have a, you know, a reasonable amount of money down. per season on that and I think I've been positive I'm very nerdy I look at the stuff from an ROI perspective but I think I'm positive ROI each of my last two years I had a nice win in a satellite league last year that that helped me cover my losses in some other leagues as I started to push out to draft in the hole draft and hold for the first time which was a struggle so maybe maybe you have some tips for me on that side but I'm not that great of draft and hold yet I ran into so many injuries but besides the point yeah there's so many guys going to drive line this comes up all the time

I look at it very simply as projections are an average of a range of outcomes, right? I think we often miss that most of the time where we're looking at, you know, a range. Like this guy could hit his 70th percentile outcome. You could hit his 30th percentile outcome. But we're looking at when we look at like a Zip's projection or any of those projections, we're looking at what we think the average is. And we're not really accounting for that spread of, you know, some guys might have a tighter spread like that. You call those guys like probably high floor pitchers.

And the high ceiling guys are really spread out generally because of some injury risk or something along those lines. When I hear a guy goes to drive line, I basically take that curve and flatten it a little more. I think the range of outcomes just gets bigger, especially skewed towards the positive. Because if projections are going off things that have happened, right, we're trying to predict based off past performance, with maybe some underlying indicators and stuff, by gaining information that a guy's going on your drive line, most of the time they're working on velocity, most of the time they're adding a new pitch or playing around with different options on the pitch side for them to have in their arsenal if they run into issues in the subsequent season. I just think that's not really baked into projections at all, really. So I'd like to just kind of target those guys if I think they're reasonably priced around ADP

on the simple fact that I think there's some positive variance there that a projection maybe isn't capturing Philly. I've always had this Galaxy brand idea too of coming up with like projections that you could play around with. So like say I give this guy cutter, you know, a cutter that he hasn't thrown like what would stuff plus and location plus say about it? And then will that actually improve his projection. I imagine teams have this internally. I'm kind of waiting for it to come on the public side. But I don't know if it actually ever will. But that's how I think about drive line, right?

Like, I just think it creates positive variance. And guys, generally because of velocity, because of shapes, because of improving things. And that's kind of how I look at guys. I write them all down. I have a notion document right now running with guys that I see online training there. And when I get into draft season in March, I'll peek back at it and just kind of highlight those guys and make sure I'm aware of them. Awesome stuff. As you guys could tell by now, we are doing a pitching smorgas board today.

We're talking all about different kind of pitching. Trying to figure out the state of starting pitching because I feel like that. That's kind of difficult right now with the new rules and crack down on sticky substances that have happened in the past couple of years. We'll talk about analytics and pitching and scouting Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shoto I know you did a great couple of videos on those two gents as well.

Splitters, could splitters become the new rage in baseball? And of course, we will wrap up with some Cubs pitchers and some potential sleepers as well. Good to hear that you play fantasy baseball. That's pretty awesome, right? You're out. helps, right? You're out in the NFBC Street, so that's really cool to hear. I know you told me a story about how you played in an NL only league with us, with like an expert kind of league.

Tell me more about that. This is a quick story. This is funny. So I used to, I was actually an accountant. I got an undergraduate degree in accounting from UMass Amherst and worked in the city of Boston in public accounting at one of the big four firms. I hated. It was the worst thing in the world. I'm sorry if anyone listening to an accountant that works for Big Four, but I just, I did not understand how anyone could work, like 70, 80 hours a week doing that stuff. So anyways, I very quickly realized I needed to pivot very hard. I ended up going to Northwestern for grad school. But I think this was 2017.

It was Cody Bellinger's rookie year is all I remember. But anyways, there's a thing called busy season in accounting where everything gets really busy and generally it's because of fiscal year closes. I'm not going to get into like what that is or anything. But anyways, you guys, I think Scott White reached out or I reached out. I don't remember how it transpired, but he offered to have me in this league. And it was an expert league. So at the time, I was like, from building a credibility standpoint, this was really important.

So I actually ended up calling out sick from work that day because it's an auction. It's an anal-only auction. It takes like eight hours. Like it's an entire day endeavor. So it was the middle of business season. I had to call out of war. I just called out. I was just like, I'm not.

I'm sick. You know what I mean? And throughout that entire day, my manager was calling me for all these questions and like asking me to do stuff. And I just couldn't answer. I had to draft this N-L-only team. And then I won. So I felt so vindicated. And it's primarily because I got Cody Bellinger, I think,

Right before the reserve round, I'd save like $2,3, $3, and he ended up hitting like 39 home runs and it propelled me. But anyways, that's my little story. So I guess if you're trying to make it in the industry, call out of work and do it, and alone the expert draft. That is amazing. I kind of wish Scott was here so you could rub it in his face, the fact that you won the league.

But I'll let him know when he gets back. Let's jump into the state of starting pitching. And Scott and I have kind of talked about this a lot already this all season. I think we'll continue to try and figure out how to value pitchers and kind of the way things are trending. So ERA and WIP were both up in 2020. I think that's no surprise compared to 2022, which was like this outlier low in terms of ERA and WIP.

And we saw that, you know, pitching in general was just much better that year, whether it was the dead and ball. It was, you know, they were still kind of cracking down on the sticky substances, but not really. For whatever reason, pitching in 2022 was much better. 2023, we get the new rules. We got shift restrictions, stolen bases,

offenses up in, I guess, a more organic way. That's the league that's the way the league wants it to be trending at this point. But overall, if you look at like really the past seven or eight years, like from a macro perspective, league-wide pitching stats, they haven't changed all that much. But the way that they are distributed has changed. So the elite aces, they're not really separating themselves as much as they have in years past.

Again, like 2021, 2021, the aces were like far away and head and shoulders better than like the middle class of starting pitcher. Now it's kind of like been bunched down a little bit together. Scott talks a lot about this glob of starting pitching, which where it kind of feels like pitchers are all kind of similar from like the SP 35 to like 75 range. But what would you attribute that to? Like how do you explain kind of what's happening in pitching right now?

Is it just the rules that have changed? Is it a combination of like the sticky substances? What do you attribute that to? Yeah, it's a great question. question. The rundown you gave me, got me spiraling into a bunch of rabbit holes as I was doing prep, but I don't actually know how much I totally prep for the individual questions you're going to ask, but I have thought. So I think it's due to how teams are approaching, like, the innings that they need to hit. Like, there's a certain amount of endings. I remember what is the top

of my head. It's like, what was like 1800 or something like that? The number could be off. But as a team, you have to get, you have to cover this many innings. And I think a lot of organizations look at the however many men, 13 guys they have in a pitching staff and in the minor leagues, like how are we going to cover all those innings? And I think the thing from that high level of a perspective that's happened is that you're starting to kind of shorn out guys. Like it relates back to the fact that guys aren't really going as deep into games because of the third time through the order penalty and the understanding that velocity

also is something that's probably going to peak earlier in an outing for the most part. So we want to front load guys who are like three to five inning guys. You see what the rays do, like around that five-inning threshold. They don't really let a lot of guys turn over lineups a ton. And pound velocity and don't throw deep into games. Don't run into those third time through the order penalties. Master a couple pitches. And we will have better outsized results in that big sample of innings that we need to cover.

