2020 Offseason Starting Pitcher Rankings (Part 2) - Fantasy Baseball Mixed Leagues

December 31, 2019

Part two of Nicklaus' starting pitcher fantasy baseball rankings for the upcoming 2020 season in 5x5 roto mixed leagues - including rankings from the #1 most accurate industry expert.

We continue with our analysis of the early 2020 fantasy baseball starting pitcher rankings by looking at the middle tiers. To read part one, click right here.

After a record-setting year for offense and a sense among the industry that 2020 likely won't be dramatically different, being able to navigate the ever-murkier waters of starting pitching will continue to be of prime importance. Looking at last year's earnings at the position, stark tiers quickly reveal themselves, with two players earning over $40, followed by five players who earned over $20, and 13 who earned over $10. That's only 20 pitchers total who earned double-digit dollars in 12-team leagues, followed by a big mess of players who didn't. Now that's what I call murky.

Let's dive back into our pitching ranks and take a look at the players who are bound to be part of fantasy rotations but may come with some baggage in 2020.

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Starting Pitcher Ranks - 5x5 Mixed Leagues (December)

In case you missed it, our very own "Big Pick Nick" Mariano was named the #1 overall most accurate industry expert ranker for the 2018 season.

Tier Four

I already didn't like Corey Kluber in 2020 and his recent trade to Texas Rangers certainly didn't improve my outlook. It's easy to just write off Kluber's 2019 as a lost season, with the veteran suffering a broken forearm after being hit by a comebacker in May, but prior to his injury, the right-hander was already having a rough start to his year, posting a 5.80 ERA and just a 22.6% K-rate in 35.2 innings. And while Kluber was worth 5.5 WAR in 2018, he did struggle some after posting a 2.02 ERA through his first 12 starts in May and June, putting up a 3.45 ERA over his last 130.1 innings. This might have had something to do with Kluber's formerly elite cutter getting smashed after having only a .235 wOBA against it in the first half of 2018. That number jumped to a .368 wOBA in the second half and a .347 wOBA in his short 2019 season. If Kluber is now going to have an average cutter to pair with his ever-trashier fastball, it's hard for me to get behind him being a top-20 option in 2020.

We're all definitely sure Noah Syndergaard is still a top-25 pitcher?

2018: 154.1 IP/3.03 ERA/1.21 WHIP/3.55 SIERA/24.1% K%

2019: 197.2 IP/4.28 ERA/1.23 WHIP/4.02 SIERA/24.5% K%

Syndergaard earned $5.70 in 2018 and $(4.40) last year. Parentheses mean negative. These are just facts.

Let's cover one more pitcher who's been mediocre in a perfectly consistent way the past two years. Jose Berrios had a 3.68 ERA in 200.1 innings a year after having a 3.84 ERA in 192.1 innings in 2018, with remarkably similar lines across the board. Berrios was also slightly worse in notable categories, with his 23.2% K-rate down two points over the year previous, while carrying a 4.28 SIERA that was up from a 3.80 in 2018. On the fantasy side, Berrios earned $3.90 last year, finishing as the #36 pitcher according to the Fangraphs auction calculator, after earning just $1.70 the year prior. I get that he's still only 25-years old but I'm having trouble seeing where a big improvement could come from, considering the aforementioned similarity of his career thus far, along with a pitch-mix and velocity that have also both stayed near-constant.

Ending the tier on a positive note, how about the man with one of the coolest sounding names in baseball, Dinelson Lamet? A great example of how injuries can make fantasy players forget about previous promises of a breakout, Lamet missed all of 2018 after having Tommy John surgery in the spring, returning this season to make 14 starts for the Padres and going 3-5 with a 4.08 ERA over 73 innings. That was nothing to write home about but keep in mind that prior to TJ-surgery, Lamet entered 2018 as a popular breakout pick, with a 216 ADP in NFBC, after striking out 139 batters in 117 innings in 2017. Getting back to the majors in early July, Lamet got right back to doing what he does best; striking fools out with extreme prejudice, with 105 of the 313 batters he faced going down to his primo whiffery. That was good for a 33.6% K-rate - a five-point increase from his mark in 2017 - and Lamet also dropped to a 9.6% walk-rate, from an 11.1% mark in 2017.

