Strikeouts in the NFBC

[viper]

When we draft, we typically have benchmarks we try to obtain.

In hitting, these can serve us well. I feel a goal in hitting is to never make a player move. If I draft a team that goes uninjured, I will never need to use a replacement level player. Every week we use a replacement level player, our overall expectations go down. The only moves I want to make are those for my later drafted players when I can get a better payer from FAAB. This may be a good argument for holding off on one catcher, one MI and one OF until the latter parts of the draft.

In pitching the story is different especially in an NFBC style league. First you really cannot really draft wins. The best pitcher in the world may have a bullpen that blows his leads. The best you can do in drfat quality pitchers from teams that you expect to get a number of wins. [My Nationals staff should not be drafted]. You can daft saves assuming the closer holds his jobs. You can also draft ratios or, at least, you can draft to avoid bad ratio producers.

Strikeouts are a whole different animal which needs a special realm of discussion - or at least I think it does. In the NFBC, people stream 2-start pitcher all the time. Every week there are a number of available 2-start pitchers and finding one or two with moderately favorable match-ups is not as hard as it seems. The net effect is that strikeouts become a function of the success of 2-start pitching. Sure, you need some anchors but not as many as you think and their prime role may very well be ratios. If your team has a set of solid ratio pitchers [Paplebon Plan anyone] you can greatly augment your strikeout totals and also give potential boosts to your win totals.

Am I blowing smoke or does this make sense?

We need more topics for discussion so I plan to put forth some ideas even if the are semi-dumb and don't last all that long. It's so nice to see an active board on January 3rd.

[Todd Zola]

I don't think this has to be restricted to NFBC discussion.

I have what I think may be an interesting take on the whole "can't draft wins" mantra which I have been toying with as a blog piece but requires a bit of research. I'll see what I can do about hammering that out.

A site feature we are working on is a means to quantitatively rank the probable starters for the week as well as the next day's probable starters. This would be a free feature, perhaps as part of a newsletter. The idea being to help identify pitchers to get strikeouts and not fracture ratios significantly.

[cwk1963]

As I've mentioned, I am more familiar the past 10 years with auctions so my viewpoints come from that angle. When trying to keep to a 65/35 or 70/30 hitting:pitching split, you have a limited budget for your pitchers. You try to get those guys that sneak under the radar. As such, I don't have a lot of money that I can use to get a Papelbon or K-Rod as they cost much more than I am willing to spend on a single pitching slot. So I am relegated to trying to trade pre-season for cheap closers-in-waiting for my saves or take a chance on a risky closer. I got Kerry Wood 2 years ago for $1 when he was deemed injury prone but there was murmurings he would get the closer's spot when he came back. He is now my only source of saves going into this season at $11 - a very nice price for the league. I deal the same way with starting pitching. During last year's auction I bought my ace - Burnett - for $22 while Haren went for $27, King Felix for $27, Bedard for $29, Webb for $30 and Johan Santana north of $40. With all my pitching spots I target the ratios of which there are 3 in the leagues with K/9 replacing counting K's. I look at the underlying skills (K/BB, BB/9, H/9 and K/9) to target those pitchers I want to roster. With respect to drafting, I would be more apt to take one of the big names - but they became big because their skill set warrants it.

[deansdaddy]

First off - congrats on the site guys!

I just participated in the NFBC Champions mock and will compete against Todd this year in that league. I am pretty jazzed about that as I have long been a fan of your work. The mock led me here to your site where I look forward to another place to get top flight info. Perhaps once the season starts we can start a thread to track the season.

For me, I agree that you can't chase W's - and I usually try to collect power arms with high K upside. My staff from this draft followed this strategy as my picks were in order:

D Haren (5th), AJ Burnett (8th), C Kershaw (13th), M Parra(16th), C Buchholz, Paul Maholm (22nd), Gio Gonzalez (26th) and JA Haap
Bullpen arms - M Capps(10th), M Gonzalez(13th), JP Howell, J Lewis(27th)

My approach was to get a couple anchors early, but usually I wait until the 5th at least for my 1st P. I usually try to grab three established veteran SP's on winning teams - but in this draft settled for two up and coming arms on playoff teams in Kershaw and Parra. Both should rack up the K's and have rotation spots opening day. Maholm was purely a ratio boosting move late in the draft - but I like him and many have forgotten that he himself was a Top prospect not long ago. Buchholz, Gonzalez and Haap are all rookies with upside. Not sure I would draft this staff in a "money" league - but I was pretty happy with it in a Dec Mock.

[Todd Zola]

Thanks deansdaddy.

For those that have not seen it, I blogged about my entry in this league

http://blog.mastersball.com/2008/12/tod ... gue-i.html

I'm OK with the squad, though I wouldn't want it in the 100K main event as while it can compete in a single league, I don't think it has the juice to beat 389 other squads.

Sorry viper, didn't mean to hijack.

Back to your regularly scheduled strikeout discussion...

[Markus_mb]

Strikeouts are a whole different animal which needs a special realm of discussion - or at least I think it does. In the NFBC, people stream 2-start pitcher all the time. Every week there are a number of available 2-start pitchers and finding one or two with moderately favorable match-ups is not as hard as it seems. The net effect is that strikeouts become a function of the success of 2-start pitching. Sure, you need some anchors but not as many as you think and their prime role may very well be ratios. If your team has a set of solid ratio pitchers [Paplebon Plan anyone] you can greatly augment your strikeout totals and also give potential boosts to your win totals.

Am I blowing smoke or does this make sense?

I have been getting my a** kicked in K's by others increasing IP (2-starts) and not benefiting as much in ERA/WHIP as I would have predicted (vs those using more SP). I think you're idea - that there is way to buy better WHIP, pair it with extra IP, and earn more than it cost you to buy it - has a GREAT DEAL of merit.

In addition to the direct exchange of buying better WHIP (Papelbon) and trading it for extra K's directly, there is another benefit. If you are going with more IP/SP then you don't need as high a K/9 per pitcher to win in the K category. That means you can roster the 6.0 K/9 and lower guys usefully. And there is a big market dropoff in price for lower k/9 starters. So in essence, like Moneyball's suggested "market inefficiences", you are buying something at a discount because the market doesn't realize how to use it properly. (Or in my case others are doing this to you!)