That is, I think, what is happening to a lot of from the fantasy perspective, the reason that we're getting that blob as, or glob, as Scott says. And we're also running into situations, I think, where we're just not getting as many top end pitchers that are separating. I think I pulled, I was looking at like, Razball has like historic roto values, right? I don't see if I pulled this up, where they look at, you know, you can go back, however many years, you go back, way back and just look at dollar value production for individual guys. And I think I saw that, yeah, so $30 plus pitchers. So this is like ace level pitchers. The last two seasons, we've had three of them. And then if you go back to

2021, you had four, 2020, you had five, 2019, you had four, 2018, you had six. So you're looking at like, you're just not, I think what's happening is because we're not getting as many guys going six or seven time through six to seven innings. You're running in situations where guys are not prepared then to become those kinds of pitchers. So the sample at the top, the guys were actually accumulating innings and wins and strikeouts, which are three of the five rhodo categories for pitchers. That has a huge impact on how much you can actually separate from the packet. And makes those top in a ACEs more valuable. I was always really resistant to drafting early SP like starting pitchers. But, you know, I had a 15 team, NFBC team last year that at the turn I went, where did I go? I think I went Garry Cole, Corbyn Burns. I passed on Shrider, which killed me. I didn't win the league. I think it came to like fourth, but just outside the money. But I've become more willing to understand based on some of these trends that these guys who were really strong on the SB side of things like the Coles and the Burns, et cetera, of the world, like can't actually produce that $30 plus value and you give you a return. But just to your point, like I just don't think we're

getting guys into the situations to put up outsized value, and that's hurting the total pool of pitching. We're also seeing more blowups, too. And again, I don't know if that's more to do with the new rules, that there's more of kind of like a snowball effect where, you know, once things kind of start going wrong, we see hit after hit because maybe shift restrictions or this guy steals a base, okay, one single drives that guy in and things just kind of spiral out of control. So we see that more, even Spencer Shreder. I mean, he's dominant. Earlier in the year, yeah. From every person, perspective we look at, right? The ERA estimators, K minus walk rate, just strikeout rate in general. He's like the top pitcher in baseball, but he has an ERA that's near four. So it's just so weird to

see that. Is there anything that you can find, maybe a common theme among the successful pitchers, right? Maybe those ones that are, you know, I guess above the glob, the top 20 or 25. Is there anything that you notice? Maybe it's the guys that have just done it before, right? the guys that we've seen go six, seven, eight endings consistently in the past, and we can kind of bank on them to do it again or whatever it might be like strikeout rate, that seems like an obvious one, right?

Just avoiding balls on play. But is there anything that you've noticed, like a common theme among the pitchers you see are successful? Yeah, I think it's really a spectrum. I think it's a matter of, I will say, like, I think that guys who command really good velocity generally are very good.

I think that's kind of, I'd say a one-line thing, that is far less common than I think we believe, right? Like I think a Spencer Strider, like a Jacob de Grom, who I mean, at this point, like, is almost not even a fantasy pitcher anymore. He just don't even think about him. But he had the most incredible ability to dot 99 relative to anybody else in baseball.

Like even relative to the guys who were thrown 92 to 94. We don't, command is still something I think we're trying to understand. I think, you know, Saras is doing a really good job and the athletic of bringing in location plus and making that public. We have block rates. You know, if you go to drive line or any organization generally has like a miss distance, which is really cool, which is looking at individual pitch types and where that ball misses. So like I throw a forcing basketball top of the zone.

If my, I think my target is up, like how much inchwise do I miss on average? Like am I missing 12 inches? I'm missing 11. And like where does that rate relative to other guys trying to throw four things at the top of the zone? There's much more nuance to the topic of command. But I think one thing we generally understand about command is that as you throw harder, you're moving faster. It's harder to control those finite finger movements that we think have some attachment to where you can place the ball and consistency of that.

Release, the vertical release angle. Those are really kind of nuanced topics that I think are really important to consistency of spotting a pitch. Maybe not necessarily consistent mechanics, but how you're getting to your release. So I think that a guy can, if a guy can spot 95 plus consistently, I think you end up being pretty elite for the most part. And I think you run to a lot of situations where guys are one or the other. You're on that spectrum of like command and stuff for command and velocity. in that respect. And, you know, everyone has a gradation of it, but there's certain guys I think really jump out that have a Lee Velocci and also are able to command. And I really think that is probably my

top line separator. I don't necessarily know how actionable that is for fantasy, but that's kind of how I think about pitching. It's like, when I see a guy who's throwing that hard that could actually dot things, I start to get like a little more confident that there could, again, that range of outcomes that we could be looking at a better outsized outcome than the average. And that's interesting, too, because there's, you know, very obvious ways to just see if that correlates, right? I mean, just measure a pitcher's velocity and look at his walk rate, right, and line those things up together. And, you know, the pitchers that throw harder and have, you know,

reasonable walk rates are maybe potentially the pitchers that we should be targeting. So something I think is worth looking into more this offseason. You mentioned location plus and some of the metrics that Enosaris has put out in the past couple of years, stuff plus, location plus, pitching plus. And there are a ton of different metrics out there, right? There's just so much. And we'll talk about it. Like sometimes my, even my head, I'm just.

spinning, like trying to put it all together. It's crazy stuff. But I think you do a great job of kind of piecing those things together. You put them out in your daily in-season notes that are on your substack. So again, I recommend everyone check that out. But what are some of the most common pitching analytics that you like to use? And if it's possible for you to reveal where to find those, because I think a lot of people who listen to us are still kind of trying to figure this out as well. Where do I find these? What do they mean kind of things, you know? It's a great point. I mean, I look, I hate the answer of saying I kind of look at everything, but I kind of do for the most part, where I'm looking at ERA as simple as it is, right?

That's the stat you're getting credit for in fantasy, especially on a fantasy basis that matters, right? Even if it's not predictive year over year or something along those lines, you want to look at indicators that are more predictive of ERA than ERA itself, totally understandable. FIP is isolating off with the pitcher control, right? Strikeouts, walks, home runs. X FIP is kind of neutralizing that for a consistent home run rate. You know, you get into ERA and XERA, XERA is, I believe from my understanding. he's just at woba ported over to an era metric or ex-wova poured over to an eri metric so that's considering like exe velocity and not considering spray angle which is something that's a little more nuanced but it's why a guy like isaq paredes on the hitting side can kind of outperform some of his

expected metrics so consistently because he pulls the ball a ton so there's in every stat you look at there's like a limitation to it and i think the hardest thing is to understand what those limitations are and understand what you're looking at what is it trying to tell you right that is the hardest thing I think on the fantasy side and even on just the general analysis side of things to figure out. So I look at a mix of everything. I recently got access to a site called True Media, which I've seen some other football analysts throughout there. It's not, they don't have a consumer product right now. They are, they, you can't access it through some media organizations. And I've found the value in it from looking at pitch movement, looking at short form

pitch movement, which isn't publicly available in real time, but True Media has it publicly available in real time. The real time pitch movement information on Savon is slightly different. They measure a vertical movement slightly differently. This is probably way too nuanced for a fancy baseball podcast. Anyways, I really like true media because it allows me to see real time pitch movement and stuff. So I like looking at things as granular as that. And then I like kind of zooming back out and looking at a stuff plus, which is that combination of velocity, release characteristics, movement, and relative to how pitchers have performed, what do we think this pitch will do going forward? Is it above average? Is it league average? And then looking at something like location plus is simply

as optimally as just how often are you putting that pitch in a spot to succeed. You combine those two. I think you get a lot of the way there. I know Unisarris did kind of a proof looking at his stuff and location model. He calls it like PPRA, I believe he was pitching plus ERA. And it's pretty predictive. Going forward, it's pretty predictive, he thought at least. And I kind of agree with it too. So for me, a lot of the time, it's trying to find a stat that I think I understand and making sure I know actually what it's outputting. I think I get caught up a lot of the time. In no offense of baseball perspectives at all, they do great work. And a lot other stuff I actually think from a numerical side is more predictive, but they have like DRA and all

these other nuanced things. And sometimes I really struggles to understand what's going into that such that I don't really know what it's telling me. So I tend to stay away from some of those, even if the predictive value that R squared is slightly higher. Like I'll take something that's like a little bit lower on the R square side of things. If I could just understand what it's telling me and understand where to look and how to not maybe take that as totally the holy grail of an individual pitching stat. So it's a lot of nuanced things. I like stuff plus. I think it stabilizes really quick and gives you an idea of that pitcher stuff. Location plus doesn't stabilize

as quickly, but it does give you a pretty good proxy for command. Something as simple as strike a on his walk rate too, I think is like, gets you like a really good amount of the way there. You look at just a simple like fan graphs sort of that stuff. Fangraphs is where I'm on a lot to get a lot of this information. I also love Alex

