There’s one common issue with fantasy baseball player rankings – they don’t translate to custom league settings. Most sets of player rankings are built toward a traditional roto 5×5 setting and most people play in leagues with custom settings. I’ve been posting my fantasy baseball rankings for years to my old website (no longer active – www.fantasyaceball.com) and in my twitter and facebook feeds under the same name (@fantasyaceball). I tend to play in OBP or OPS H2H leagues that include holds, quality starts and all sorts of other options, including keeper options, so that’s where my annual rankings list tend to lean.
So, how do we overcome this problem? This summer I had the idea to create rankings based on core fantasy skills (named fScores for “fantasy scores”), rather than simply ranking one guy over another guy based on standard fantasy baseball league settings. This way, if you play in a points league or quality starts league, something like durability can be sorted to re-rank players for your specific league settings and re-weighed.
This article will pertain only to my pitching fScores, a separate article has already been written specifically about the hitting fScores.
There are four main skills that go into an effective fantasy baseball pitcher:
- Durability (fPDurability)
- Stuff (fStuff)
- Control (fControl)
- Run Prevention (fERA)
NOTE: Run Prevention is designated by fERA and has within it a subcategory weighing external factors, such as defense behind the pitcher and home ballpark.
Let’s go through these skills one by one where I’ll briefly describe what goes into each of these in my equation and also how each one plays off the other. After we go through the skills, I’ll go into the rankings and fScores for starting pitchers and relief pitchers.
fPDurability
fPDurability is the pitcher’s ability to stay healthy and pitch deep into games against an average MLB starting pitcher or relief pitcher.
fPDurability should be used primarily as a way to measure the players skill with their ability to stay on the field and produce. If a player scores above average in all of the other skills, but can’t stay healthy (ie: James Paxton or Noah Syndergaard), then it’s going to affect their total value to your fantasy team.
The way to think about fPDurability in regards to fantasy stats is probably something like this:
fPDurability = IP above replacement player
fPDurability + fStuff = K totals above replacement player
fPDurability + fERA = better overall assistance in ERA, QS or W above replacement player
Higher fPDurability pitchers will positively or negatively affect your ratio stats for pitchers when weighed against the totals of your other pitchers.
How are the fScores weighed season by season?
We are weighing all of these fScores for pitchers on the player’s last 3 seasons (including additional weight on the last ½ season).
3 seasons back is given a 15% weight
2 seasons back is given a 25% weight
Last season is given a 30% weight
Last ½ season is given a 30% weight
How do fScores project forward?
Additionally the total fScore is weighed based on expected 2022 fScore with a spread included on the way the player is currently trending. If a player is aging or injured and their skills are trending down, this will be seen in their second fScore. If the player is young and improving their skills, they will be trending up in their second fScore.
What stats go into fPDurability?
fPDurability is determined by taking average season IP totals, GS totals and IP / GS totals for starters and weighed against the league average starter. RP fPDurability totals are weighed against league average relievers, rather than starters.
One thing to keep in mind with pitchers is they are about 20% more prone to serious injury than position players and something like Tommy John surgery will completely destroy their fPDurability if this surgery was performed any time in the last 3 seasons, even for a previously categorized “work horse” like Chris Sale.
Examples:
Zack Wheeler scored the highest fPDurability for a starter in baseball with a 1.21 (meaning he is 21% better at staying healthy and pitching deep into games than the average major league starter).
James Paxton scored the lowest fPDurability in baseball with a 0.27 (meaning he is 73% worse at staying healthy and pitching deep into games than the average major league starter).
Rookies / Small Sample Sizes
As with hitting fScores (and even more so with pitching), I don’t have as much information to pull from at the Major League level and have had to attempt to synthesize their minor league stats at approximately an 85% downgrade into translating to the majors.
This by no means is a perfect translation from minor league stats to major league stats and many of the fScores utilize Statcast data, which is more or less not provided for minor leaguers. So this should be kept into consideration when analyzing the fScores of minor leaguers / prospects, rookies and more or less anyone with less than two seasons of experience at the Major League level.
fStuff
fStuff is the pitcher’s ability to throw effective strikes that lead to strikeouts or progressing in the count. We all love pitcher stuff right? fStuff is what leads to the fun Pitching Ninja gifs we pitching nerds watch all day.
fStuff isn’t a direct correlation to strikeouts, because we don’t really have any way to measure pitch sequencing effectiveness, but it measures the important traits of getting non foul ball strikes.
What stats go into fStuff?
fStuff is a weighted aggregate consisting of stats such as CSW%, K%-BB%, and fastball velocity.
Examples:
Jacob deGrom scored the highest fStuff in baseball with a 1.68 (meaning he is 68% better at getting non-contact strikes than the average major league starting pitcher).
Wade Miley scored the lowest fStuff in baseball (of all analyzed starters) with a 0.80 (meaning he is 20% worse at getting non-contact strikes than the average major league starting pitcher).
fControl
fControl is the pitcher’s ability to avoid walks and pitch in or around the strike zone effectively against an average MLB starter.
fControl is a close correlation to WHIP and to avoid walks in general.
What stats go into fControl?
fControl is a weighted aggregate consisting of stats such as WHIP and BB%.
Examples:
Justin Verlander scored the highest fControl in baseball with a 1.67 (meaning he is 67% better at avoiding walks than the average major league starting pitcher).
Luis Gil had the lowest fControl in baseball with a 0.74 (meaning he is 26% worse at making avoiding walks than the average major league starting pitcher).
fERA
fERA is the pitcher’s ability to limit runs against
What stats go into fERA?
fERA is a weighted aggregate consisting of stats such as SIERA, ERA, BAA, HR/9, Barrel%, including external factors such as home ballpark metrics and defensive factors.
Example:
Jacob deGrom scored the highest fERA in baseball with a 1.63 (meaning he is 63% better at limiting runs against than the average starting pitcher).
Nestor Cortes had the lowest fERA in baseball with a 0.68 (meaning he is 32% worse at limiting runs against than the average major league starting pitcher).
fScore (Total and Future)
The provided total fScore is based upon a direct average of fPDurability, fStuff, fControl and fERA because all four skills play off each other.
fScore (Future) is considering the trending nature of all the stats aggregated into the fScore skills. They take into account the following questions: Are the consolidated skills on average trending up or down? By what percentage are they trending up or down?
When you take fScore and Future fScore it should provide you a range that the player should fall between, not taking any major player skill or habit changes such as developing new pitches, velocity uptick from previous seasons, diet change, work out regimen change that happen outside of the standard deviation of volatility in the sport.
Using the spreadsheets in the position ranking articles, a fantasy baseball player can change how they weigh the skills or grade players based on a skill that can provide an advantage to them in the settings of their fantasy baseball league.
In future articles we will go position by position using my fScores spreadsheets and discuss player rankings and tiers. By providing each player an fScore, tiering players out is more clear than ever before. Additionally, you will note I do not follow in my rankings the fScores by the “T” but use them as a strong guideline and may shift players up or down based on my biased notions of perceived progress or possibility to avoid injuries or get better in certain areas that can’t be shown by numbers scouting, which the fScores undoubtedly are doing.
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