Building a pitching staff

[Taxman90]

Todd,

I always struggle with the thought of taking relief pitchers that are not likely to be closers to round out my pitching staff. I tend to take the long shot starters that I'm hoping will finally find it. I have taken set up guys to help my ratios before but then I end up struggling with K's and then you never know when even a good reliever will throw up a 4 run inning without recording an out. Hard to recover from that but I guess a started can do something similar. I end up either dropping them to pick up a promising prospect, stream starters or just leave them on my bench to use in an emergency.

So many relievers that are not projected to get saves are relatively high up in the rankings. Is that due to the uncertainty of bullpens this time of year (saves are divided up) or are they just better options to hold rather than weak starters that can kill ratios? Any thoughts on what a 9 pitcher staff build would look like if you were mixing in a D. Williams, Pomeranz, Trevor May or Pedro Baez to 2 closers and 5 or 6 starters? Would I need to make sure I had K's covered with my starters?

Appreciate any thoughts you have.

[Todd Zola]

Those are projected earnings in a vacuum. The ratio protection relievers afford balances points lost in wins and strikeouts.

The problem is conventional valuation assumes everyone with a positive number is active all season - and in most leagues, this isn't the case. Pitchers are streamed into the lineup based on matchups and possible two starts. However, their earnings include the starts while they are on your reserve, on paper the toughest matchups.

This is hard to explain, but if instead of having each pitcher's total stats use din valuation it was the estimated production from each roster assuming several arms are used at that spot over the course of the season, the utility of the middle reliever drops since he's being compared to an aggregate of pitchers with good matchups and not a guy with 15 starts that won't get counted in the standings.

Sorry, this may not be clear, I can try to clarify is you're not seeing what I'm trying to get across.

[Taxman90]

That makes sense. If you take out the tough matchups of starters and combine with another starter with some favorable matchups that roster spot looks a lot nicer than the overall projection of the first starter or say a middle reliever.

In a 12 team 30 man roster (NFBC style) do you like to draft a low ratio middle reliever to have on your bench to put in if the streaming options are Alex Cobbish or do you just feel that usually one will be available in FAAB if required?

[Todd Zola]

Depending how I addressed saves, I may stash a speculative closer, but in a 12-team league, I do my best to have seven starters every week. It takes some planning, and being willing to occasionally drop a seemingly decent starter, but I consider the free agent inventory as my eighth reserve. In fact, I'll use the first week's schedule to draft my SP5-SP7 in 12MIX and then drop them, unless they line up for a decent set up the second week of the season. During the season, you need to anticipate pitchers with good matchups the week previous to their games so you're paying minimally in FAAB as opposed to the following week when everyone looks at the schedule and sees Brad Keller has the Tigers and another soft team that week.