Chamberlain's pitch leaderboard, which is kind of a more nuanced thing. I don't know if you guys have mentioned it, but that has short form movement and gets kind of a better understanding of how pitchers and pitching coaches talk about the movement of a baseball as it gets towards the plate. It doesn't update every day, but it updates probably every week in season. And it does a really good job of looking at individual pitch characteristics from a discipline

standpoint and really dig into why is an individual pitcher effective. That's probably the question I'm trying to answer the most on my step stack and anywhere else. Like, why is this guy effective? Why is this guy not as effective? Or how could he become more effective? Those, like, simple questions, I think, are kind of how I piece everything together. Yeah, and that's a lot of what we're doing in season too, right? Like, not only am I trying to watch games every single night, but I'm,

I'm going through the baseball savant, the pitch usage to velocity, and comparing that to like previous games and doing it for every pitcher. So like, if anyone's ever wondering, if everyone's ever wondering why we start at like 1230 a.m. every single night, it's because it takes a long time to like gather all that information and stuff. So yeah, it is a lot of work, but it's very interesting to, I think, point those things out on a daily basis. Again, if you want to kind of gain that edge in fantasy baseball,

I have an Excel sheet. This is something I've done the past couple of years where the metrics I've noticed either other really smart people using or things that I like to use. I'll just kind of put them all on one sheet together. And for pitchers, for example, I have K-minus walk rate, FIPP, X-FIP, Sierra,

swinging strike rate, swinging strike rate, stuff plus, location plus, pitching plus. And then just things that are pretty obvious, right? Like innings pitched from the previous season, projected innings pitched by Steve. and steamer projection in terms of like a dollar value. So just, I guess, kind of like, give it a little fantasy spin as well. So just like having all the data, but also having the fantasy spin.

And, you know, I'll tell you if it works. I guess we'll find out if I draft good pictures this year, right? Like, you know, this is what I'm trying to look at and kind of base my rankings off of that. But yeah, as I learn more, I'll let you know how that goes. You mentioned, we mentioned all these different kind of stats. Is there anything that you've noticed is the most predictive? Again, like you kind of mentioned Enosarous, it was P.P. ERA, right? That's what it was called.

Yeah, I think it's pitching plus ERA is that prefix to the ERA. Is that like the one that you found that's most predictive so far? Or because honestly, a lot of these ERA estimators, what we hear is that they are descriptive, not predictive, right? It's like they're telling you what a pitcher has done so far, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's what a pitcher is going to do moving forward. So is there anything else that you found that is maybe more predictive than others? Yeah, and it's tough because it's all. It's all gradations, right? Like, nothing is 100% predictive.

Everything is like, the R squared's there like between 3 and 0.3 and 0.4. So it's saying that like, if I understand some of the basic statistics here, like an R squared number is saying how much of that future variance is attributable to this individual's statistics. So if it's around 0.3 or 0.4, you're saying like 30 to 40% is described by this individual stat we're looking at. You know, so that creates like 60% of other stuff that we just don't know. We don't know why it's great. It could be a variety of variables. So it's tough as to what is most predictive.

I think, again, it goes back to my point of just, like, making sure you understand the inputs, making sure you kind of have an idea what's going on. And that's why I lean on like a PPRA, where it's just easier for me to know that he's going off location plus and stuff plus, which I think I understand really well. And he's mixing some park variables and some other things. So I like that.

I think that that's a really good way to look at things. And again, like a skills independent area, like Sierra is pretty good too. That's looking more at ball and play outcomes. and I mentioned earlier in this podcast that I got into a rabbit hole. That's what I got into the rabbit hole of was I literally spent like 45 minutes toggling through. You know, I don't know if you're running to this. You read an article and it's really good. But within that article, they're often linking to other things.

And I often find that the things they're linking to, I like, I'm 25% of the way through one piece. And I open up another one and that piece is like two times as on. And then I go through that one. And then I'm like trying to circle back. So I have like six tabs open and it's a disaster. But what a pitcher can control and bad at ball outcomes is the rabbit hole I got into. And Skills Independent ERA brings that. in consideration, whereas like a FIP does it. A FIP is basically saying like, hey, I don't really

think you have too much influence over it. And I, we use FIPP a lot because I think it makes a lot sense. But I do think fundamentally, almost every organization believes that pitchers actually do exert some control over bad at ball outcomes. And the thing that I started to kind of understand a little more in digging through this than I have thought about in the past is that, you know, exit velocity is more what a hitter could control and launch angle is something that more so a pitcher maybe has some more influence over. And that's a byproduct of location. Launching is heavily heavily influenced by vertical and horizontal location, particularly vertical location. You think of like forcing fast holes with some hop up in the zone, you're going to create fly balls, right?

You're looking for a long changle there. That's potentially very steep to the point where it's not going to end up being a home run. It actually starts to diminish in terms of that padded ball outcome. And then the same thing for like a Logan Webb. He's pitching down in the zone with a sinker. If you're consistently putting that ball down in the zone, this goes back to the idea of like command, trying to quantify command to some extent. If he's consistently putting that ball down in the zone, the probability of there being a ground ball is, higher. So I think pitchers exert some control over that element of launching, or whereas

hitters may exert more control over like the exit velocity side of things. So I like looking at a Sierra because they're starting to maybe consider some more of that ball and play nuance that other things might be missing. And I'm sure you've seen guys like this all the time. Like Bryce Elder was a great example last year where he has like some kind of weird pitch metrics where he's a high slot guy who can throw a sinker. So he's getting a lot of drop that ball approaches the zone really steep. That is relatively unique to other right-handed pitchers in baseball. So I thought for a period of time last year that it was reasonable he was outperforming. Some of his metrics until the league caught up, that gets into more of the nuance.

Like, okay, well, when as a fantasy owner do I kind of let Elder go? Like, we thought he would implode at some point. He kind of struggled at the end of the year. But if I could get three months out of a guy being like a three, five pitcher off the waiver, like I'm hyped. You know what I mean? Like, that's amazing. So it's like I like trying to isolate off and find like some nuance that might take the league a little to understand what's going on with that individual pitcher. But that's a bit of a rambling talk there.

but I wanted to get into that radical of like, what can a pitcher control? And that I think is really important. I don't think there's a direct answer to it. But I like that idea of them being able to control launching a little more than exosity. And it's so interesting. I think it is really nuanced too.

