Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Pitcher Hot Potato

Last week, we took a trip on the closer carousel. One thing we can say for certain is that it is never a dull ride. In the last week, we have seen several more relief pitchers who were unable to hold onto their closing gigs for various reasons. But this week I want to dive into starting pitchers. The following is more of a commentary on general strategy, but I believe it holds value concerning rest-of-season rankings as well. I will begin with a brief story from the way back machine.

My favorite type of season-long fantasy baseball league is the Salary Cap Challenge contest. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you are not alone. Fantrax used to run this type of league back in the day, as did CDM Sports. Its primary home is now on NFBC. Quite frankly I don’t think anyone has properly marketed the game for at least the past decade, and it will probably die out at some point as a result, but that’s neither here nor there. I will die on the hill that it is the most equitable style of fantasy baseball.

A staple in these challenge games is that you get a limited number of player adds and drops for the season. They designed this feature to prevent managers from abusing the waiver wire. The main problem with having a limited number of drops is that some managers would blow through their allotted moves early and be screwed later in the year. They would become disenfranchised and stop making roster moves altogether. To combat this, CDM allowed for two more players to be added for the final five weeks of the season. This helped keep more managers engaged throughout the season. Nobody likes it when managers ignore their teams down the stretch, especially in a Roto league.

I used to relish trying to figure out which two players I should add. I also enjoyed trying to figure out who other managers would be adding. More often than not, at least one of my two roster expansion players would be a starting pitcher. That is because you could usually find a quality pitcher with two two-start weeks in five weeks. As we all know, fantasy baseball managers highly covet two-start weeks. This was a huge edge down the stretch and helped me quite a bit. Shoutout to Andy Pettitte, Javier Vazquez, and a bunch of other starters who I am blanking on at the moment.

There is a reason I mention this, and it ties into my ROS rankings. We have roughly five weeks left in the regular season. However, it is going to be damn near impossible to find a starting pitcher who will make seven starts over the final five weeks. Teams treat starters completely differently than they did a generation ago. We have open admissions of innings limits, six-man rotations, and openers/bullpen games. Teams may rest starters once they have been eliminated from playoff competition. Others may do so once they have secured a playoff berth. I would be surprised if any pitcher in baseball threw more than 40 innings from this coming Monday until the end of the regular season.

So while I may have Pitcher A ahead of Pitcher B in this week’s rankings, take your specific situation into account. If you need wins and strikeouts and are not concerned with ratios, now is the time to churn and burn. If you have a fringe starter who makes two starts either next week or the week after, the odds are that he will have no more two-start weeks. At that point, you can drop him for another pitcher who does. There are very few pitchers who I would deem undroppable, especially after Labor Day. It is a mad dash to the finish line at this point. May the wind be at your back.

Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings