Latest news with #ZeroSP
New York Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
A Zero SP fantasy baseball strategy prioritizes hitters. What's the advantage?
Last week, we revisited the Zero SP draft strategy I recommended in February. Inevitably, I suggested not drafting a starting pitcher in at least the first five rounds and ideally abstaining through the seventh round. So, in the most extreme execution, no starting pitchers are selected before pick 100. Advertisement If we took the same approach with hitters, readers asked, what would those results be? In the comments of my Zero SP column, I said we don't need to 'statify' what we know, and we know hitters are less volatile than pitchers. But I've opted to put a fine point on this, at least for the first half of 2025. We can use first-half numbers to determine the chance of finding a top-30 hitter after pick 100 and selecting a bust among hitters in the top 100. In high-stakes drafts for the final week of the draft season, on average, 64 hitters were picked in the top 100 overall compared to 24 starting pitchers. Let's see where the top 30 hitters (as of July 8) were selected in March. I'm ranking the top hitters using auction values calculated by TGFantasyBaseball, based on 12-team mixed leagues with 70% of a $260 budget spent on hitting. Again, ADP is from high-stakes NFFC leagues for the final week of the draft season. Position value is factored minimally in the dollar values, as all positions are allocated a share of the 70% budget. We can quibble with these dollar values, but we're trusting them for this exercise as we did with the pitchers. So we have 33 hitters because of a tie for 30th place. Of those, 11 were drafted after pick 100 (or not drafted at all) compared to 23 of our top 32 pitchers (again, because of ties for 30th). For the hitters, that includes No. 2 (Pete Crow-Armstrong), No. 8 (Brandon Lowe), No. 9 (Byron Buxton), No. 11 (Michael Busch), No. 16 (Riley Greene) and No. 21 (Brice Turang). Two of the top 30 were mostly undrafted: Jonathan Aranda and Andy Pages. So, after pick 100, you still had a shot at 34% of the top hitters through the first half of this season. Compare that to 72% of the top-30 pitchers you could have drafted after pick 100. Now let's look at busts who have thus far devastated managers who picked them among the top 100: That's 20 disasters out of the 64 hitters picked in the top 100, a bust rate of 31%. The bust rate for starting pitchers selected in the top 100 was 42%. But, just five of the top-30 hitters drafted were busts, a bust rate of 17%. (You want to draft as many top-30 hitters as your league will allow.) So, 34% of the top-30 hitters were picked after pick 100, and 31% of those picked in the top 100 were busts. Compare that to 72% of the top 30 starting pitchers being chosen after pick 100, and 42% of the starting pitchers selected before pick 100 ending up as busts, thus far. There's little hope of finding top hitters on waivers during the season because so many more are drafted compared to pitchers. And the constant churn of pitchers, due primarily to injuries, creates opportunities for new ones to emerge in a steady stream. There is a lot less churn on a percentage basis with hitters. MLB managers know hitters tend to perform close to the back of the baseball card, so they are more patient with struggling hitters than with struggling starting pitchers. Advertisement We tend to find hitters early in the season, including Aranda (who I touted here early) and Pages; otherwise, we depend on prospect hitters getting promoted and hope they quickly acclimate to the big leagues — a tough ask. Let's end with a list of top hitters in expected stats (xwOBA) who may be available on waivers. Simply stated, there are not many options. That's it. Hitters are very hard to find at this point in the season, and it's not like these names, as well as they've hit in the past 30 days, offer much league-changing hope. (Photo of Pete Crow-Armstrong: Matt Marton / Imagn Images)
New York Times
25-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Zero SP draft strategy: Why you shouldn't pay a premium for starting pitchers in fantasy baseball
The Zero SP strategy — not drafting starting pitchers in the first five rounds — is a topic I wrote about last spring. For the uninitiated, Zero SP is similar to Zero RB in fantasy football but actually pre-dates it. It leans into extreme fragility. The idea is that if/when your pitchers get hurt, they are not as damaging to your fantasy fortunes because they weren't your most expensive draft commodities. Advertisement Not only are pitchers fragile, but they are also highly volatile. On draft day, there's a divergence of opinion with pitchers in baseball that does not exist with the hitter pool. With the Zero SP strategy, we're also allowing pitchers' in-season ability to radically improve with adjustments we can't predict. Finally, we're adjusting for the ever-diminishing value of starters due to declining usage trends. Sure, some hitters come out of relative fantasy obscurity and become fantasy stars, but not nearly as often as pitchers. I try to identify pitchers using expected stats, targeting those that pitched better than their actual results. You can also locate lower-ADP pitchers based on traits like velocity or dominance with a particular pitch or two that could produce better overall performance with pitch-calling adjustments. On top of starting pitchers being the most likely source of surplus value relative to acquisition cost, they are also less valuable than ever. Looking back 20 years shows that top starters are throwing 15% fewer innings and thus have about 15% less starting pitching value. Nothing similar has happened with hitters, obviously. There are a number of ways to quantify declining pitcher value. Let's first look at every-fifth-year snapshots of the 10th-most starting pitcher innings on the yearly leaderboard going back 20 years to the dawn of the century. 