And I think it depends on the pitcher. And I could be wrong about this, but this is just kind of the way that I'm deducing it in my head is that someone like a Framber Valdez or even a Kyle Hendrix, like they throw a bunch of sinkers. They want to keep the ball down in the zone for the reasons you mentioned to get ground balls.

Someone like Christian Javier, who has this kind of rising fastball effect that he throws up in the zone to try and get infield pop-ups and fly balls that don't turn into home runs. Those guys are very clearly, I think, trying to influence where the ball is coming off of the bat. But then I also think that there are other pitchers that are just like power pitchers

where they're, in their mind, they're probably just trying to throw it past this guy, right? Like, let me just throw a fast ball, like, away in the zone and try and get a swing and miss. Or, like, I'm not trying to induce, like, a ground ball or anything. I want to throw a slider down in a way to a righty, and try and get a strikeout, right? So, yeah, it is really, really interesting and nuance

because it's like, how do you capture that? How do you capture which pitchers are purposely trying to influence launch angle and which ones aren't? It's a good point. I think the quick way that I'll respond to that is like, I think Stuff Plus and Location Plus do a really good job of this. They're available publicly on fan graphs. Because I look at this all the time.

I think of the modern pitcher as a guy who has like a 125 stuff plus, right? Bang or slider, 3,000 RPM. He's got a big sweeper. It's 84. It's harder than other sweepers. you know, maybe he's got a little hop to his fastball. That's unexpected for a guy who's got that much sweep. Nasty change up with a ton of bite.

So you see this stuff plus like 120, right, which is like almost two standard deviations above the average. You're like, oh, yeah, let's go. And then you look at the location plus, it's like a 90. And it's like, oh, he's actually a reliever, you know? But it's like we're trying to make him a starter. Like that is, I think how you could maybe isolate off and find that power pitcher.

But I run into that all the time because, you know, Sarah's also has some like minor league statistics. And I have access to an individual in an organization who gives me some minor league staff. so I could kind of figure out the stuff plus of double A pitchers and high A pitchers if I want to. And AAA, I believe that's publicly available on Prospects Live. I think they have some stuff up around pitch shapes and stuff. So you could kind of back into like what the stuff plus is of a guy coming up.

Kind of don't have to wait for the public to know. That's one of the maybe minor edges I think I have in the game, but in fantasy baseball specifically. But yeah, I run to that all the time. Like I was looking at you guys, I listened to your most recent podcasts where we were talking about starting pitching prospects. I have some thoughts there, of course. I was looking at minor league guys. and Jackson Joe was one that jumped to me earlier in the year when I saw some of his L data because he had really strong stuff plus,

but the location plus wasn't terrible. And he had a little more of a sample there too. I think he had three stars where he was on one of the stadiums in the NFL that had trackman. So he had like a 96 or 97 location plus, not enough to stabilize it, but it was more encouraging than like one of the starts I stopped from Ricky Teetam where he had like an 8085, which is like from what I understand about location plus and some of the command metrics,

Because if you're in reliever territory, it's really hard to be a starting pitcher. So I don't know if I'm totally concerned about like a Ricky Tideman versus the Jackson Joe. But I was slightly encouraged that Jackson Joe had three starts where he was kind of around this starter territory of location despite having really strong stuff. So I kind of ticked him up mentally in my brain a little. But yeah, that combination of like, do you have great stuff, which I think translates to being a power pitcher? And then do you have actually a big command to be able to spot it? Which I think goes back to my point that I mentioned earlier, like you got VLO and you could command it. I really like that profile.

Yeah, all right. Let's take our first break. We do have a bunch of other pitchers we want to get to here. A quick note before we do that. FBT is a finalist for the best baseball podcast category in this year's sports podcast awards. And thanks to all of our listeners, we actually won this award last year,

so we're looking to go back to back. And to help us bring home the hardware, you can find the link in the podcast and YouTube descriptions or scan the QR code, which is on the screen right now. The whole process should take you less than a minute. And we really do appreciate it. Thank you for your continued support.

We're trying to go back to back. So help us out. And let's take our first break. When we return, let's talk about specific players. Yamamoto, I want to talk about this kind of splitter usage that we think could be on the rise. We'll do all that right after this. Welcome back in.

We're here with Lance Brazdowski. And let's talk about some of these breakdowns you did on Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga. You did these on your YouTube channel. Highly recommend everyone checks them out. We'll start with Yamamoto. 25-year-old Japanese Fidom, who just came off a season with a 116 ERA

and a 0.86 whip over a strikeout per inning. He has posted an ERA of 1.7 or lower, three years in a row. In each of those three years, he won the Sawamora Award, which is the equivalent of the Sayyung in Japan. He also has won the league MVP each of the past three years.

Now, this is where I think the tone could change a little bit, because you threw a little bit more cold, water on Yamamoto during your breakdown. So talk to me about some of the things that you noticed that you think could maybe cause maybe a little bit of a period where he has to make some adjustments and maybe he doesn't get off to like this great start that some people think he might. What do you see when breaking down Yamamoto?

Yeah, I honestly hate that I made this video and it got as much traction as I did because I listen like I before he went to the Dodgers, which I think is just going to kill everything because I love what the Dodgers do from an optimizing pitcher standpoint. I give him a lot of leeway when they acquire a guy, you know, even if Lanselin wasn't totally successful. He had some starts for he was usable last year. Anyways, I was talking to people in baseball about him, and a lot of people expressed head as a hesitancy where they were like, listen, I think it's pitchability profile. I think for the most part he's getting really good money because he's 25. Like, we just don't have a 25-year-old pitcher hit the market to be able to give him 10 years.

So it's like, I actually think he might get 250 plus and then it became 300 million plus, you know? So I put this out because I had a couple people who I respect to tell me that, like, like they thought he might struggle immediately with some adjustment. So I was like, all right, everything I've seen on him has been positive. Why don't I put together a video that's like maybe more lukewarm? Maybe people will learn from it. Little did I know that like everyone attacked me in the comments. I can't believe you don't like this guy.

And it's like, I don't know if I wasn't clear about my point in that video, but I value contrasting perspectives a lot in what I read and what I think and talking to people. Like, I want to know why someone disagrees with me, you know? So in making this video about Yomoto, I wanted to be a little more lukewarm. warm because I just thought it would be more valuable for people to consider maybe why he doesn't get off to like a crazy good start. And then he went to the Dodgers and now I'm going to be totally wrong and I feel terrible about it. But anyways, to put on that hat of skepticism around Yamamoto, it is more of a pitchability profile, right? Like he is a guy that I think does something

kind of funky with his foreseeing from the location data I've seen and also some of the minor WBC stuff where he's able to actually dot his four seam outer third versus Rites and go up with it, which is very similar to like what a Garrett Cole does. You can contrast. to Garrett Cole with like a Carlos Rodan. We're like, Rodon, if you look at his heat maps, he's throwing the trash ball in one spot entire time no matter what. And I just don't think he has the innate level of command like a Garrett Cole does. Like, Garrett Cole works off that out of third to put up his slider line.

He also goes for four seam up. Like he mixes things in a really unique way because he has the command to be able to do that. And I think Yama Mudd represents that same ability. He's got the ability to kind of go back to this four seam. He throws it up a little. He throws it down too, which is something we can get into with the mona guy, where the MVP guys just throw down a lot. I think of Monaco particularly has to elevate more.

