The player news is fairly slow this time of season as the players don't start arriving to camps until next week. However it's a great time to take a look back and see what's trending.

2010: Say Hello to The Dominance of Starting Pitching Part 2

On Tuesday we took a look at the shift from hitter or offensive production during the decade that was (00s). Today, let's take a look at the other side of the equation: Starting Pitching.

Let's start with the Fantasy Baseball 5x5 $ values of the top 120 starters. According to our data, from 2000 to 2009, the average fantasy value for the top 100 pitchers has risen from $11 to $13, and FPI or Fantasy Production Indicator (which measures fantasy contribution per inning) has risen from 1.20 to 1.35. So while Hitter values lost about 10-12% during the decade, pitcher values have gone up at a 10-12% clip.

Below is a more informative look at the tiers of starters as sorted by WHIP (a credible indicator of fantasy value as ERA and Wins are also closely correlated with WHIP). Here’s a listing of the pitchers with at least 120 IP and sorted by the lowest WHIPs in the year 2000 (grouped by top 10/20/30/40) :

Now fast forward to 2009:

Hence the 4th tier, the 31st-40th best pitchers in 2000 averaged a 1.36 WHIP, and that same tier pitcher is now averaging a 1.25 WHIP...amazing how rapid the shift has been in less than a decade....and the likely culprit was of course Steroids or PEDs.

At the same time among the top 120 pitchers, the average ERA has dropped from 4.61 to 4.40, and the average WHIP has also dropped from 1.43 to 1.35. While Fantasy Production Index or Indicator (FPI) has increased by 9% to 1.30 from it’s low point of 1.21 in 2000. Clearly pitchers have rebounded from the early lows of the 2000 decade.

Additionally and not surprisingly, pitcher projections have become more predictable than they were to start the last decade.  Does anyone remember early in the 2000s when famous Sabermetician Bill James wouldn't even do pitching projections because of his frustration with their predictability? I remember this frustration first hand, and now we know the culprit (PEDs). Don't get me wrong, they'll always be an increased injury factor as pitchers are just more injury prone (the "unnatural" pitching motion). Outside of the injury factor, I routinely correctly project an almost equal number of directional upswing/downswing among both hitters and pitchers. The stigma of unpredictability is starting to fade.

My three observations:

• On average, Pitchers are performing at a higher level than at any point in the last 10 years. The relative value of pitchers has increased over the decade.

• Pitcher Production predictability has increased significantly over the decade.

• Similar to hitters, the degree of separation between the upper tier pitchers and the 2nd tier is less pronounced than it was in the past.

In looking at the trend among both pitchers and hitters, the overriding factor is that outside of a very few players, there is a tendency to overvalue the top tier of players. When in essence the degree of separation between the top 40 players for both hitters and pitchers is now much smaller than it once was. Hence in an auction draft, I prefer to stay out of the bidding on near top tier talent as the relative gain in performance will likely not exceed the incremental price difference between the next tier. As an example, take a look at the incremental differences between the 11-20th and the 21-30th player range for WHIP and SLUG....it's not nearly what it once was.

As we have discussed in the past, winning auction prices take a barbell structure, and now more than at any other time over the last 10 years, there is more value closer to the middle. 

For those that use our player projections software, you already know that unlike generic rankings or valuations you may see elsewhere, the software does the math for you. It actually computes auction values based on these incremental stat differences and also is bases it's computations on your particular league settings. Thus the values are a true representation of player contribution in your exact league format. Similarly for those who play in a serpentine draft (non auction league), the true lesson for the stat trends comes from our Value above Mean (Position Scarcity Formula) which ranks the players according to the incremental differences between the stats and the other roster positions.

In a coming blog we'll discuss the relative fantasy value of pitching from a simple mathematical perspective.

Recent Sabermetic Twits from Fantistics on Twitter (we are brand new to twitter, come join us as we build our social presence):

Anthony A. Perri

Statistician and Publisher -Fantistics Insiderbaseball.com