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ACR is a Useful Tool for Evaluating Pitchers in Fantasy Baseball
Last season I introduced a new statistic I had been working on called Ace Composite Rating (ACR). When I created ACR, what I really wanted was a statistic that could be used to evaluate starting pitchers that was both accessible to average baseball fans and useful to fantasy owners. To put it another way, I wanted a number that people could look at and extract meaning from without needing to be well versed in all things sabermetric. After lots of conversations with like-minded folks, ACR was born.
What is Ace Composite Rating (ACR)?
Perhaps a useful place to start would be to talk about what ACR is not. First of all, ACR is not an advanced metric. It is not a sabermetrician's dream.
ACR is also not a perfect statistic. People will always say "but what about this?" or "how do you account for that?" and my response is always the same: you're right -- there are many things ACR doesn't take into account, but there are also some pretty important things it does take into account.
In its most basic sense, ACR is a number that considers the statistical categories for starting pitchers that are most likely to make an impact from a fantasy baseball perspective: ERA, WHIP, K, BB, H, HR, and IP. Through a series of pretty simple calculations (mostly addition and subtraction) those numbers are combined to create a composite score. For those of you who care, the formula looks like this:
ACR = ((ERA) + (WHIP) + (H/9 IP) + (BB/9 IP) + (HR/9 IP) - (K/9 IP) - (IP/GS))*-1
The higher the ACR number, the better. Simple as that. For reference, any number on the positive side of zero indicates what the statistic would consider an "ace": only about the top 20% of MLB starting pitchers finished the season with a positive ACR. Once that number climbs above three, you're dealing with the most elite starting pitchers in the game.
As you may have noticed, every number that goes into the formula for ACR is a traditional baseball statistic. My goal here is to make this as simple as possible to understand for the average fantasy baseball owner. Advanced pitching metrics, like FIP for example, are pretty useful for evaluating starting pitchers in the real world. The problem is, I'm not sure how useful FIP and other advanced metrics are in the fantasy world. I can't score any extra points in my head-to-head league by having a starting pitcher with excellent FIP. Fantasy scoring is based on actual results; FIP is based on hypothetical results. This is not an attack on FIP or any other advanced metric, but as fantasy baseball owners we have to consider the limitations of all statistics -- ACR included.
Why ACR is Worth Your Time
At the end of the 2014 MLB season, I calculated the Ace Composite Rating of all starting pitchers with 13 or more starts. What I found was that the top pitchers in terms of ACR were very comparable to the top pitchers in Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball Leagues. That's a good start, but most of us can figure out in a given year who the top pitchers will be in an upcoming fantasy draft. Where ACR becomes particularly useful is in differentiating between pitchers you might select in the later rounds of your draft, once Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Max Scherzer and the rest of the studs are long gone.
Starting at the league average of -3.9, we can sift through some potential later-round picks to make an informed decision. Let's take Justin Verlander as an example. Everyone knows Verlander had a down year in 2014, but some might still be inclined to draft him early in 2015 as a bounce-back candidate. But when you consider that his 2014 ACR (which was 2 full points below league average) puts him in the same group as Jarred Cosart and Hector Santiago, that idea becomes a lot less appealing. I can't imagine anyone making the case to draft Hector Santiago, but I know someone in your league will draft Justin Verlander. Do you want to be that guy?
On the flip side, a guy like Drew Hutchison could be a nice sleeper candidate (as discussed here) in terms of his -3.34 ACR. Here is a player a lot of people may not be familiar with, but who put up a better-than-average ACR in 2014 despite a less-than-stellar ERA. In fact, Hutchison falls in line right behind Jered Weaver and Matt Garza in terms of 2014 ACR data: decent company for a pitcher who isn't on everyone's radar.
Closing
When draft day rolls around, it never hurts to have more tools at your disposal. We all know that leagues have been won and lost based on the quality of picks in the mid-to-late rounds of our drafts. Some of us learned that lesson the hard way. This season, as you're researching to prepare for your draft, don't forget to consider ACR while evaluating starting pitchers. You can find the complete list of 2014 ACR numbers for qualifying pitchers here. It could be just what you need to draft your starting pitchers a little bit smarter in 2015. Good luck!