And like Yal Morg, even pitch a little inside with the Tarrides as well, which I like. So you have kind of these nuanced pitchability elements that I don't think up here stuff plus is going to capture. Despite that, stuff plus and the stuff is really strong. I was a slightly concerned that the forcing didn't get a ton of swing and miss in MPB. And everyone was like, I understand, like everyone just told me that's because of the contact nature. But I get that that's the contact nature of guys over an NB. But we've also seen, even if strikeout rates go up in the major leagues, that's primarily driven by more off speed usage, less forcing usage.

It's not really driven by foreseeing getting more swing miss in zone, for example. So that is a great example. Like, Kodai Sanga is similar. Like, I know he doesn't have the same level of Nate command that Yamamoto does, but Senga's fastball was like,

and great out a little bit worse, but he had sub, like, 20% swinging strike rate where the average is somewhere around 22%. He comes over, and that's his worst pitchers' repertoire and dropped to like 18, and slowly you saw throughout the year, Senga backed off the forcing usage and through everything else.

So I'm most curious about the forcing usage and what the Dodgers do with it and how much maybe they rely on other pitches in his repertoire or if they like the idea of him throwing the fastball 50, 47% of the time somewhere in that window because they think the pitchability is good enough. So that's the more of the growing pain that I think he could run into. It's just like, I'm used to throwing this fastball all the time. I get I could spot it, but like against major league hitters, even be able to spot it might create some risk of damage and barrels. So like let's back off that usage, bring it down to like 45, 42, 41, and then throw some other pitches, like throw the splurter, which is filthy. I'm curious to

see if they tinker with anything on the slider side of things to get more swing and miss versus right-handed hitters. There's some nuance around his profile that I think creates, I just say variance. I'll just say variance in the first couple months and even the first maybe year of this contract. But the problem here is that the Dodgers do a really good job of extracting immediate value from these guys. So I'm in on him. Like I'll put it on a record. Like I like where his ADP is right now. I actually think, again, thinking of that range of outcomes, how I think of a lot of pitchers. Like I think he has a chance to be like the SP2 this year, like number two or three pitcher in all, in fantasy specifically, and I think he's got a clear shot with the

Cy Young as well. Just from a pure standpoint, if I think the Dodgers are really interesting in being able to maximize the value of these guys immediately, you have to, again, accept a lot of risk of him being slightly smaller, which, whatever, in terms of whether that causes injuries, but also adjustment to the ball, adjustment to the routine, how many innings he's going to throw. Like, that's it. There's a lot of things in there that matter.

Dodger Stadium, too, allows a lot of home runs on flybals and line drivers. I don't think a lot of people maybe think about that and realize it, but the ball's in the air for the most part there, like he will create, I think he's going to give up some home runs in that respect, even though he hasn't really given up too much. So that gets into another angle of like, well, what if behind in the count they start throwing sinker more with him? Like I think his natural arm path leads him to having a little more sinker usage over here.

So there's, again, all these like push and pull that I think the Dodgers are going to do a better job of preempting maybe than other orgs would. So I'm eating crow on this one. I think he's good. I just wanted to do something different. And clearly I should not do that. First and foremost, Lance, you haven't made it on YouTube. until you get some nasty comments.

So you should feel good about that fact because look, you're gonna ruffle some feathers. I like that aspect. I'm like you. I like to hear differing opinions. I always said to me, the best content for fantasy is to hear both sides of the argument,

to hear people kind of, you know, one person likes this player, one person doesn't like this player, let's argue about it. And then the listener gets to decide, okay, which person do I agree with more or which person made more points that I agree with?

And that's really what it should be. So I actually appreciate the fact that, you know, you looked at it from that perspective. Let's talk about Imanaga, who is going much later. And we can talk about that in a second. But just to give people a little background, 30-year-old lefty coming over from Japan, coming off a 266 ERA 102 whip, well over a strikeout per inning, 10.6K per 9, 7.8K to walk ratio. So that is amazing stuff.

And just taking a look at the arsenal. it's mostly fastball sweeper, splitter, doesn't throw incredibly hard, 92 to 93 miles per hour. But as you pointed out in your breakdown, he kind of throws from this funky arm angle as a lefty where he creates this like interesting vertical approach angle

and it's like lots of fly balls. That's something that has played the past couple of years in Major League Baseball. I do wonder if like people are starting to catch up to it a little bit. I know there's been like some articles and whispered, and some research done that like, all right, the league might be catching up to this kind of like rising fastball. Tell me what you saw from Chota Imanaga

and the fact that like he is going so late right now. I mean, he's like outside the top 250 in ADP. Yeah, yeah, he's super late. The problem is like I saw his ADP and then he's around some other guys that I kind of like from what I saw. Like he's near and they're injury guys, but like Tristan McKenzie and Nicolodolo, like those are interesting arms.

I'm curious to see where Lucas Gialito goes. He's around at ADP. You run in this couple of relievers. there. Like if you're in on Mason Miller, his ADP is probably going to rise if they ever announce him as the closer. You know, Kintamai, I was just talking about it's in that same window. So I wish he was around other pitchers that I'd be more confident and going after him. But yeah, you mentioned, you hit the nail on the head. Like, he's got a really hoppy fastball. It's got like 20 inches of vertical breaker cell, which is well above the average. You know,

you have to adjust for arm slot and some other things too, but the average is around 16 for a four-scene fastball. The other thing is that you just don't see that from the left side a lot. The two guys that I compliment to were Alex Vesci and Mr. Cortez, who throw similar forcing fastballs. Both of them pitch up in the zone a lot. I'menaga over an NPB did not pitch up in the zone a ton. So I think that's a clear adjustment that he's going to make that I'll actually flatten out that vertical approach even more.

That's just the angle of the ball entering the zone, which is influenced by location really, really heavily. So you do have to kind of adjust for it. But yeah, he's a good pitcher. I think he's solid. I wonder how many innings we're going to get out of him. That's maybe one of the hesitations. Most of the reporting I've seen is something along the lines of like, yeah,

we think he's a back-in starter. and then like as you get late in the year, potentially moves into more of a relief role or, you know, and you get into the playoffs, if it's a playoff team that acquires him, maybe he's more like a playoff reliever kind of type. And if the team is in contention, maybe they move him earlier into that role

to preserve innings and something along those lines. So like, I like the mix. I think it's fine. He does allow a ton of fly balls, which is a thing that I'm looking at from the perspective of what park he goes to. If he goes to like, he's not going to go to the Reds, but if he goes to like a great American,

like I'd be a little more concerned and if he goes to like the Royals, which he's probably also not going to go to, but think of like that disparity in terms of how how much damage flyballs can really create in that respect. So I like him. I like him at the ADP. I'm,

you know, I don't remember who it was, but there's another analyst out there always, it's always sticks in my head is like, you don't really know how you value got until you're in a draft room and you're staring at them as to whether you actually take them. Yeah. So I'm not exactly sure if you're putting Gileito,

I'managa, Nick Lodolo. I actually like Christopher Sanchez a little too. I think his ADPree is a little high. right now, though, I thought he'd be more of a dark horse. That's a Philly lefty who has some funky shapes. And it Tristan McKenzie. All those guys are on the board, I need a pitcher who am I going with?

