Picking Fantasy Baseball Pitchers

To play FanDuel’s Fantasy Baseball contests, you need a starting lineup of one pitcher, one catcher, one infielder at each position, and three outfielders – for your total of nine players. That’s one pitcher and eight hitters.

Remember – You must select players from at least three different teams and all nine players must fit within the salary cap.

In my opinion, the starting pitcher is your most important decision. That one player can make or break your contest. So, first, I’m going to discuss selecting your pitcher.

At FanDuel, the scoring for pitchers is minimalist. Only four categories are considered:

(1) Wins – You get 5 points if your pitcher wins.

(2) Innings Pitched – You get 1 point for each inning pitched – one-third (.33) of a point is awarded for each third of an inning pitched.

(3) Strike Outs – You get 1 point for each batter your pitcher strikes out.

(4) Earned Runs – You lose one (-1) point for each earned run your pitcher allows.

Your pitcher is not penalized for walking batters or giving up home runs.

Wins

Your pitcher is rewarded if he wins the game. As mentioned, he gets 5 points if he wins. On average, a starting pitcher wins 52% of the time.

No-decisions and Losses

Your pitcher is not penalized for no-decisions or losses. On the average, your starting pitcher will either get a no-decision or a loss 48% of the time. If your starting pitcher records a no-decision or a loss, he will still earn points for the other categories.

Innings Pitched

Here’s where your work-horse comes in handy. Your pitcher earns 1 point for every inning pitched. Therefore, the farther your pitcher goes, the more points he gets.

Let’s assume your pitcher makes it through 7 innings. In that case, he earns 7 points.

If your pitcher wins the game, he earns an additional 5 points – giving him a total of 12 points for the win plus the 7 innings pitched.

Strikeouts

Your pitcher gets 1 point for every batter he strikes out.

Let’s take our pitcher above who pitched 7 innings. If he strikes out 6 batters, he earns an additional 6 points. We add the 6 points for the strikeouts to the 7 points for pitching 7 innings – giving your pitcher a total of 13 points.

If your pitcher got a no-decision or a loss, he still gets those 13 points.

But if your pitcher also picks up the win, he gets another 5 points to up the total to 18 points.

Earned Runs

Your pitcher is penalized for each earned run he allows.

Using the same pitcher from above, let’s say he gives up 3 earned runs. In that case, he loses -3 points.

So he gets 7 points for Innings Pitched, plus 6 points for Strike Outs, minus 3 points for Earned Runs allowed – giving him a total of 10 points for a no-decision or a loss.

If your pitcher wins the game, he gets an additional 5 points and winds up with 15 points.

Your ultimate pitching weapon would be a pitcher who throws a complete-game shutout while striking out a lot of batters.

2014 Dodgers Starting Rotation

Let’s take a look at the Dodgers starting rotation from the 2014 season of Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Dan Haren, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and Josh Beckett. Let’s assume that they pitched for different teams and we were trying to decide who to use.

First we’ll look at their raw numbers.

Obviously, you’d like to pick an elite pitcher like Clayton Kershaw over anyone else, but top-of-the-rotation pitchers take the mound only 20% of the time. So you’re going to have to do some scrutinizing the majority of the time to come up with your pitcher.

Zack Greinke would be an obvious second choice, but the other three remaining choices are not so clear cut.

Hyun-Jin Ryu with 14 wins and a 3.38 ERA looks better on paper than Dan Haren with 13 wins and a 4.02 ERA. And they both look better Josh Beckett with just 6 wins. But Beckett’s ERA of 2.88 is better than Ryu’s and Haren’s. Will that make a difference?

The chart above shows the average points each pitcher earned for each no-decision or loss.

As expected, Clayton Kershaw scored best with 17.3 points per start. But there was only a gap of 1.6 points between the other four – Greinke with 14.3 points, Haren with 13.7 points, and Ryu and Beckett both with 12.7 points.

But when you factor in Wins, the gap widens.

When Clayton Kershaw won, he upped his total to 22.3 points – and he won a whopping 78% of his starts. Which shows why he was an elite pitcher in 2014.

The difference between Zack Greinke and Dan Haren is just 0.6 points – but Greinke’s advantage widens somewhat because Greinke won 53% of his starts compared to Haren’s 41%.

Comparing Hyun-Jin Ryu with Josh Beckett, it would appear on the surface that their point totals were the same – 12.7 for no-decisions and losses and 17.7 for wins. But Ryu would be a better choice because he won 54% of the time compared to Beckett’s 30%.

That’s one way to look between the numbers when trying to decide who to start.

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Tomorrow, I’ll go through the mechanics of selecting my starting pitcher for Opening Day.