Week 20: The Success of the Elite RP Strategy

Josh and Amber took in the PGA Championship in Charlotte this month after their summer vacation to Mexico

TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Brian/Josh	3.86	1	Dean	3.00	1	Michael	2.83		Max	Poorly* Managed
2	Michael	3.93	2	Brian/Josh	3.25	2	Dave	3.33		Dean	Bitter Ender
3	Dean	4.57	3	Arthur	3.38	3	Brian/Josh	4.67		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
4	Arthur	4.86	4	Michael	4.75	4	Matt	4.83		Paul	South Florida Gators
5	Max	5.50	5	Max	5.13	5	Cory	5.67		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
6	Dave	5.57	6	Keith	6.13	6	Max	6.00		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
7	Matt	6.21	7	Cory	7.13	7	Dean	6.67		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
8	Keith	6.43	8	Paul	7.25	8	Paul	6.67		Brian/Josh	Smoak Ish
9	Cory	6.50	9	Dave	7.25	9	Arthur	6.83		Matt	615 for the win
10	Paul	7.00	10	Matt	7.25	10	Keith	6.83		Michael	Pic'em Pelham'ed

BJ took a step backwards leaving them and Michael in a near deadlock for first place in the power rankings. Michael took only his second step backwards in the rankings in two and half months, awesome timing with 2 weeks to go. Dean and Arthur were the only ones to take a measurable step forward.  Both of these teams have made a run as the best team in the league this year and can do it again if things break their way.

This past off season I introduced the concept of the ‘Elite RP.’ There were multiple factors involved, but one of them was the belief that the closer position as we know it may soon be a thing of the past, that managers might start to realize that the best relief pitcher on their team is best used in the highest leverage situation, and that may not be the 9^th inning. The statistical analysis for this will have to wait until the end of the season, but this one hasn’t panned out as much as I could have expected. Some closers are used in multi-inning situations like Raisel Iglesias of the Reds every now and then, and Craig Kimbrel has already been brought in 8^th inning more times this year than ever has in his career, but the trend is certainly not a full scale movement. 

The good insight that did come out of this concept of an ‘Elite RP’ was how it applied to Floored. Due to the presence of the Earned Run category, our league favors good relief pitchers. The good ones lower your ERA and WHIP, while contributing a handful of strikeouts and they don’t add very many Earned Runs. This past offseason I created a somewhat arbitrary set of criteria that could differentiate what makes for an ‘Elite RP’ and this season I’ve been tracking them since late April once all the RPs have had a few weeks to normalize their stats. The criteria are that the pitcher must: have below a 3.00 ERA (duh), have below 6 walks per 9 innings (you can’t be good if you’re walking people all the time), have a WHIP below 1.1 (the most arbitrary number, it seemed to cut out a lot of guys), pitch more than 2 innings a week (this weeds out the injured guys), and most importantly has more than 10 strikeouts per 9 innings (a great K rate is the great differentiator). This year, 72 RPs have met this criteria for at least one week, here are the names of the RPs with at least 10 weeks with Year to Date (along the way) weeks meeting this criteria and their Year to Date (today) Stats:

Name	Number of Weeks Elite (out of 17 tracked weeks)	ERA	WHIP	BB/9	K/9
Tommy Kahnle	17	2.98	1.07	1.9	14
Andrew Miller	17	1.65	0.78	2.8	13
Craig Kimbrel	17	1.33	0.63	1.5	17
Kenley Jansen	17	1.26	0.68	0.8	14.1
Archie Bradley	15	1.22	0.96	2.3	9.9
David Robertson	14	2.45	0.95	2.8	13
Josh Fields	14	2.68	0.97	2.7	9.4
Chris Devenski	14	2.7	0.93	2.8	11.5
Brad Hand	13	2.19	0.91	2.5	11.9
Raisel Iglesias	13	1.82	1.05	3.4	11.3
Blake Parker	13	2.22	0.86	2.4	11.1
Carl Edwards	12	3.44	1.01	5.3	13.1
Wade Davis	11	2.27	1.19	4.9	12
Justin Wilson	11	3	1.18	4.7	11.4
Greg Holland	10	4.05	1.28	4.6	11

