(The full, nine-inning Playbook was originally published during the spring of 2020. It has been updated for 2022 where applicable.)
It has been quite the past two years in the baseball world. But really, hasn’t it been that in the real world, too? So, it’s only fitting that baseball serves as a parallel.
The pandemic shortened the 2020 baseball season to a mere 60 games per team, although with expanded playoffs — and that came only after weeks of difficult negotiations between the league and the MLBPA to come to an agreement on how it would be played. Then, the 2021 season thankfully was played to its completion and on schedule, but still under the cloud of COVID-19, with teams forced to adapt to the much-larger pitching workload asks, and with a major change to the rules in June (which we’ll get to in detail a bit further in this column).
If that weren’t enough, baseball’s collective bargaining agreement then expired last Dec. 1, after which the league locked out the players, leading to weeks’ worth of slow-paced negotiations that only in the final full week of February picked up steam. As of publishing time, the league and the union have yet to come to an agreement on a new CBA, forcing fantasy managers everywhere to forge ahead with their 2022 plans without entirely knowing the league’s structure.
It’s true every season, but especially so entering 2022, that fantasy managers cannot simply scout players and compile a basic cheat sheet. A thorough knowledge of what’s going on around baseball as a whole is integral to success. Even in the absence of a full set of rules, being prepared for the many possibilities gives you an advantage that perhaps some of your competition won’t have.
This edition of the Playbook updates you on the various happenings around Major League Baseball, catching you up on trends (or preparing you in the event of future ones) that could influence your rankings. Each of the links below will take you directly to any of the seven topics covered, if you’d like to skip ahead.
Baseball progresses through the pandemic
Things might be improving on the whole in dealing with COVID-19, both in the real and sports world, but it remains a cloud that hangs over the game. Major League Baseball ran its 2021 season to completion, but it wasn’t without interruptions, as coming off a shortened 2020 season in which 45 games were postponed (43 of them eventually made up), nine games were postponed (all made up) due to COVID-19 outbreaks in 2021.
Additionally, dozens of players were sidelined for periods of time due to either positive tests or due to the league’s COVID-19 protocol — including during the postseason, where most notably World Series MVP Jorge Soler missed the final game of the Division Series and first four games of the League Championship Series while on the COVID-19 list.
Another thing to consider is that while baseball had things somewhat easier than the other three major sports in 2021, it also spanned the warmer, summer months of the year whereas football, basketball and hockey spanned colder, winter months — including the period of time where the Omicron variant wreaked havoc. The National Hockey League was forced to postpone more than 100 games and withdraw its players from the Winter Olympics and, if you played fantasy football this past season, you surely recall the impact of COVID-19 on your late-season and playoff-weeks planning.
We’ll see whether or not this baseball season has quite as many hiccups as the two that preceded it, and whether the league’s COVID-19 policy remains the same, but you can be sure that the ongoing pandemic will have some impact upon the game. So long as that’s true, many of the league-structure measures you put into place in either 2020 or 2021 probably still make sense for 2022. That means potentially larger benches or additional or unlimited injured reserve spots, to provide flexibility. Remember, you want your league to enjoy its smoothest and most enjoyable experience.
The universal designated hitter
We might be awaiting the advent of new or adjusted rules resulting from the new CBA, but one thing that we do know is that the designated hitter, which was in place throughout all of Major League Baseball during the pandemic-shortened 2020, will return to the National League beginning in 2022. Commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed this to be true during one of his early-February press conferences, and it’d be a stunning turn of events if the universal DH wasn’t in the new CBA, once it is ratified.
I’ve already written about this in-depth in a separate column, which covers the topic in more extensive detail than I’ll provide here, but let’s summarize. NL teams have typically allocated around 300 plate appearances per year to pitchers, and American League teams roughly 25, excluding the number of pinch-hitting appearances for said pitchers mid-game, all of which will be absorbed by either a singular DH or spread across several hitters who fill the role on a rotational basis. NL games also saw an average of 0.14 runs per game fewer than their AL counterparts from 2017-19 and 2021, the most recent four full seasons, meaning that NL pitchers on the whole might see a rise in ERA by roughly that amount.
While it’s entirely possible that the new CBA will incorporate some sort of DH rule tied to starting pitchers, or vice versa (where starters bat but relief pitchers do not), the proximity of the upcoming season makes it most likely that we’ll see a traditional, universal DH application. Prepare accordingly, because in the NL, a player like J.T. Realmuto could get a noticeable boost by having a Salvador Perez-in-2020-like DH safety net on his catching days off, while a pitcher with a wide ERA/FIP divide in a hitting-friendly park (such as Tyler Mahle) might disappoint in the ratio categories by facing more DHs.