I'm not exactly sure if I'm at the top of my list right there, just because I like some of those other arms around there. Even like a Brandon Fott is a little above that, but maybe he would fall back. There's a couple relievers. So I struggle a little with, if I'm on the clock, would I actually take him from a fantasy perspective? But I do think he's a guy that could provide some value. I think maybe he has some risk in the profile, but I actually think he's maybe slightly

safer than some of these injury guys around here. So I struggle with him from a fantasy perspective. From a real life perspective, I think he'll be good. I think he's like a pretty good pitcher. And I'd be pretty surprised if he gets completely blown up. I'd be pretty surprised if a team doesn't just have him throw up in the zone more with the forcing. And that really maybe helps out some of the, you know,

translation to MLB hitters and how that will all work. But that fastball is funky. Like Vesia and Cortez had really good success with it. So I'm curious to see how he does. I like it, man. I like where the price tag. is that. Again, the ADP from December 1st on 238.7. I do like some other names in there in this range.

I think this is a good range to shop for like your SP5, your SP6, something like that in a draft. Between Imanaga and Ladolo, you mentioned. Christopher Sanchez, I like quite a bit as well. This seems like a pretty good range, but I do like Imanaga, everything I've read, everything I've seen. Just to put things in perspective, I do think there might be a little bit of the fact that Imanaga is coming over at the same time as Yamamoto.

Maybe he's being overshadowed a little bit because Kodai Senga's ADP, you look at his numbers in Japan, his age when he came over. His ADP last year was 184. That's like 60 spots higher than where Imanaga is going right now. So to me, that's just like a little surprising, and I think we're getting a pretty good discount on Shota Imanaga. Let's take our final break when we return. We'll talk about this new wave of pitching, more splitters coming on the way potentially.

We'll wrap up with some Cubs. Maybe some sleeper starting pitchers will do that right after. this. Welcome back in. We are here with Lance Brasowski, and let's talk about this potential new wave of pitching. So we know sweepers have been all the rage this past year. I heard you on foul territory, and you kind of throw out the possibility that you think we could see more splitters in the future. Why is that? It's a really good pitch. It's the best pitch in baseball at generating swing and miss and limiting hard contact. So if you're looking at the perspective of how to get out, I like to talk to, I like talking about coaches and coordinators, pitching coordinators.

or generally like the overseers of a minorly pitching department for any individual organization. Usually there's a couple of them. But sometimes there's one that kind of heads a lot of the decision making and general high level philosophy of what an organization wants to value and do. And a lot of the time they're just like, I just want to figure out how to get outs. Like I don't really care how they're coming most of the time. You know, like obviously we want to get it through swing and miss, probably a little more predictable. But in hearing that so much, it just makes so much sense for me to give you the pitch

that creates the highest probability of it out, right? It's a splitter. And again, we might run into the situation where there's maybe more bad splitters, which we're kind of running into with sweepers, such that you might think, oh, the league's getting better versus sweepers. It's like, well, there's just more bad sweepers. So is that, you know, if you were to, if there was a way to figure out like stuff plus, if stuff plus was on stack, for example, maybe we could search and see like, is the league

actually getting better versus stuff plus sweepers that are above, you know, 10%, 20% above average, like the really good ones, but they figure out how to hit those better? Or is it more that there's just more hanging around the middle and those are the ones are getting better against. But maybe that happens with splitters. I really like splitters. The thing you hear all the time, and I get shredded again in the comments for this everywhere I mention it is just, it causes injuries. I was even on air with one of our analysts here. He's a little more old school, one of the reporters in the area. And he looked at me on camera. He's just like, it's just going to cause injuries. And I was like, show me the data. Because there's nothing out there on it, right?

And now that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, right? There's a lot of things that I think in baseball where we slowly understand that perhaps it is actually something that matters. And maybe we don't have data to back it up. Maybe it's more anecdotal, but it doesn't mean just because it's anecdotal. It's incorrect. It just means we don't really have the objective evidence to support it. So with Splitters, I don't necessarily think they cause injury. Like, there's not a direct correlation, I don't think, and I haven't seen one. And I've had coaches ask me to give it to them because I've brought it up before. Like, I haven't seen that anywhere. Where are you looking? And I'm like, I don't know. I've heard it from people so much that I think there's maybe a shred

of truth. But I do think that we're seeing some organizations of more tolerance to it. And this is the Mariners in particular giving it to guys like Kirby and Gilbert. Gilbert has huge. huge hands. There's finger width, finger size, hand size has some implication on it as well. I also think there's different ways to get to splitter movement with different orientations and crypt. You've seen a lot of split changeups like Joe Ryan where, you know, you think of the Amamoto pitch where he's literally wedging the ball between his fingers. You can literally like spread your fingers and you'll feel like your forearm muscle kind of tighten up as you do that. There's different kinds of splitters where if you're more of like a natural pronator, you can

lay on the seam and not actually split the ball in between your fingers and not get perhaps that same four on pressure. So I think there's much more nuanced to the topic of like, does it cause injuries? They're generally thrown harder than changeups and they have more drop. Velocity has some correlation to injury. Velocity also has correlation to success. So you have to think of that risk reward of like,

you know, the case against weighted balls is like it causes injuries. And my favorite comment I ever heard in reaction to this was, okay, well, how hard do you throw? Like, pretend it's the conversation. Like, I don't want to throw weighted balls because I think it's going to cause for me to get injured. And the pitcher throws 89.

And the pitcher throws 89. And the pitcher coach looks at him and goes, well, you suck. So it doesn't really, like, do you not want to have the chance to be a major league pitcher? Like Alex Cobb talks about this a lot, too, where he's had a ton of injuries. He's gone through some crazy rejuvenations and changes. He's taken risks. And he's a major league pitcher. So, like, and he's been injured a lot.

So your goal is to be a major league pitcher and get outs. Like, I don't, I get the goal is to be healthy in the major leagues, but I don't think that that's the primary goal. Because if that was the primary goal, you probably just wouldn't throw, right? You just wouldn't have a pitching staff. Like, we want you to be healthy. We don't want you to have arm injuries. So just don't throw and then you won't get injured.

So I think there's a lot more nuance around the splitter topic that I just don't think we have a great understanding of. I've heard a lot on the sweeper side where sometimes it just doesn't fit the guy's throw or he's not used to suppinating getting to the front of the ball enough as much to throw this pitch 30, 40% of the time out of the gate after never throwing it. And maybe that leaves to some injury increase. I think of this in relation to like you go to the gym for a year and then you take a year off. then you go back the next year and you immediately hit like an 80% squat right up the gate. You're going to hurt. Like your injury risk is going way up. Like there's generally like a buildup period.

So perhaps there's a way, you know, over a two-year period to slowly introduce that guy into a splitter to mitigate some of the risk of issue and injuries. I just think there's so much nuance to it. I know teams are thinking about this because I've talked to them about it. I've talked to some organizations about it. Everyone is kind of on this idea. I'm just curious as to whether we actually get a wave of it or if it's just, you know, it's going to be the Mariners giving it to three or four of their starters. and then everyone's seeing it works and then maybe everyone followed suit.

It's going to take that one team to be like, yeah, we had now four starters with splitters and they all learned them in the last two years and none of them got injured yet. So like, do you really think it causes injuries? And then teams are maybe going to introspect and go, man, they have the third best pitching staff in baseball. It's like maybe we are willing to take that risk

as the 27th best pitching staff in baseball that one of our guys gets injured. You know, like there's that risk reward we don't think about enough. I think it's just really, I don't want to say it's ignorant, but it's missing the point to just say, don't throw the pitch because you could get injured. So that's kind of my rambling thoughts as to why I think it could come to the forefront.