We’ll keep the summary short because we have some big matchup recaps to get to, but these are the high level takeaways from the table above: Note that some of these pitchers are not currently ‘Elite,’ I am using year to date stats to show the names and the number of weeks that these pitchers have been very good. Also note that only 9 of the 15 are/were closers this years. There are plenty of great RP stats out there not only for closers. Finally, think of some of the pitchers missing from the above table: Alex Colome, MLB leader in saves, bad K rate at 7.6, 1.2 WHIP, 3.3 ERA; Aroldis Chapman, number one ranked RP coming into the year, 4.23 ERA and 1.43 WHIP (he’s been elite a few weeks but has battled command and injury all year), Dellin Betances, a theoretical poster boy along with Andrew Miller for this Elite gig, way too many walks at 6.4 per 9 innings.

Michael has utilized this strategy all year leading to the number one ranked pitching staff (of course a good bit of that is due to two great Corey Kluber months and James Paxton being the breakout pitcher of the year, but still).

This offseason I will be taking a look at the success of Elite and non-Elite RPs when they move into the closers role and what effect that criteria has on their success. Until then, go find the next Elite RP.

Onto the week in review, it was a doosey:

The biggest blowout in another week of blowouts was Dean who thumped Cory despite Cory putting up a league record tying 21 HRs (Arthur also put up 21 in Week 19). Dean had a very good week in his own right hitting .295 with 15 HRs and 88 R+RBIs. Dean has been trying to find the bottom since his early season run and this week may have been it. He finally streamed his pitchers well, his hitters came through, and he finally didn’t have an all-star performing opponent. Dean enters the final 2 weeks 3 games behind Michael for the 4^th playoff spot.

In the heavyweight matchup between the first and second Power Ranked teams, Michael came through with a much needed win over BJ. BJ just isn’t playing very good ball right now. They hit below.250 and had rather pedestrian numbers across the board. They did put up a ton of Walks and streamed their way to win pitching strikeouts (interestingly, with 33 fewer innings, Michael only had 10 fewer pitching strikeouts) to keep the matchup close enough to not lose first place in the Yahoo Standings. BJ is 13.5 games ahead of Dean in 5^th with 2 weeks to go and is still likely safe, but they will need to play better to have any shot at a playoff run. Michael’s run took a full stop this week, after very good numbers midway through the week, the production halted and he limped his way to this victory. Michael is holding off Dean for now, but will need 2 good weeks to ensure a playoff spot.

Arthur had another of the blowout wins this week over Matt. Matt once again missed the pitching innings pitched minimum but it only cost him one category. Seriously Matt, cmon. Every needs to throw some shame at Matt. Arthur had a pretty good week with 16 HRs and 94 R+RBIs and a 3.39 ERA but this win too was far more about Matt not being very good. Arthur is clinging to 3^rd place and this win merely allowed him to hold serve on a week where all the contending teams had big wins. He holds a 8 game lead over Dean.

Dave beat his Power Ranking Superior, Max, soundly and has risen within 1.5 games of first place in the Yahoo Standings. As was the case with the other big wins on the week, Dave was the beneficiary of an underperforming opponent. Dave only had 11 HRs and 57 R+RBI, but he put up a 2.8 ERA and was good enough to top a floundering Max who hit .206 on the week with an ERA over 4. No Bueno. If Dean or Michael do miss the playoffs, Dave will be the one they are the most mad at. Dave has had a very middling team all year and has been incredibly fortunate in the opponents perspective. In a year this tight, though, someone was bound to be helped by the schedule. Dave faces Dean this week in a make or break matchup for Dean. They are 12 games apart in the standings which could evaporate in one head-to-head week. It is certainly the single most important matchup these last two weeks.

Paul beat Keith, apparently there was some sort of lunch on the line. They both kinda stunk. It happens. They are already planning for the Bourbon Street Championship. Go get em.

Monster of the Week: Dean stepped up in his first week out of the playoffs. The matchups only get more important now.

Max of the forever: Matt missed the pitching innings minimum again. I need some help from everyone here on this. On Saturday night I can make the adjustment to get him a pitcher for Sunday. I can’t do anything on Sunday morning about it. No one wants to get into the playoffs because someone missed the IP minimum. Don’t be that guy. It’s been too good and too competitive a year to get in like that. Send me a text if you see someone might miss the threshold.

2 weeks to go. Huge matchup this week between Dave and Dean. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.