Sticky stuff
It seems that everyone in baseball seeks a hidden advantage, and 2021’s “scandal,” as with sign-stealing before it, involved pitchers applying foreign substances to the baseball as a means of improving their spin rates. We’ll dive more deeply into spin rates in the next inning of the Playbook, but suffice to say that by applying said substances to the baseball, a pitcher gains the advantage of finer control, more revolutions on and therefore greater movement of, and heightened effectiveness of his pitches.
Whether pine tar, sunscreen-and-rosin mixtures or the granddaddy of them all, Spider Tack, was at play, Major League Baseball cracked down on the application of such substances to the baseball last June 21, at a point where roughly 44% of the season had been played. For such a wide-reaching rule to be implemented midseason was rather unusual, sending shock waves through both the baseball and fantasy baseball communities.
Pitchers adapted surprisingly quickly, with only two — Hector Santiago and Caleb Smith — ultimately drawing 10-game suspensions for violations, but the league-wide impact of the reinforcement of the rule was evident. Through June 20, the league as a whole had a 4.13 ERA, a 23.9% strikeout rate, a 12.6% swinging-strike rate and a 2,267.6 revolutions-per-minute average spin rate on all pitches combined. From June 21 forward, however, the league’s ERA rose to 4.36, its strikeout rate fell to 22.6%, the swinging-strike rate dropped to 12.2% and that average spin rate plummeted to 2,208.1 rpm. The latter rates were also consistently in that range over each of the regular season’s final three months individually, suggesting that it wasn’t a matter of pitchers successfully adjusting and completely recapturing their former form. Things absolutely changed as a direct result of the rule.
Those changes weren’t “one size fits all,” nor should they be directed singularly at the game’s elite, no matter how many mentions of New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole there were — and you can thank Josh Donaldson‘s June call-out of the right-hander for much of that. Two of the top nine pitchers in terms of spin rate through June 20, for instance, gained spin on their pitches on average thereafter, as did two of the top five pitchers in terms of average fastball velocity, and they were all household fantasy names (Joe Musgrove and Charlie Morton the former, Luis Castillo and Zack Wheeler the latter).
Two of the top 10 in terms of average spin rate on all pitches combined from the beginning of 2020 through June 20, 2021, Corbin Burnes and Dylan Cease, finished fifth and 15th in terms of fantasy points from June 21 forward. In other words, the new rules weren’t exactly the easiest change around which to strategize, nor is that likely to be so entering 2022, either.
Examining the pitchers whose spin rates were most affected post-June 20 provides a more actionable subset. Among the 20 who pitched at least 100 innings for the season and saw at least a 90 rpm decline in average spin rate among all pitches thrown, 15 experienced an increase in ERA of at least a half-run or at least a 2% decline in strikeout rate. Seven experienced both: Adbert Alzolay, Cole, Sonny Gray, Mahle, Shohei Ohtani, Taijuan Walker and Ryan Yarbrough.
While not the fantasy stalwart that are a few of the other names on that list, Walker was a prime example of a pitcher noticeably impacted by the rule. Through the end of May, he had generated among the highest average fastball velocities and spin rates with his fastball (94.1 mph, 2,215.9 rpm) and his swinging-strike rate was a by-far-personal-best 13.1% with the pitch. From June 21 forward — especially after the All-Star break — he wasn’t close to the same, his average fastball spin rate slipping to 2,015 rpm and hitters batting .277/.360/.560 with a 7.8% swinging-strike rate against it.
Keep that list tucked away as you consider the draft stock of each of those seven hurlers, but also bear in mind that such things as spin rates can fluctuate year over year, meaning that any pitcher who derives a good amount of his fantasy value from a high spin rate could be impacted in 2022 (or a future year).
Closers by committee
Teams are increasingly shifting to closers-by-committee, non-contending teams continue to trade away their higher-priced, most talented late-inning relievers, and there has been heightened scrutiny regarding pitching workloads in recent seasons. The hunt for saves, therefore, is certain to remain challenging in 2022.
The 2021 season represented the first played in its entirety since 1982 to not have any pitcher reach 40 saves — and only nine pitchers saved even as many as 30 games, the fewest in a full season since 1988. Eight teams had three or more pitchers record at least five saves, the most teams to do so since the 1991 season. The Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds, Seattle Mariners and Tampa Bay Rays effectively utilized closer-by-committees for nearly the entire year.
Speaking of those Rays, one season after matching the record with 12 different pitchers saving at least one game in 2020, they shattered that mark by having 14 individuals notch a save in 2021. That means that, between the 2019, 2020 and 2021 seasons, the Rays had three of the only 18 seasons in baseball history with at least 11 different pitchers recording a save (they had 11 do it in 2019).