He'll need to continue to improve on his control if he wants to take the next step to stardom but seeing a drop in his walk-rate after TJ-surgery is certainly a positive sign. And one final piece of cheese to entice you; Lamet's nasty curveball (which may just be a different version of his nasty slider) has a 22.8% SwStr that trails only Blake Snell for the highest mark among starters who threw at least 300 hooks in 2019. The only thing I dislike about the 27-year-old right-hander is that his stock is rising too fast, as he currently sits at a 111 ADP in NFBC Champions leagues in December.

Tier Five

Remember when Madison Bumgarner was one of the best pitchers in baseball, both on the field and in fantasy? But alas, 'twas a dirtbike that did MadBum in, and the big left-hander with the big twang just hasn't been the same since injuring his AC joint in 2017. Bumgarner was at least back to being the workhorse in 2019 that he was when he pitched over 200 innings from 2011-2017, finishing with the year with 207.2 innings pitched, but his previous stuff didn't come with the innings. Bumgarner's 24.1% K-rate was his highest since 2016 but that's still down from the 27% rates that he was running in 2015-2016 and his 4.15 SIERA was the second-highest of his career and was over a run higher than what he had during the prime years of 2014-2016.

Having recently signed a five-year deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bumgarner now moves out of the friendly pitcher-confines of Oracle Park, where the home-cooking has been much more kind to the veteran hurler, as he posted a .261 wOBA at home versus a .349 wOBA on the road in 2019. After earning just $4.6 in 12-team leagues in 2019 (good for the #40 pitcher and #192 player overall) and being projected by Steamer to barely be a top-75 starting pitcher in 2020, I'm having a hard time putting any sort of trust in Bumgarner, even though he's been one of my favorite players ever since he and his now-wife gave each other prime horseflesh for their wedding gifts.

An elite eater of innings (and possibly ham), I believe in the Lance Lynn-aissance after the former Cardinal went full ham in his first full year at his new home in Texas, going 16-11 with a 3.67 ERA over 208.1 innings and posting a 6.8 fWAR that trailed only Gerrit Cole and Jacob Degrom. Dig a little deeper, though, and a picture of a different pitcher than the previous six years starts to emerge. Lynn went from a 22.4% K-rate and 9.2% walk-rate for his career to a 28.1% K-rate and 6.7% walk-rate in 2019, while increasing his swinging-strike rate from 9.3% to 12.5% in 2019.

As is often the case with large changes in a pitcher's performance, Lynn saw significant changes to his pitch-mix and fastball velocity in 2019, as he had in years previous. Throwing primarily a sinker, cutter, and curveball to go with his fastball, Lynn dropped his sinker usage to 17% in 2019, after it sat at 33% in 2018 and 43% in 2017. The sinker was replaced by a nine-point increase in the use of his four-seamer and a four-point increase in his cutter. Add that to an average fastball velocity of 94.7 mph that was up from 93.8 mph in 2018 and 92.4 mph in 2017, and I'm getting more on board for a repeat performance in 2020.

I get Robbie Ray as a strikeout play, with the 28-year-old lefthander having been a K-machine his entire career. You can basically pencil him in for about a 31% K-rate and 12 K/9 but I just can't stomach the 1.35 WHIP that's probably coming too. Ray was fantastic in 2017, posting his normal strikeout rates and a 2.89 ERA, but barring a large amount of batted ball luck, or a dramatic improvement in skills, I can't really squint and see that ERA ever coming back, given the state of his ERA evaluators as of late.

