Celeb blog: Is Pitcher Streaming Actually Useful?

 Happy hump day everyone!  Welcome to your guest midweek rant!  Did I say rant?  I meant blog.  Michael usually leads the blog with a big picture of someone in the league, so I found this picture of Michael “playing” (and I use that term very loosely) flag football [Editor's note, Michael is definitely pounding the ground in celebration after breaking up a pass on defense...a skill that he was not hired to do for this team].  Anyways, here we go: 

I’ve been hearing the same complaints about streaming pitchers that Michael has.  But instead of bothering our dear commissioner about it, I instead took the data approach.  So I set out to answer a few questions: What stats are streamers contributing (compared to non-streaming starters)?  How would the standings look if we took out streamers altogether?  Are some people good at streaming and others bad? Should I stream?

First though, a few quick definitions: I defined a streamer as a pitcher who only starts one game for a fantasy team before hitting the waiver wire.  You can debate other definitions, but this is what I chose and I’m sticking with it.  I defined “wins” in the standings as wins + ties / 2.  Keeping track of ties was arduous and I just hate ties.  And finally, there were a few ties in the standings, one of which was between me and my dad.  Yahoo ranked him higher despite our identical records, but I’m writing the blog and I don’t like seeing myself behind him so I took it upon myself to be the tiebreaker.  All my stats are through week 3. 

What stats are streamers contributing (compared to non-streaming starters)?

Starter Type	IP / Start	W / Start	SO / Start	QS / Start	ERA	WHIP
Regular SPs	5.6	0.34	6.5	0.52	3.07	1.05
Streamers	5.0	0.27	4.5	0.27	4.74	1.29
Difference	-11.1%	-22.4%	-31.0%	-48.5%	+54.3%	+23.2%

 

Here are the stats per start for streamers compared to non-streaming starters.  As you can see, streaming starters will drag down your ERA and WHIP by quite a bit, and are 20-50% less effective on SO, Wins, and QS as a regular SP.  This shouldn’t be surprising to anybody – the good pitchers are rostered, not streamed.  Note: I excluded SVH as a category in above – if your players are getting starts and holds on the same day then they’re either cheating or had a heck of a double header. 

How would the standings look if we took out streamers altogether?

Team	Current Wins	Wins if there were no streaming	Points won/lost because of streaming	Streaming Starts
BJ	32	32	0	9
Michael	29.5	28.5	-1	12
Carl	23	22.5	-1	8
Dean	24.5	27.5	+3	7
Dave	22.5	24.5	+2	9
Paul	19.5	16	-4	13
Arthur	17.5	18	+1	10
Keith	16.5	15.5	-1	6
Cory	15	16	+1	0
Max	11.5	11	-1	1

The first thing that jumps out is…it looks mostly the same.  3 weeks in most people aren’t seeing a meaningful difference.  The second thing that stands out is that the person who streamed the most start (Paul) has also been hurt by streaming (down 3.5 wins) the most.  Oh and the person who hasn’t streamed a single pitcher (Cory) has actually gained because of it.  Plenty of data points in both directions if we look at everyone else (Dean is +3 and 3^rd in streaming starts, Keith 2^nd to last in streaming starts and -1 because of streaming) Now this doesn’t take into account the game theory aspect of it – maybe if Paul had streamed less his opponents would have changed their behavior.  But I don’t have time to do all the what-ifs so you get what you get. 

Are some people good at streaming and others bad?

Team	Streamer Starts	IP / Streamer Start	W / Streamer Start	SO / Streamer Start	QS / Streamer Start	Streamer ERA	Streamer WHIP
Michael	12	4.2	0.08	4.7	0.08	4.68	1.30
Dave	9	5.7	0.56	5.1	0.44	2.82	0.96
Keith	6	4.8	0.00	3.0	0.33	4.71	1.36
Dean	7	5.3	0.57	4.9	0.14	3.16	1.14
Arthur	10	4.5	0.30	4.3	0.10	7.05	1.75
Carl	8	5.5	0.25	4.5	0.38	3.25	1.26
Max	1	5.7	0.00	3.0	0.00	6.35	1.24
Paul	13	5.4	0.15	5.0	0.31	5.22	1.15
BJ	9	4.9	0.33	4.2	0.44	6.55	1.55
Cory	0	N / A	N / A	N / A	N / A	N / A	N / A

 At this point in the season, hard to distinguish good from lucky, but here are the results – Dave, Dean, and Carl are clearly either good or lucky and Arthur, Michael, and Max are clearly bad or unlucky.  Lots of variation here.  Time will tell whether it’s just noise or real skill. 

Should I stream?

I made a flow chart for you: