Week 21: The Field Shrinks...maybe?

 

Max and Jessica are having a baby! With a due date around March, pull the string back to find out that the two had a VERY happy honeymoon-ish.

[placeholder for ranks updates; projections: Michael keeps climbing, Carl ticks up too, Dean makes a move up, Keith and Max take a step back]

I was noticing that it was becoming harder to find lower level starting pitchers going 5 innings lately. I ran some numbers to figure out if these lower level pitchers were indeed going shorter into games. First I had to break pitchers into groups based on their year to date performance. I put the top 20 pitchers in an "Aces" tier, the next 30 pitchers in a "SP2s" tier, and then finally the next 40 pitchers in a "SP3-5s" tier. I looked at the number of pitches these groups have thrown in each of their starts this year. 

There's a lot going on here, and of course there is a lot of noise in pitches per start (were they throwing a Maddux (a complete game shutout in less than 100 pitches)? duh bad pitchers get pulled faster, etc); but what we see here is that EVERYONE is getting pulled earlier in games right now. Sure, there is also a July blip where that third tier had some real bad outings; but in general, that lower tier is going less deep into games than any other tier all season. What I'm taking away from this data is a) aces are where it's at, but we knew that already, and b) that lower tier of pitcher is really not that helpful right now, relative to how helpful they were a few months ago. 

Interestingly though: Quality starts are actually on the rise:

My first explanation for this is that we as a league took a few weeks into the season to learn who the good pitchers were going to be this year. This trend has been relatively flat since week 5 or so. The next explanation would be that we really haven't gotten Quality Starts consistently from the lower tier of SPs all year, so them being pulled earlier in games really hasn't affected our Quality Start counts.

There's room for disagreement on this concept that bottom tier pitchers that we own full time are basically the same as what can be grabbed off the wire (SPs beyond SP90). If you can find those replacement level pitchers that get more leash from their managers, you will have a leg up on the field down the stretch. Go find them, I know I'm sure trying.

OK, some quick matchup recaps now that we're down to 2 regular season weeks left:

• Michael had a pretty big week to beat Arthur. Home Runs were up across the league this week, but Michael led the field with 20 HRs and had a 2.50 ERA over 90 innings to boot.. Arthur didn't quite have it and feel back to ~9 games out of 4th place, a big hill to climb with two weeks left.
• Carl took down Max with a big week of his own. Carl did this mostly with pitching which was his calling card earlier in the summer. He is eying that playoff matchup against Paul who this week....
• Kept. On. Winning. Paul took down another playoff contending team and won the lunch bet with Keith in the process. Keith fell down to 7th, ~8 games out of 4th place. Another tough hill to climb
• Dave kept his playoff dream alive. Who needs their best player to make a run? Not having Jose Ramirez is not slowing Dave down, this week knocking Brian and Josh to the brink of elimination. BJ is now ~7 games out of 4th place while Dave is ~4 games behind the same 4th place team of...
• Dean, who is tied with Cory as this blog is written. Dean finally put some good things together with a 15 HRs, a .300 AVG, and a 3.50 ERA. Cory is now down to 9th place, ~10 games out of 4th place and missed his big opportunity to beat the team he is trying to catch.  Dean having a 4 game lead on the field for 4th place is the biggest we've had for a 4th place team in awhile, but it really isn't that many games at all.

It would be interesting to actually do some schedule analysis with two weeks left, but with still 6 teams within 10 games...I can't bring myself to do it.