{"id":702781,"date":"2026-05-30T01:34:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T01:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/702781\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T01:34:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T01:34:22","slug":"fantasy-baseball-mailbag-selling-high-teams-with-platoon-problems-low-k-starters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/702781\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy baseball mailbag: Selling high, teams with platoon problems, low-K starters"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point in the season, we all have different needs when it comes to our fantasy teams, so it\u2019s a good time to open it up for questions to see what topics are on your minds. I went to the Rates & Barrels Discord (here\u2019s a link to join<\/a>) and received three interesting topics to dive into.<\/p>\n

Topic 1: I always personally struggle to sell high because you just get addicted to riding the wave.<\/p>\n

For pitchers, here\u2019s how I evaluate whether it\u2019s a good time to \u201csell high\u201d. It\u2019s easy enough to run a leaderboard of starters with the biggest gap between their current ERA and their projected ERA, using OOPSY. Let\u2019s do that first. On second thought, let\u2019s remove anyone who\u2019s projected for lower than a 3.50 ERA going forward, because it\u2019s not really that great of an idea to sell high on Shohei Ohtani because he might have a 2.99 ERA going forward instead of the 0.82 ERA he has so far.<\/p>\n

Sell-high starting pitchers<\/p>\n

NameERAppERADiffS+L+P+<\/p>\n

1.32<\/p>\n

4.30<\/p>\n

2.98<\/p>\n

98<\/p>\n

91<\/p>\n

92<\/p>\n

1.51<\/p>\n

4.17<\/p>\n

2.66<\/p>\n

99<\/p>\n

105<\/p>\n

104<\/p>\n

2.31<\/p>\n

4.78<\/p>\n

2.47<\/p>\n

89<\/p>\n

107<\/p>\n

99<\/p>\n

2.04<\/p>\n

4.15<\/p>\n

2.11<\/p>\n

91<\/p>\n

101<\/p>\n

92<\/p>\n

1.57<\/p>\n

3.63<\/p>\n

2.07<\/p>\n

106<\/p>\n

116<\/p>\n

117<\/p>\n

2.50<\/p>\n

4.48<\/p>\n

1.98<\/p>\n

86<\/p>\n

105<\/p>\n

93<\/p>\n

4.01<\/p>\n

5.97<\/p>\n

1.96<\/p>\n

80<\/p>\n

103<\/p>\n

88<\/p>\n

2.69<\/p>\n

4.64<\/p>\n

1.95<\/p>\n

98<\/p>\n

102<\/p>\n

99<\/p>\n

2.27<\/p>\n

4.19<\/p>\n

1.92<\/p>\n

89<\/p>\n

106<\/p>\n

96<\/p>\n

I agree with almost all of these as \u201csell highs\u201d. This speaks to my method for ranking pitchers \u2014 look at the projections, look at the underlying metrics that have proven predictive, and anchor the analysis to those. Kyle Harrison aside, these are all middling stuff pitchers, getting by mostly on location, and they have boring-to-harmful rest-of-season outlooks.<\/p>\n

What makes it tough is that anyone else can look at these numbers and decide they aren\u2019t buying high on what you\u2019re offering. So you\u2019ll have to find more enticing pitchers if you want to actually coax some value out of what you\u2019re offering. Consider a few of these riskier \u201csell highs,\u201d if you will:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Parker Messick has a 2.23 ERA against a projected 3.91 ERA, and Progressive Field plays the most hitter-friendly<\/a> in June.
\u2022 Emerson Hancock (2.78 ERA \/ 3.94 ppERA) has seen his arm angle drop a further 6-plus degrees, and he\u2019s lost four-plus inches of ride on the fastball.
\u2022 Ryan Weathers (3.64 ERA \/ 4.27 ppERA) has a C health grade and has only topped 100 innings once in his career.
\u2022 Ranger Suarez (3.02 ERA \/ 4.12 ppERA) is sporting the worst Stuff+ and ground-ball rate of his career.<\/p>\n

Deciding to sell those players all hurt more, I get it. Most of them feel like real breakouts, young pitchers with a lot of seemingly great career left. But that also means you might actually get something for them, too.<\/p>\n

Topic 2: Which teams struggle against starters of only one handedness (i.e., struggle against only lefties or only righties) \u2014 something to know when streaming against them?<\/p>\n