Baseball’s advent of the three-batter-minimum rule in 2020 didn’t lead to the return of the traditional closer. Far from it, as sabermetrically inclined managers Rocco Baldelli (Minnesota Twins), Kevin Cash (Rays), Alex Cora (Boston Red Sox), Craig Counsell (Milwaukee Brewers), Gabe Kapler (San Francisco Giants) and Scott Servais (Mariners) all worked around the new rule to have the pitcher with the best matchup often handling ninth-inning chores. Depending upon how the remainder of this offseason goes, Dave Roberts (Los Angeles Dodgers) could also steer his bullpen in that direction.
This trend has only heightened the debate between investing in top closers versus “don’t pay for saves.” While it’s true that more saves are being spread across a wider margin of the player pool, especially the undrafted-in-fantasy portion of it (a point made in the previous inning of the Playbook), it’s getting ever more difficult to scrounge together the category going entirely that route. There’s a clear case to be made for paying for a top closer, considering the rising value of each individual save as they continue to be spread across more of the league.
Consider that Liam Hendriks‘ 38 saves in 2021, in ESPN Player Rater terms, were worth 37% more than Sam Dyson’s 38 saves five seasons earlier, in 2016. That illustrates the lowering of the saves category’s “replacement level,” underscoring how important it has become to squeeze the most — and highest-quality — saves out of every active lineup spot. To put it another way, if your competition got Hendriks’ 38-save season from one spot while you spent two spots to get 19 saves apiece, you’ve both arrived at the same team saves total, but your opponent gained the advantage of an available second lineup spot from which they could get valuable stats in the other categories.
Incidentally, one thing that has improved across the league with the advent of the three-batter-minimum rule is holds production. The 2021 season saw a record 1,781 holds of at least one inning, 101 more than the previous single-season mark (1,680, in 2018) and almost 240 more than the average across the five most recent complete seasons (2015-19). It wasn’t a one-year aberration, either, as scaling the 2020 season to a 162-game schedule, it would have seen a total of 1,744 one-plus-inning holds.
That’s not to say that holds are the new saves. Far from it, actually, as only three relievers even got to the 30-hold threshold, while a mere 19 recorded 20-plus holds, each of those unusually low numbers compared to past seasons within the 21st century. Holds production might have increased league-wide and, judging by the categorical leaderboard, they were earned by generally deserving relievers, but they were also spread across the league, à la saves production.
What fantasy managers could consider as a result of these developments, assuming they’re displeased with the rise in closer-by-committees, or the annually frustrating trend of closers traded into setup roles — hello, Craig Kimbrel in 2021 — is to incorporate holds into their categorical mix. A rising number of leagues are migrating to either “saves plus holds” or “saves plus one-half holds.”
Using the latter, the Giants would have placed two pitchers in the categorical top 11: Jake McGee (35, fifth) and Tyler Rogers (28, 11th). Six relievers who fell short of 20 saves would have finished among the category’s top 25: Rogers, Giovanny Gallegos (26, tied for 15th), Scott Barlow (23, tied for 20th), Blake Treinen (23, tied for 20th), Hansel Robles (22.5, tied for 22nd) and Adam Ottavino (22.5, tied for 22nd).
Stolen bases are in decline
While not a completely new realization, as the stolen base as a baseball strategy has suffered since around the release of Michael Lewis’ book, “Moneyball,” stolen-base production reached historic lows in 2021.
The league attempted fewer than 3,000 stolen bases (2,924 to be exact) the lowest total in any complete major-league season since 1971, when there were only 24 teams in the league. On average, teams attempted 0.60 stolen bases per game played, the fewest in any season since 1964. No individual player stole as many as 50 bases for the fourth consecutive season, and the two who did steal 40-plus represented the lowest number in any season played to its completion since 1967.
What this trend has done is heighten the value of each individual stolen base — to the point that fantasy managers are desperate to find them almost anywhere. Let’s again use the Player Rater example, as Whit Merrifield‘s 40 stolen bases of 2021, the league’s second-best total, carried roughly the same valuation weight as Jonathan Villar‘s league-leading 62 stolen bases five years earlier, in 2016. Javier Baez‘s 18 steals in 2021, meanwhile, carried a near-identical valuation weight as Bryce Harper‘s 35 home runs, illustrating the relative scarcity of the category.