2004: 222.1 (again, this was the 10th most innings in 2004) 2009: 220.1 2014: 219.2 2019: 204 2024: 189.1 What about the innings of the 25th most-used starting pitcher by year … 2004: 209.2 (again, 25th-most innings in 2004) 2009: 207 2014: 202.2 2019: 184.2 2024: 178.2 And, finally, the number of pitchers who threw 200+ IP: 2004: 42 2024: 4 (ha) Previously, the top four starters you drafted to carry your staff would log 215 innings each, for 860 total. Now they're likely to log 700 total innings if you're lucky. That's like your top hitters losing 138 at-bats. It's massive. In recent years, these trends have really hammered the number of starting pitchers taken in the first five rounds of drafts, as you can see by the numbers below (draft data from FantasyData for 2020-23 and NFBC for 2024 and 2025): 2020: 14 2021: 17 2022: 16 2023: 18 2024: 13 2025: 13 (February only) Advertisement So we're taking 18.5% fewer pitchers this year and last than the 2020-23 average, which is generally smart, though some people are still dipping aggressively into the starting pitching pool while others are not. This article is trying to persuade you to be in the latter group. You could say, 'Well, it's all relative.' But it is not. Dominant relievers are worth more than ever. They're throwing 40% of a starter's innings instead of about 33%. They'll also generally have better ERAs, better WHIPs and a greater K%. (Note that I'm not advocating for Zero RP) Based on current ADP data, how could you execute this Zero SP strategy and build an expected mid-level starting pitching roster? The goal is to build a foundation you can supplement with waivers and trades via your surplus of hitters and closers. Last year, 12 of the top 20 ERA leaders were lowly regarded in draft season (meaning after pick 60 but often way down the ADP list or not even drafted at all). In 2023, 10 of the top 20 were in that position. Let's assume you take two starters in the overall 60-100 pick range, two more before overall pick 174, and two to three more after overall pick 175. Here's how I might play it, but the idea is not to get too attached to anyone, instead letting the value fall to you at or after ADP. (based on ADP from 126 February NFBC drafts) Michael King (68): I don't get King sliding this far, but he is. Look at the red ink on this Statcast page. It's beautiful. I think King's a third-round value, and I can draft him in the sixth round. So, if King is your ace, it's cheating on the Zero SP structure because you actually have a top 20 starter. Bailey Ober (93): Ober is another high-strikeout pitcher with a lot of red ink on his page. Yes, he gives up too many homers as a fly-ball pitcher, but that depresses WHIP, too, because fly balls are outs way more often than ground balls. And Ober's expected ERA, which includes homers, was just 3.22. Advertisement Justin Steele (134): Fine, he's a boring soft-tossing lefty, but his K rate is above league average. I don't worry about his hamstring injury, but the elbow injury he suffered later in 2024 scares me. He is back in spring training and has already had a dominant outing. If my 11th-round starter goes down, I'll live. Where is a healthy Steele going to hurt you? And he'll help at least slightly in all four categories. Yusei Kikuchi (170): I liked him at the trade deadline last year, saying he had almost a 50% chance to outperform Jack Flaherty. The Astros cleaned him up even better than I hoped and leveraged his pitches/traits. I will bet Kikuchi doesn't forget what they told him. Of course, I get that the Angels seem like the Jets of baseball when it comes to ruining players. Nick Pivetta (187): I'll give you three here, even though I think the ideal structure is three closers and six starters. Pivetta is moving to a much better pitcher's park in San Diego. His park neutral xERA last year was 3.51 with a 29% K rate. I know he had a higher ERA on the road than at home last year, but his road WHIP was 1.09, which comports with about a 3.50 ERA. Luis Gil (203): I'll bite on the 2024 AL Rookie of the Year. His xERA was worse than his actual at 3.80, but that's still good. Maybe Gil will get better in his second year as a starter. Gil has a very live arm, but this pick really works out if he cuts his walk rate by about 33%. There's probably a one-in-three chance he does. But you can afford to be wrong at this price. Clay Holmes (289): Converted relievers have had a lot of success in recent years. Holmes has three pitches, with the slider and sweeper being top shelf. My theory is that the sinker will actually play up with more fatigue as a starter and revert to the 2023 results. Remember, if your hit rate with Zero SP is lower than expected, you can still be a winner on waivers with starting pitchers who have 75th or better percentile outcomes. The fantasy manager with a roster weak on hitting doesn't have nearly the same supply of breakout hitters. Plus, you should have surplus hitting to trade. (Top photo of Yusei Kikuchi: Thomas Shea / Imagn Images)