Again, the easy answer is to go to FanGraphs and look at team splits<\/a> and see what has happened so far. Here\u2019s how these teams have hit (using wRC+) against lefties and righties so far this season:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Sure, you expected the Rockies and Padres to be in the bottom five versus lefties, but did you expect the Mariners and Blue Jays also to be there?
\u2022 Everyone knows about the Phillies versus lefties (20th), but they\u2019re better than the Orioles and A\u2019s so far against southpaws!
\u2022 Watch out for Cleveland against lefties, they\u2019re ninth-best (and the Angels are 12th-best!).
\u2022 The Angels suffer against righties (27th), though they are joined by the Red Sox (28th) near the non-Rockies bottom.
\u2022 Hey, the Phillies are 25th against righties, maybe that\u2019s their big problem?
\u2022 The Reds are fine versus lefties (8th) but have struggled against righties (24th).
\u2022 Watch out for the Pirates (fifth) and Mariners (second) against righties!<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s an approach, and it has its merits, but platoon splits in small samples are pretty noisy, and then when you add it up for a whole team, you\u2019re compounding the problem. A better method is to take projected platoon splits by team, which you can do using Steamer projections<\/a> if you\u2019re a FanGraphs member.<\/p>\n

According to those splits, here are the teams that struggle the most against lefties and righties:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Play your lefty starters against the Rockies, Guardians, Nationals, Marlins, White Sox, Pirates, Rays and Tigers, in that order.
\u2022 Play your righty starters against the Rockies, Angels, Marlins, Reds, Rays, White Sox, Nationals and Guardians, in that order.<\/p>\n

You can see where the quibbles might be. The Nationals have scored the most runs in baseball, and the White Sox are eighth. You may find that you want to be more conservative and leave some teams off these second lists.<\/p>\n

But, at least process-wise, using projections should be the superior way to go about things.<\/p>\n

Topic 3: The 20 percent strikeout rate cliff for starters. Historically, how hard is it to be a fantasy-relevant SP (say, a top-75 SP by end of season) while at or below that number?<\/p>\n

I took all of the 485 starters with 120 or more innings pitched in a season since 2021 and put them up against their accrued fantasy value in dollars. I used 15-team settings, so if your league is shallower, the findings are probably more stark. But among that group, 142 struck out 20 percent of the batters they saw or fewer.<\/p>\n

Among those 142:<\/p>\n

\u2022 60 returned positive fantasy value in 15-team leagues (around top-100 among SP)
\u2022 27 produced $5 or more value (around top-75 among SP)
\u2022 Five returned at least $10 of value (around top-40 among SP)
\u2022 One (Tyler Anderson in 2022) returned $20-plus in value (around top-15 in SP)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a little surprised that around one in three low strikeout starters can return fantasy value, but there are a few caveats.<\/p>\n

For one, they\u2019re very unlikely to be top starters. So, as much as Nick Martinez (15 percent strikeout rate), Michael McGreevy (18 percent), Eduardo Rodriguez (18 percent) and Randy V\u00e1squez (18.9 percent) are great stories, they aren\u2019t likely to end up in the top 15, and are almost one-in-30 shots to even be top-40 pitchers when all is said and done this season. Given that Martinez has accrued $15 in value so far this season, it\u2019s far more likely that he\u2019s going to be a negative from here on out than anything else.<\/p>\n

The other thing is that repeating this trick is really, really hard. Among the 60 positive value low-K seasons in the past five years:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Only one player (Anderson) has done it three times, and he was worth $5 combined over the five-season sample.
\u2022 Anderson had a $21 season, a $4 season, a 75-cent season and two double-digit negative dollar seasons.
\u2022 Only 13 players managed the feat twice, led by Jameson Taillon and Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos in talent.<\/p>\n

So the general rule of thumb is rent, don\u2019t buy. Low strikeout starters can be found money, where about one in three who are actually given full volume have figured something out and can be a positive. But they are a one-in-30 bet to have real fantasy relevance, and a one-in-142 bet to be a top starter. Once they do it, they\u2019re about a one-in-four shot to do it again (though not necessarily the next year).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a real shelf. Strikeouts matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this point in the season, we all have different needs when it comes to our fantasy teams,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,11142,462,82,480],"class_list":["post-702781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fantasy-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}