Only 19 players stole as many as 20 bases in 2021, the fewest in any full season in a half-century, and every one of them except for Dylan Moore (362nd overall) finished among the Player Rater’s top 153 overall, despite the fact that seven of those 19 delivered negative earnings in at least one other traditional rotisserie category. Six players managed at least 25 home runs and 25 stolen bases in 2021, and they finished first (Trea Turner), second (Bo Bichette), sixth (Jose Ramirez), seventh (Fernando Tatis Jr.), eighth (Ohtani) and 11th (Cedric Mullins) on the Player Rater.
It’s that multi-category ability, delivering any amount of steals to go along with power and (potentially) batting average, that has risen dramatically in value in this steals-starved era. For one thing, there are more of them. The six 25/25 men last season were the most in any individual year since 2001, the nine 30/15 men were the most since 2009, and the 27 20/10 men represented the fourth consecutive season in which there were at least that many. It’s becoming increasingly important to diversify your rotisserie categories with the first few picks of your draft, as demand for these power/speed types continues to annually rise.
That’s not to say that the one-dimensional speedsters are losing value. Far from it, as Myles Straw stole 30 bases but contributed little else in fantasy terms (his 86 runs were nice, but also a product of his speed), yet managed to finish 69th on the Player Rater. Five years earlier, Billy Hamilton managed a No. 64 overall Player Rater finish with a similarly one-dimensional contribution, yet his was fueled by a whopping 58 steals. Straw’s 30 steals paled in comparison, yet made his fantasy teams much more competitive in 2021 than they would have in 2016. So long as you can accurately forecast such a player to see the playing time needed to fill that category, there’s no shame in selecting the one-dimensional performer these days.
Keep this in mind, though: If you miss out on those multi-category performers early, you’ll be pressed to pay a premium for those Straw types, as steals are sure to go far earlier in drafts than they would have in the past.
Starting pitcher workloads have shrunk
Another byproduct of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season was the near-disappearance of the workhorse starting pitcher. In recent seasons, innovations such as the “opener,” relief specialization and expanded rosters that included a rising number of said relief pitchers have caused teams to take a more conservative approach to pitching workloads.
In 2021, there were only four 200-inning pitchers (Sandy Alcantara, Walker Buehler, Adam Wainwright and Wheeler), the fewest in any season played to its completion in the history of baseball. To take that a step further, only 39 pitchers even qualified for the ERA title — a pitcher must work at least one frame per team game, or 162 in a 162-game season — the fewest in any season played to its completion since 1900.
Whether those trends spring back to past norms in 2022 is unclear, as pitchers should be more prepared to absorb heftier workloads the further removed they are from the pandemic-shortened 2020. The days of the 225-inning starter, however, are almost assuredly behind us — there hasn’t been a pitcher to reach that threshold since 2016 — and we might not be far from the league considering an adjustment to the ERA-qualification rules considering the dwindling number of annual candidates.
What this means for fantasy is greater importance of the quality, rather than quantity, of individual pitching performances, more validation of relief-driven lineup strategies, and potentially a need to address the rotisserie categories themselves.
Taking the top-25 earners of 2021 in terms of ERA and WHIP combined, all but one (Trevor Bauer, 111th) finished among the Player Rater’s top-75 overall. Compare that to six years earlier, in 2016, when four players (Julio Teheran, 86th; Chris Devenski, 118th; Addison Reed, 172nd; and Dan Otero, 182nd) finished outside the top 75. Grabbing an ace, one of the rare few with the capability to reach that 200-inning threshold, is becoming increasingly important, especially with teams generally relying only on their best pitchers to work that often.
Fantasy managers in points-based leagues might already be familiar with the strategy, but in ESPN leagues which allow daily transactions, filling the gaps around your less-active starting pitchers with high-quality relievers is another strong angle. As starters’ innings totals dwindle, so do their counting numbers, placing more importance upon padding those statistics with relievers who don’t count against your starts caps.
But there’s another benefit to filling those lineup gaps with relievers: An increasing number of wins are going to relievers, meaning you can improve that category simply by falling into cheap wins that landed in your relievers’ laps. A record 1,083 wins went to relief pitchers in 2021, and it was the third consecutive season in which that total increased.
Speaking of that shifting of wins to relievers, those 1,083 relief wins means that a record-low 55.4% of the league’s wins went to starting pitchers. Many industry analysts and fantasy managers (including myself) have railed against wins as a rotisserie categories for years, and the declining categorical production only strengthens the argument against wins. After all, relief wins on the whole tend to be fluky, determined by more of a matter of fortuitous timing than skill.
The problem, however, is that my — and, again, many people’s — historical recommendation for a replacement, quality starts, isn’t faring any better in the modern era. The 1,593 total quality starts amassed in 2021 were the fewest in any non-shortened season since 1961, and it meant that only 32.8% of all starts resulted in a quality start. Considering relief pitchers — and openers — mathematically cannot qualify for a quality start, that’s a concerning rise in categorical scarcity.
