2019 Preseason Blog Series Part 3: What Changed?

Paul took a date night trip down to a Miami Heat game last weekend, but somehow he ended up on the pep band’s drum set. I don’t have the story, but in my head it was classic Paul.

UPDATE: There is a major retraction needed here. Dean caught an error in the data I was using and it turned my conclusions upside down. Everyone needs to forget everything I said yesterday and read this instead.

So. We’ve made the rule changes. We as a league said we want to value hitters closer to how major league clubs do. We want our pitchers to get credit for quality starts, even if they don’t get wins. We want more than closers to be valuable relief pitchers. But what does it all mean?

Starting Pitchers are getting a big boost with this rule change. Using last years data, I compared the Yahoo rankings using last year’s scoring system to this year’s scoring system. As expected, Starting Pitchers are getting a major bump. 25 starters entered the top 100 pitchers and 25 relievers left the top 100 pitchers.  I compared the data from the pitchers that were in the top 100 from both lists, a total of 75 data points. The average number of ranking spots gained by starters was 21. So a starter, like Noah Syndergaard, who threw a decent number of innings last year but had high Earned Run totals was more punished with last year’s system. He was ranked the number 94 pitcher. Under the new scoring system, he would have been the 34^th pitcher. Conversely, all the closers lose a bunch of value now. Their low Earned Run totals don’t get them any bonuses in the scoring system and there are bunch of setup men that will get holds now that gain value on them too. The average relief pitcher lost 23 ranking spots.

So what does this do for our draft analysis? I still think this one is open to some strategy. The high end closers, which there aren’t many, are still going to be the best sources of saves plus holds, so it’s not like they will be going undrafted. But the days of 2^nd round picks being spent on relievers may be over…except for those that don’t read this update, of course. This also means that more starting pitchers are more valuable. I expect far more innings to be pitched in Floored this year as people chase Wins, Quality Starts, and Ks. How you get there is the fun part.

Moving onto the hitters, this one is a bit more straightforward because only one category changed. By getting rid of hits and adding slugging percentage, power hitters boost value. I can’t do analysis like for pitchers because there is no clear SP/RP divide for hitters’ categorization. So the analysis is more name and skill dependent. Trea turner loses some value as a leadoff hitter that has a high batting average…but he’s still awesome. Joey Gallo becomes an ownable player now with his contributions in Slugging Percentage and his deficiency in the Hit category is moot. These skills require player to player analysis, but you get the idea.

The moral of the story is, I hope you’re getting set for draft day. With the keeper deadline on the 14^th and the need to perform any bidding wars on any trades, I am setting the trade deadline for Monday, March 11^th.