2018 - 3.93 ERA/4.31 FIP/3.77 xFIP/3.89 SIERA, 1.35 WHIP

2019 - 4.34 ERA/4.29 FIP/3.76 xFIP/4.02 SIERA, 1.34 WHIP

Kind of feels like Ray is going to have an ERA over four, right? And I also find it concerning that his fastball velocity dipped for the second year in a row, averaging 92.4 mph in 2019, after it averaged 93.7 mph in 2018, and 94.2 mph in 2017. Given all these negative markers, I have a hard time believing that Ray will earn you a fantasy profit at his current 147 ADP in NFBC Champions leagues.

Tier Six

Matthew Boyd is another guy who will likely be doing some swift rising up my ranking, as the 28-year-old made big strides in 2019 and seems poised for a big breakout in 2020. On a terrible Tigers team, Boyd went 9-12 over a career-high 185.1 innings, posting a mediocre 4.56 ERA. However, his 3.61 SIERA was almost a full run lower and Boyd also gave up 1.89 HR/9 - his highest mark since throwing 57 innings in his 2015 rookie year - a number that was buoyed by an 18.2% HR/FG, after he ran rates under 13% for the previous three years.

Putting those numbers aside, the biggest reason to I'm believing in a big Boyd breakout is the 30.2% K-rate in 2019 that was up from an 18.2% K-rate for his career prior. How'd he do it? This seems to be a classic example of pitcher saying, "maybe I should stop throwing my worst pitches and throw my best ones instead", with Boyd almost completely junking the sinker he had started using heavily in 2017-18. He threw it 24% of the time in 2017 - with a 6.50 xFIP and a .395 wOBA against - and 15% in 2018, resulting in an even worse 7.20 xFIP and a .458 wOBA. The sinker then dropped to 4% in 2019, with Boyd's slider ascending to his primary secondary pitch, with a career-high 36% usage.

But the old slidepiece didn't just get its usage upped, Boyd also altered its movement and the pitch now has almost double the horizontal movement as it did in 2018. The differences in results on the pitch were stark, with the slider's swinging-strike rate jumping four points to 19.8% and it's whiff-per-swing rising from 30.9% in 2018 to 41.8% in 2019. That may not be Patrick Corbin-levels of nastiness but the SwStr% is the 15th-highest among starters who threw at least 20% sliders in 2019 and his whiff-per-swing ranked ninth.  And giving further regard to my positive outlook on him, it certainly didn't hurt that his average fastball velocity went back up to 92.1 mph after sitting at 90.5 MPH in 2018. Boyd has a better team surrounding him 2020, a more effective pitch-mix, an increase in velocity, and an increasingly nasty slider. Sign me up.

I hear you Oakland fans; you want to believe that the 29.2 innings you got out of Sean Manaea at end of 2019 after he returned from shoulder surgery will be a harbinger for similar success in 2020. Manaea was lights out in his five starts in September - going 4-0 with a 1.21 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, and a 27.5% K-rate - but when looking under the hood, I'm finding few reasons for him sustaining those levels of success. Beware the peripherals!

One of these years is not like the other; one of these years does not belong. For me, it looks like Manaea's 2019 success was driven by some small-sample chicanery, with his .194 BABIP and 100% strand-rate jumping off the page and a career-high hard-hit rate certainly not helping his case. Optimistically thinking, perhaps his bump in strikeout-rate had something to do with a change in pitch-mix upon his return and could return in some fashion next season?

Manaea did come back throwing his slider 31% of the time (up from previous years in the 13-17% range) and decreasing his changeup usage to 15% (down from 24-31% previously) while increasing his fastball usage seven points to 63%, compared to 56% in 2018. However, his average fastball velocity also decreased for the third year in a row and now sits at just 89.8 mph, down from the 92.9 mph he averaged in his 2016 rookie season. Like Ray before him, I think you're likely getting around a 4.00 ERA and 1.30 WHIP for Manaea in 2020 but unlike Ray, you're not getting a mess of strikeouts to go with it. His 167 ADP in December NFBC Champions leagues is just far too rich for me.

That's it for Part Two of our starting pitching rankings analysis. Check back soon for Part Three, where I'll dive for values in the lower tiers of arms.

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