CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Friday, April 2nd
That was a fun Thursday. Baseball is back! Just as we discussed in the rambling preamble yesterday, there are going to be random unprojectable performances from pitchers in their opening starts, and that is exactly why I recommend spreading out further than normal these first couple weeks. We saw guys like Hendricks and Castillo way off their game, and while I’d love to say we’re going to crystal ball which other pitchers will have a rough opening start, that’s not the way it works. All we have is the past data, but that past data is not as complete as usual thanks to the shortened 2020 season. We’ll look at 2019 and 2020 numbers to tell us what is most likely to happen, but I’m going to say it again – my lineups are going to be very spread out to catch the unprojectable outliers in these first couple weeks.
The pitching is nothing like it was yesterday, but there are still two aces and a strong second tier to dig into. On the offensive side, Coors Field is the lone hitters park on the slate and the Dodgers are all alone on top of the list today, with some decisions to be made on what to do with their high ownership.
H3. FRIDAY NIGHT PITCHING
TWO ACES
Unlike yesterday, we’ve got just two pitchers on this slate who had over 30% strikeouts last season and who appear to have obvious ace upside at first glance. Trevor Bauer and Blake Snell. Bauer is pitching in Coors Field, which doesn’t take him off the board on this slate, but it does make it less than thrilling to pay for him as the most expensive pitcher on the slate. There is also the up-and-down nature of his career, so we can’t just assume he’s the same 36% K pitcher from 2020. I’ve got him baselined at a combo of his 2019-2020 stats – 29.7% K, 8.3% BB, 3.78 ERA, 3.84 SIERA. That’s a very good pitcher, but not a must play in Coors Field at his salary.
Then we’ve got Snell moving to his new team in San Diego, but of all the places he could have gone, this is not the spot you’d expect him to see any dramatic increase in pitch count or innings. In Tampa last season, he didn’t reach six full innings once in all of 2020, and I think it’s safest to assume this is still a five-inning pitcher. With that being said, there’s no rule that they can’t let him go deeper if he pitches well, and even in five innings, this is a stud. His 32.6% K rate the past two seasons tops this slate by a slim margin over Bauer and a wide margin over everyone else.