Welcome to our 10th season of fantasy baseball coverage. We will help you get ready for your drafts and prepare for the upcoming season so you can become a champion.
As a refresher for those who followed our coverage throughout the years and to any new readers, there are different league formats that are used in fantasy baseball. The traditional is the five-by-five rotisserie league format, and that is what I will base my opinions on.
For those who are not familiar with what that means, there are five hitting categories — batting average, home runs, runs scored, RBIs and stolen bases. For pitching, the categories are wins, strikeouts, ERA, walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP) and saves.
On-base percentage (OBP) continues to become more popular as a replacement to batting average, so I will refer to that stat as well since it could change how we evaluate certain players.
I personally feel fantasy baseball continues to be at a crossroads with the current format. Major League Baseball teams are not valuing starting pitchers and closers anymore and we need to adjust as an industry. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened.
Even though roto leagues are still the standard, I encourage commissioners to think about implementing head-to-head formats along with total points. By adding more categories and getting the fantasy football feel of going against an opponent every week will only help enhance the fantasy baseball experience.
Here is part two of my fantasy baseball guide. Click here for part one.
Wins And Saves
Two of the main pitching categories are wins and saves. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to achieve both in fantasy baseball.
In full seasons since 2019, the number of starting pitchers who had 14 or more wins has gone from 14 to 13 to 19 to 12. Why are we still using this as a category?
A lot of this can be attributed to pitchers just not going deep into games. Starting pitchers averaged 5.2 innings pitched in 2022 and 5.02 in 2021. The number was 5.1 in 2023.
In order to earn a win, a starting pitcher must pitch five innings. In order to qualify for a quality start, which is a popular category, pitchers must throw six innings and allow three earned runs or fewer. Both of those categories have been hard to reach in recent years.
As a result, the thought process has generally been to draft one of the studs early. Seven starting pitchers are being drafted within the top 30 overall. However, I will continue to recommend the strategy of waiting on starting pitchers and finding value later.
I recommend eliminating the win and quality start stat and adding another category like strikeouts per nine innings
As for saves, this is always a category we chase on the waiver wire since the position is extremely volatile. Teams aren’t relying on one pitcher to close out the ninth anymore.
In the shortened 2020 season, 67 pitchers recorded at least one save. In 2021, 116 pitchers recorded at least one save but only nine pitchers finished with at least 30 saves. In 2022, 131 pitchers finished with at least one save and 10 pitchers had at least 30 saves.
To put this in perspective, 84 pitchers finished with at least one save and 21 pitchers finished with at least 30 saves in 2015. It only took seven seasons for a huge shift to occur, and fantasy baseball has yet to catch up.
In 2023, 12 pitchers finished with at least 30 saves, providing a glimmer of hope for closers. It appears teams may be realizing that using one pitcher consistently in the ninth is the way to go. However, 214 pitchers still finished with at least one save last season.
Our strategy has remained the same in recent years, as we recognized this trend early and there is no reason to change. Fantasy managers don’t need to reach, but we would like to draft a closer on a good team with a solidified role. We will attack the waiver wire throughout the season and ride the hot hand in order to compete in the category.
I can’t stress enough that this is a category that should be gone. Fantasy leagues should use a holds-plus-saves category to expand the player pool for targeting relievers.
The Return Of Steals
If there is one thing that I’m extremely proud of from last year’s last year’s draft guide, we recognized that stolen bases would return. The new rules implemented by Major League Baseball favored more stolen bases.
This is what was in last year’s draft guide:
In 2021 and 2022, there were only six players who had 30 steals or more. I believe we will see at least 10, if not more, pass that number this season. The most notable increase should come in terms of players stealing 15 to 25 bases. There were 32 players in 2021 who had at least 15 stolen bases and 40 in 2022. I would predict that number will be over 50 in 2023.
Eighteen players stole 30 or more bases last season, so my prediction was close. Seventy players had at least 15 stolen bases, so again, the prediction was close. More importantly, recognizing this prior to the season helped position our teams for the long haul.
Fantasy managers have been known to reach early in drafts for players who provide stolen bases or use their last few picks on players who will help in that category. That doesn’t need to happen anymore, as there are many players that can provide a strong floor throughout the season.
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