And I do think the word nuance is probably like the hot topic, is the key word of today's podcast because I'm just thinking through. Kevin Gosman is like the face of splitter usage, right? And he doesn't even throw like a wedge split. He throws like an offset split. So I don't think he's getting as much like finger pressure as like a Kodai sang or something. And he's thrown 170 plus endings three years. in a row. But that, I mean, again, it's like everyone is different. Not everyone is Kevin

Gosman. Not everyone has like the same hand size as Kevin Gosman or is used to throwing this pitch as much. Right. So again, it's, there is a lot of nuance. I just, I don't know that you want to, like you said, just rush a pitcher into like making the splitter his most used pitch, but kind of slowly breaking it in. And we saw that again, with the Mariners who kind of seem like they're at the forefront here. Logan Gilbert didn't throw a splitter in 2022. This past season, he threw it around 15% of the time. George Kirby, he only used a splitter

about like 6% this season, but that went up in the second half. It was basically non-existent in the first half and then he used it about 12% in the second half. And it was a really good whiff pitch for George Kirby.

And if you think, you're thinking about it from a fantasy perspective, if he starts to use this splitter 10 to 15% of the time and that gets him up to even a strikeout per inning, given the ratios and the team

that he pitches for should get a decent amount of wins. like that could turn George Kirby into a legit like SP1, like top 10 starting pitcher for fantasy. So it's really interesting for me to think about it from that perspective. And then even someone that's going really late in drafts, Bryce Miller, I saw you either retweet or put out some video that he's in driveline working on a splitter now. So very clearly, this is on the mind of the Seattle Mariners organization. And we might be able to see their pitchers take that step forward.

I mean, specifically someone like Bryce Miller, he's going so late in drafts that maybe this is another reason to target him. No, I totally agree with that. I don't know if Brett Smell was at, but I did post that. And I don't remember what facility he was at. But he seems to be learning one. And that's it.

He was an interesting one. I made a video on him earlier this year where I was like, okay, the differential, like release point differential, we're not entirely sure how much it really matters. Like Ricky Teabon, you guys were talking about where his is so massive that maybe it does to some extent. But Bryce Miller has a similar situation. Miller was around there where it's like he drops the slot so much on his changeup

that I always theorize like, well, if you could maintain that fastball release and then go to a pitch that you could go. create a similar amount of break. I wonder if that would be more deceptive. So I really like that angle on a Bryceman. This goes back to the first question you asked me, right? Like when a guy adds a new pitcher goes to a drive liner is working in a facility and we get that information bubbled up, like the fact that Miller might have a new primary off speed pitch in a splitter over a changeup and we think it's probably a better, we can theorize it could be a better offering. Like that is that is not something that's accounted for in a projection, right? That is something you can anecdotally

add into a projection and make you a little more confident to taking him a little above ADP. And again, if you get into March and he's dominating in spring, that pitch looks filthy, he's going to increase. So, like, this is maybe more of an off-season idea. But, but yeah, I just think that stuff creates variance for sure. All right, I only want to keep you around for a few more minutes here. Obviously, thankfully, you've stuck with us this long. I ramble to her.

I went long, man. No, no, no, it's all good. I want to ask you specifically about Justin Steele. Obviously, you work, you work very closely with the Chicago Cubs. So I want to ask you about Steele, maybe some sleepers that you're looking at for, looking at for the 20-24 season, specifically with Steele, I mean, obviously a breakout year for him. 306 ERA, 1-17 whip, over a strikeout per inning.

Unique two-pitch pitcher. It's fastball slider. Doesn't throw particularly hard. He improved his control dramatically. So I wanted to ask you about that. How much do you think he can maintain the control gains for Justin Steele? And how much do you value someone like him where the stuff plus is actually below average? I mean, it rates out as like a 99 stuff plus league average is 100.

How much does that factor in? So control and stuff plus for Justin Seale. Yeah, the nugget I have on the control side is that in talking to him and some of the pitching brass here, they really just simplified everything he was doing. And you can prove this out a little by looking at Savant Heat Maps. Just look at this fastball location to Ryan and hitters between 22 and 23, which you'll generally see is that he kind of almost had two locations where he was going kind of up away, letting things right arm's side, and he was also kind of pushing inside.

And he was kind of all over the place. I don't think he has great innate command. So what it seems like to me they did this most recent, was really just give him one target, like put him kind of more up in versus righties and let natural misses go to the out of third of the plate, but we don't really care about those. We want you to try to get the ball inside more and then work on that inside line with your slider down to right-hand piters. And it worked really well from control standpoint.

So I don't necessarily know of simplifying, you know, approach in the zone for every single pitcher is going to improve command, but it clearly did for Justin Steele. He wrote it all year and he dominated. I think that fastball is just such a wacky pitch. It's a weird offering. It's a cutter. It's not a forcing fastball, in my opinion. He just is so naturally, his wrist position is so naturally superinated at release that he just cuts everything he throws.

He does kind of have a sinker. He does kind of have a change up, but he just throws himself sparingly and they're not great. They're more just like shotgun blast pitches. They're just like, what was that? I have no idea. But yeah, the fastball is super odd, especially coming from that arm angle, there's not really any other lefty in baseball. Or even pitcher. There might be some runners.

There's probably not any lefties in baseball who literally create that. that much drop and like cut to the pitch. It's a cutter. You can't even really classify as a forcing fastball, even if he'll tell you it's a forcing fastball. But I think it's sustainable for the most part. And I think he's a great example of a guy that is over for forming Stuff Plus. And perhaps there's some reason why.

Like Stuff Plus is looking at pitches that have happened in the past that are similar. And because that pitch is so unique, we don't really have too good of priors to understand how good that might be going forward. Because no one's kind of thrown that pitch before. So our sample is really small. If you have a really generic four-seeing fastball, like we're pretty confident there's been 10,000 of those, 20,000, 30,000 of them thrown over the last couple of years

to be able to tell how that's going to do. But on Steel's four-seam, it's so unique. I just think it's really hard for Stuff Plus to figure out what it's doing and if it's good or not. So it grades out on its average, but it's clearly, in my opinion, above average pitch for a couple reasons that. And again, that goes back to the substack.

I love, like, kind of figuring out, like once you understand stuff Plus, the fun part is then trying to figure out why stuff plus might be wrong on a pitcher. That's like the next level, right? Like, you look at it as gospel, and then you're like, This guy who's got a league average is not a league average. We have two-year samples of him overperforming on the contact quality side of things. Why is that happening?

Then you try to understand that. And then, you know, make your own assessments as to whether it's predictable. So it's my take on Steele. The early ADP for Justin Steele, 102.6 as the 28th starting pitcher off the board going just behind Zach Eflin, Joe Ryan, Kyle Braddish. Does that range sound right? Do you think Justin Steele should be going higher than that? What do you think? Yeah, that's a tough one.

I probably take Bratish above them. Maybe that's just my little bias towards Braddish. I had a lot of him last year, and he proved to be very, very good for me. I think that's okay. Yeah, I think I might be okay with that. I think that's an unreasonable area. I'd probably just flip Braddish above him, but the other names he mentioned, I think he's in that area. I'm curious to see if his ADP drops because I do think he's not going to be too sexy of like a data guy because of the stuff plus because of all these other projections that are probably going to undercount how good that four seam is.

So I'd be curious to see over time where there becomes more of a value. and he's maybe going slightly later, or if people actually zig that and go sharp on him and think that he's actually had a pretty good inning total, you know, and he's had really good results, and maybe we rely more on the results than we do some of the underlying stats there.