So what’s the right answer? One of the categories I’ve strongly endorsed for years has become paramount to big-league teams in this situationally based pitching game: Innings pitched. Innings were generally frowned upon in the early days of rotisserie baseball, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when most any pitcher could rack them up quickly, but nowadays baseball teams don’t want to waste precious pitches on those who can’t rapidly record outs — the “innings eater,” as they were called back then, is dying. Innings pitched could be a brilliant substitute for wins and/or quality starts.
This isn’t to say that fantasy teams must make categorical changes for 2022, and with the lockout casting some uncertainty on the upcoming season’s playing field, it’s probably best not to proactively make a change. However, and as I often recommend deciding on major league-structure changes at least one year in advance, now is as good a time as any to begin a conversation as to what to do for 2023.
The catcher talent pool
Catcher continued to be the weakest position in fantasy baseball, posting a collective .302 wOBA, meaning it narrowly missed a third consecutive season posting a sub-.300 number in the category. Catchers collectively batted .229/.305/.391 with a 24.8% strikeout rate, all of those numbers, wOBA included, easily the worst at any individual field position besides pitcher (and the wOBA was worst by 11 whole percentage points).
At a casual glance, it might appear that Salvador Perez’s historic, 48-homer 2021 gave the position the look of a mild rebound, but it’s hardly the case. Thanks to his significant amount of DH time, he became one of the rare catchers to qualify for the batting title — 3.1 plate appearances per team game, or 502 in a 162-game season, are required — with J.T. Realmuto being the only other one to do so in 2021. Catchers are increasingly defense-oriented, get more time off than any position, and generally don’t provide much offense.
In past versions of this Playbook inning, I’ve examined the lessening argument for position scarcity, where the middle-infield positions have in recent seasons become competitive with the other fantasy positions in terms of depth and quality. Catcher is the one position where the “position scarcity” argument remains valid, but it’s also a potential trap for fantasy managers. Most importantly, how catchers are used in your league — are there one or two in your lineup, and how many teams are in your league — has a big say in how you should address the position in the draft.
In shallow mixed, ESPN standard or one-catcher leagues, the advantage of paying a premium for a top backstop is mitigated by the limited volume that even the best catchers commonly provide. That note about Perez and Realmuto being the only ones to qualify for the batting title comes into play, illustrating the limited playing time typical catchers provide.
To put this into Player Rater terms, while No. 1 catcher Perez was competitive with roughly the top three finishers at each infield position and top-10 outfielders in overall rating, it took him a historic level of playing time and power from a catcher to do it. No. 2 catcher Realmuto, meanwhile, finished only 137th overall on the Player Rater, behind 17 first-base eligibles, 19 second-base eligibles, 11 third base-eligibles, 18 shortstop-eligibles, 37 outfield-eligibles and the DH-only Nelson Cruz, and while some of those are common names eligible at multiple spots, it’s still illustrative of how much more production players at other field positions provide.
This wasn’t a one-year development, either: Perez’s No. 36 overall Player Rater finish was the best by a catcher-eligible player since Buster Posey‘s No. 27 placement in 2012. The No. 1 catcher, on average, has finished 91st overall during the past five seasons, which isn’t enough return to warrant spending top-40-overall draft capital on the position, certainly not in shallow mixed and one-catcher rotisserie leagues. In points-based leagues, where Perez’s playing time represents a sizable advantage relative to the position’s replacement level, a case can certainly be made, but even there it’s dangerous to build your roster around a backstop.
That’s not to say that a relatively early pick — perhaps borderline top-50 overall, or top-35 in a two-catcher or 12-plus-team roto league — is completely foolish for a catcher like Perez, who has the defensive skills to log a potentially position-leading number of plate appearances, not to mention has the DH cushion, as well as elite power. There’s a valid, “avoidance of negative earnings” angle at catcher.
Still, in the past two seasons, eight of the 12 catchers selected eighth through 13th at the position on average brought positive earnings, four of them finishing among the Player Rater’s top 250 overall, and an additional 21 undrafted players returned positive earnings, strengthening the positional free-agent pool.
That certainly supports a wait-on-catchers strategy in 10-team standard ESPN (and most any one-catcher) leagues.
Well, seven Playbook “innings” are now in the books, and you should be ready to take your fantasy baseball game to the advanced level. In the next edition, we’ll dive more deeply into advanced statistics such as Statcast, defense independent and “luck”-based statistics.
Source: www.espn.com