What is the best way to approach starting pitching in your Fantasy Baseball Draft? Every season it is one of the nauseous questions for fantasy analysts and everyone has their own approach.
For a long time nobody would do that ever Take a starting pitcher in the early rounds of concepts. Subsequently, for a few years, the “Pocket Aces” strategy was prepared to spend their first two choices in the position to get a lead over the competition. Here at CBSSports.com, discussions about starting pitcher were defined last year by “The Glob”, while this year’s conversations mainly focused on the sudden, new depth of the position.
Well, I am a data man, so I want to see what the data tells us about how we can approach the position. I got data from the last 10 years of concepts (not including 2020, because that was a short, weird, noisy year that we are happily farther away from every year), and looked at how beginning pitchers drank in every round in that time span. The data used here comes from the historic ADP and Fangraphs auction calculation tool of NFBC, and this is aimed at players in formats with 12 teams.
And … well … yes, pitchers are not usually great investments, especially in comparison with batters:
However, I think it is worth pointing out that, while batters are returning more value (and considerably less often) than pitchers at every point in the design, that gap is considerably less pronounced in the early rounds, where pitchers the tendency have pretty good investments.
From 2015-24, 14 pitchers were set up in the first round on average, and seven of them returned at least $ 20 in value, while 12 sent back at least $ 10. In the second round, nine of the 21 returned at least $ 20, while 14 came back at least $ 10-that is, 74% of the pitchers were set up in the first two rounds at least players, while only four of the 35 Returned negative value. That gets worse in the reach of the third round (16/33 were worth at least $ 10, 8/33 at least $ 20), but it is in the fourth round where the collapse of pitching value takes place:
And the thing to note here is how flat the returned value is from the fourth round to in principle the 10th. Starting in the fourth round, the average pitcher return chose around $ 5 in value, and that remains between $ 8 and $ 4 for almost every round until the 10th (the exception is the seventh round, where pitchers returned on average only $ 2 in value ).
We are not dealing with gigantic sample sizes here, so the data is somewhat noisy – no more than 34 starting pitchers are on average set up in one of the rounds we are talking about. But the trends are, I think, pretty clear and clear to understand: early pitchers can be worth the investment, but after the first few rounds you look at an increasingly smaller return. From the fourth round around the 10th there just doesn’t seem to be much difference in the average quality of the pitchers that is being taken.
The SP Dead Zone
That is the SP Dead Zone there. I borrow a term that is partially understood in fantasy football circles Research Ben Gretch did in 2019 for CBSSports.com To refer to the way in which Elite declining seasons tend to come into concepts overwhelmingly from the first few rounds. It is actually a bit incredible how good SP values and RB values reflect each other -the first three rounds are where the vast majority of the elite SP and RB seasons come from, and values tend to be around the same point in concepts in concepts To deposit, directly in the fourth round. And then, in both cases, the efficiency on investment is often remarkably plane from the fourth round to about the 10th.
What is the collection meals here?
Well, it should have to Be that, if you are going to spend an early round pick on a starting pitcher, you should probably have it counted. And historically that means in the first two (maybe three) rounds. And then it is probably not very logical to hit the position again for a few more rounds – if the values in the fourth round are not much better than in the eighth, ninth or 10th, then you just have to wait until that time you SP2 and SP3. This allows you to focus your most valuable choices on battery people, who offer the best return on investments, while you still give yourself the best possible chance of ending at least one bait.
It is, to borrow a fantasy football term, the “hero -SP” strategy, and it is the one I have taken over with great success in the past seasons since I did a similar analysis in 2021. You build your pitching staff around one of those aces that is a better gamble to give you both the elite workload and the production, and then you focus more on finding pitchers with properties that you like as the design continues. It usually comes out to one pitcher in the first three rounds, one or two at the 10th, and then touches the position hard in the double digits as soon as I have built up my stroke core.
How do I take it into action in 2025?
Of course every season is different, because every harvest of pitchers is different. From 2015 to 2017, for example, Clayton Kershaw was a pick in the first round every season and he returned at least $ 35 every season in the middle of one of the best runs a starting pitcher had. Bet on Kershaw with a first round pick in 2018 did not go exactly in his season of 30 years, he was still very good, but his strikeout rate fell for the first time since 2013 under 9.0 per nine-but it is it Difficult to consider it a “error” when he led the NL in Era in five of the previous seven seasons while in those seven seasons he runs an almost incredibly 2.10 ERA era over 1,452 innings.
That is quite different from the preparation of Spencer Strider in the first round last year to come from his first season ever with more than 131.2 innings – especially because it was a season in which he had a bloated 3.86 ERA. Not all pitchers from the first round are created, is what I say, and when you look through the history of the first round, we are usually talking about guys with multi-year track records of ACE production:
First round SPS |
ADP |
Value |
2015 Clayton Kershaw |
3.9 |
$ 42 |
2018 Max Scherzer |
10.0 |
$ 38 |
Clayton Kershaw 2017 |
3.8 |
$ 35 |
2016 Clayton Kershaw |
4.0 |
$ 35 |
2021 Jacob Degrom |
5.2 |
$ 32 |
2018 Chris Sale |
12.0 |
$ 32 |
2019 Jacob Degrom |
11.0 |
$ 28 |
2022 Corbin Burnes |
10.8 |
$ 19 |
2019 Max Scherzer |
5.4 |
$ 19 |
2021 Gerrit Cole |
7.2 |
$ 18 |
2018 Clayton Kershaw |
7.4 |
$ 13 |
2022 Gerrit Cole |
7.8 |
$ 11 |
2021 Shane Bieber |
10.4 |
$ 2 |
2024 Spencer Strider |
8.3 |
-$ 5 |
The two SPS in the first round that did not return at least $ 10 in value are both injured, which is no surprise IS-Hey, pitchers are injured! -But they were also two of just three on the list without several seasons of both ACE production and ACE workload-De Onder was Corbin Burnes in 2022, which came from the successive Sub-2.50 ERA seasons, one of which came during The Short 2020 season.
Pitchers with multi-year track records of ACE production tot To dominate the early rounds of concepts, which makes sense – if you have been proven that you can handle the workload while you remain effective, you should have to Being worth a premium in concepts. What is interesting about the 2025 harvest of pitchers is that the most expensive pitchers have generally not proven. Among the five starters that are set up in the first three rounds in NFBC concepts in the first three rounds, Zack Wheeler is the only one who has been completed more than once when a top 10 starter is worst finishing since 2021 is SP23, while Logan Gilbert is the only one Other of the five who had even thrown more than 130 innings in successive seasons – Paul Skkenes reached 129.1 between the university and the pros in 2023, while Tarik Skubal only managed 85 in 2023 and Garrett Crochet managed only 25 in 2023 (and not it Pitch at all in 2022).
Now, due to the wear in the position, multi-year runs of ACE production are becoming more difficult and harder to find. That may be a sign that these early pitchers are simply overvalued this season. And maybe history won’t be the guide to be. Perhaps this year the early pitchers are not worth the investment they have been in recent years. After all, every season is different.
That said, if you Are Zack Wheeler is going to choose one of the early pitchers this season clearly The one who fits the Bill or earlier early pitchers is the best. That he later goes 10 picks than SKENES and seven picks later than Skubal only helps his business. Things can of course go wrong for Wheeler. But he has the proven track record of Elite production And Working load we are looking for here, and it is someone who can really touch no one else at the pitching position.