So I'm not sure where I'm going to end up taking him, but I'll probably have more shares than I did last year where I really didn't have much, because I leaned on the, you know, Sarah's stuff of saying that it really wasn't that good of offering. I know Eno was off him too. I agree. Like, I believe in a lot of that stuff a lot of the time,

but I think Steele might be an odder case that we're not capturing fully on the under your underlying metric side of things. Yeah, you know, I think I kind of like Justin Steele so far, just still kind of working out my starting pitcher ranks. I agree. I mean, Braddish, I think, is someone I'm going to target. Like, if you're playing in a deep relief, like a 15-team league,

if I get him as my SP2, or if you're playing a 12-team or you get Bradish as your three, I think you're doing great there. So I think he's the one I would push ahead, but I think I would take Steele ahead of both Zach Eflin and Joe Ryan. Nothing against those guys. Like, Zach Eflin, you know, he's only really been able to stay healthy for one season,

and that was last year. and then like Joe Ryan, I mean, I have all kinds of crazy thoughts about like gives up way too many home runs. And I worry about him being like two one dimensional with the fastball. So I'm going to push Joe Ryan down personally for me. But let's wrap up with this. Sleeper pitchers. Anyone that you've noticed that's going late in NFBC ADP could be a Chicago Cubs pitcher. Could not be a Chicago Cubs pitcher.

But any names that you've noticed stand out and maybe ones that you're even going to target in your drafts. Yeah, yeah. This is the first kind of looking I've done on some of the SPADP. I haven't really digged in too much. I don't think I have any drafts coming up for a bit. But the names that jumped out of probably more, maybe not the deep, deep window, but in like the middle rounds or so.

I like Nick Pavetta a little. And I know anyone that's played fantasy for a long time is like, you got to be kidding me. But I actually really like some of the adjustments that he made last year late. He was like a starter at the beginning of the year, and then he went to relief in the pen. They played around with this cutter and his sweeper. So he kind of had one slider,

and they broke it into two pitches where they gave him something more lateral and also something that was harder with a little more lift. and I like that adjustment and it proved really strong when he came back at the end of the year. He kind of dominated in those last couple starts. So again, like projections are going to say we take that entirety of that whole year and we'll project it forward. We don't really think the end adjustments are something that matter. And I think for the most part of that's probably a good way to just approach, you know, second half surgers or whatever you want to call them. But I tend to maybe buy into certain guys when I see clear adjustments like this.

Now the question is whether illegal adjust back, I think they will to some extent. and they kind of backed off his splitter, which is kind of funny. We were just talking about splinters. They backed off his splitter because he was getting killed, actually. I had no idea why. Maybe he was tipping it or something early in the year. But I like him where he is.

He dominated. I just think that small sample is really good, and we have reason to back up why it was so good that I kind of like him. He ended up as like an SP, I think it was like SP30-ish or so last year. But I like those small adjustments for him. So I'll go Pivotta. Then I'll go two Rays guys back-to-back.

I think they're going very similar in ADP, Aaron Savali and Ryan Pepio. This might be more just betting on an Or, organization generally, but the race for the last couple years have done a great job of extracting a lot of these value, this value out of guys. I had a lot of Zach Eflin last year. He really helped me out in some leagues. I like him again this year. I'm not sure against steel. I might actually take Eflin above steel. That's probably a good debate that I just heard you mentioned. But yeah, I like both those guys. Savali, they played around with adding a sweep or two. They threw more sinker.

They kind of diversified his mix a little. I'm curious to see in the offseason if they tweak anything with him. Sometimes in season adjustments are a little harder to make for a guy switching teams. After the deadline, they got him. Pepio is an interesting one, because the The Dodgers, I think, kind of unlocked some stuff with him last year. And I think the race see that. I think they really like the four scene. The change-ups really good. In talking to some people in the Dodgers organization, I know that Pepio is a guy who

played around the sweeper. And this gets into a whole layer of like maybe everyone shouldn't have a sweeper, which is very much the case. And I think Pepio ran into some trouble actually trying to maintain that sweeper, and it messed up some of his mechanics from what I understand. So he's a guy that I'm very curious on the breaking ball maintenance side of things and what the Ray specifically do with him. and I'd actually, if they gave him a sweeper,

I might actually back off Pepio, which is maybe a super hot take. But I'm curious to see if they maintain kind of what I call like the Dodger slider, which is a little shorter, harder slider, but a lot of guys throw with his fastball shape. So I still like him at the ADP again because I think they extract so much value.

And then I'll go super deep cover, my last one quick. Sawyer Gibson Long is going like 500 overall. He's like, I don't know, SP like 98 or something like that right now. He popped last year. He had four starts, 20 innings. This goes back to my point that I mentioned in this podcast. I kind of like what the Tigers are doing on the pitching side. I think he does not have a spot right now.

So this feels more like a really, really late draft and hold guy at the moment. And even a guy that's more just you put that eye on him under your waivers and you kind of hold him and see how things transpire in that rotation, especially because they added Maida. So I'm not exactly sure how many innings he'll throw. I imagine he'll start a AAA and I'd like to monitor how his shapes look and everything looks. But he's a huge extension guy down the mound. That's a really like kind of basic idea that I think a lot of people understand just how far he releasing the ball down the mound. He's in like a really high percentile. And he doesn't have the best fastball shape of that extension

and how he throws up in the zone. It allows it to kind of flatten out and work. He's got a nasty slider off it that works really well. I also really like his change up. He's just got a good mix. He generated a lot of swing and miss on some things too. Generally when you see kind of outside swing and miss results on righty, I like to think there's a little deception going on.

I think it might be linked back to the extension with him. I like him as a pitching prospect. That's also just again, kind of my hat tip to what the Tigers are doing, I think. So I like Sir Gibson Long as like a super deep guy. Again, this is going to have to be like, super deep 15 team draft and hold right now or for me he's just a guy that I'm going to keep it on on waivers. I also loved NFBC strategy last year in fab leagues of making your entire bench starting pitchers out of the draft and then just like taking shots because I found especially

in 12 teamers where I think I'm a little better than 15 right now. I really like just I had like Mitch Keller and all these other guys just on my bench on every single one of these 12 teams and then through like two weeks of the season I tried out make a ton of moves and then I figured out if there was anything that maybe subtly changed and tried to predict going forward how good these guys would be. So maybe Gibson Long, if there's some injuries in the Tigers rotation, ends up being one of those guys that I add and sit on my bench for a couple weeks and just see. But I don't think he's going to make the rotation. So he's more of a guy that I think is going to be super under the radar that I think could be pretty good.

Music to my ears, Lance, because I did a draft out at first pitch Arizona. We went out to watch the Arizona Fall League. Like my first draft way too early back in like first week in November. And I got Aaron Savali, I think, as my SP4. I got Sawyer Gibson Long as like my SP 7. So sounds good to me. I've been to Aaron Somali apologists for years. So I yeah. To me it just makes so much sense with what they did with Zach Eflin having a really good curveball, you know, kind of accentuated that cutter. I feel like Savali just fits that mold so much and they can kind of do something similar

here in 2024. So yeah, I'm very big on Savali as well. But thank you so much for joining us here today again. You can find him on Twitter X at Lance Braz. You can check out his sub- You can check out his YouTube channel. If you're watching the Chicago Cubs, you could potentially see him out there interviewing some players as well. Lance, thank you so much for joining us today, man. Thanks for having me, Frank. All right, we're going to wrap there for Lance.

I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning in to fantasy baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. And we'll be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye.