Pitching Season Rating: A new metric for grading starting pitchers in fantasy baseball
Spending the past week running correlations while learning new spreadsheet formatting techniques can only mean one thing — I desperately need the baseball season to start (on American soil). Before we kick off, another hat tip is in order for the fine men and women working behind the curtain here at The Athletic. In an age of saturated and generic content, very few pieces nowadays are dedicated to progenitorial work aimed at developing a new metric or idea. And it makes sense — most flop and wind up in the dustbin of fantasy history … but not this one (I hope).
Despite dedicating every winter to fantasy baseball research, there's seemingly never enough time to cover it all, especially when the eleventh hour hits. Consider my newest brainchild, Pitcher Season Rating (PSR), an invention out of necessity. We've all been there in the draft room. You're a few picks away in a snake draft with a handful of hitters in the queue until it's suddenly empty. When it comes to batters, the industry has created more than one all-encompassing stat for a shorthand comparison, whether it's Weighted Runs Created-plus (wRC+) or Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA). Granted, it doesn't fully account for our fantasy perspective, namely steals. However, it will almost always steer you in the right direction. But what about starting pitchers? ERA and WHIP are skewed by volume or lack thereof — and while wins and strikeouts account for quantity, they don't speak to the quality of innings pitched.
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Long story short, our backstory is now in place — the lightbulb went on, and PSR was born. There isn't a comparable shorthand to serve as a sufficient starting pitching descriptor, particularly for a fantasy-based perspective. I wanted something on a 1-100 scale (similar to Madden ratings) that can be looked at for quick yet fair fantasy season comparisons. The closest thing in existence would be auction value returns, but there are a few issues. For starters, not everyone speaks dollar-value lingo, but it also accounts for replacement value, which I ignored. I didn't incorporate the player rater into my calculations, but I did use it as a benchmark in my backtesting, and the high correlation (R=0.86) feels pretty encouraging for a first run.
(Sample from FanGraphs consists of all 271 starting pitchers with at least two games started and 10 innings pitched in 2024 so as to avoid openers)
Wins — The wonkiest of all pitcher stats, one sit-down at an auction calculator will open your eyes to each win's value. Only two SPs posted 18 wins in 2024, and it doesn't start consolidating there — just 32 SPs eclipsed a dozen wins last season. Since the stat exists in a vacuum, players like Cody Bradford and Trevor Williams get a major boost for earning a half-dozen dubs each in under 75 IP.
Earned Run Average — Ratios proved especially hard to weigh due to their dependence on volume. Shane Bieber didn't surrender a single earned run, but it seems disingenuous to rate it among the best fantasy seasons in the league at just 12 IP. Conversely, both Taijuan Walker and Johnny Cueto posted an ERA north of 7.00, but Walker's hurts much more across 74 IP as opposed to 11 IP. You get the point. If PSR ever does catch on in the industry, I look forward to improving its impact.
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WHIP — The same issues as grading ERA with a necessary curve applied to volume. Only 18 qualified SPs, by my parameters, hung a sub-1.00 WHIP in 2024, but more impressive perhaps is that four achieved it in over 180 IPs — Logan Gilbert, Tarik Skubal, Zack Wheeler, and Bryce Miller. Similar to ERA, Shane Bieber deserves some credit for a stellar 0.92, but I'm struggling to claim he had a fantasy season for the ages in just a dozen frames.
Strikeouts — Finally, a category that didn't require me to blow dust off my old statistics textbooks. Combining an element of quantity and quality, total strikeouts do the best job as a standalone descriptor — though the bar's extremely low given the circumstances. For reference, it's not until SP66 by PSR that a pitcher struck out fewer than 100 batters, and it was Gerrit Cole at 99.
Since the study includes all pitchers meeting my minimum workload requirements, a '50' grade doesn't properly represent the bland or average season by percentile for our purposes. Using the eye test, I think that needs to get bumped up to 60, where Matt Waldron (142.2 IP; 7 Wins, 4.79 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 130 K) and Alec Marsh (128.0 IP; 9 Wins, 4.57 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 122 K) finished. Pretty unremarkable, huh? If you're nodding yes, it probably means we're onto something.
12 starters earned +90 PSR in 2024 (SP1):
12 starters earned between 85-90 PSR in 2024 (SP2):
I can't list all 271 SPs here, so I made the entire 2024 PSR list (with 5×5 stats) available on a public sheet. If the industry finds this useful, thought-provoking or both, maybe we can revisit it at the All-Star break to track 2025 or in the offseason and go back a few years. Get in the comments below and let us know what you think!
(Top photo of Tarik Skubal: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)
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Hockey is seeing a surge in popularity and buzz, fed by the 4 Nations tournament, Alex Ovechkin's stirring run to the NHL career goals record and the Florida Panthers repeating as Stanley Cup champions to set up a threepeat bid next season. Up next are the draft and free agency, with Mitch Marner and playoff MVP Sam Bennett among the top players available, and anticipation is building for the NHL's return to the Olympics for the first time since 2014. 'For all of us, I think we're just really proud of being a part of this bigger picture and growing the game and getting it more on the forefront,' Guerin said. 'The game's never been in a better spot.' 4 Nations success The NHL and NHLPA wanted to stage a World Cup but plans were pushed back until this year with a pared-down version involving the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland. Commissioner Gary Bettman referred to it as an appetizer, and no one knew exactly what to expect. 'We all went in hoping it was going to be a great event,' Armstrong said, 'and it ended up being better than anyone could have expected.' Canada's star-studded power play of Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Sam Reinhart connecting on a tic-tac-toe passing goal less than a minute into the opening game against Sweden served notice that the play would be at the highest level. The U.S. and Canada had three fights in the first nine seconds, and geopolitical cross-border tensions with crowds booing anthems and more put the 4 Nations in an unexpected spotlight. Fans were riveted. The final became one of the hottest tickets in Boston sports history, and more than 9 million watched in the U.S. and nearly 11 million in Canada. Not bad for a tournament that never happened before and may never happen again. The GR8 chase Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals took center stage as he chased down Wayne Gretzky's record of 894 goals, a feat that had long seemed unapproachable. Despite missing more than a month earlier in the season because of a broken left leg, he was in striking distance by late March. Still scoring at an absurd pace at 39 years old, Ovechkin went on a tear and tied the mark at home on a Friday night that became a celebration of his career. Two days later, he got No. 895 in New York against the Islanders, with Gretzky, Bettman, his mother, wife, children and more there to congratulate him. '(It is) the biggest accomplishment that the world of hockey has seen a very long time,' longtime teammate T.J. Oshie said. 'This record is going to be here for a while.' Ovechkin, now at 897 goals, is set to play his 21st NHL season and add to his total. Panthers repeat Florida had the 11th-most points out of the 16 teams that reached the playoffs and started each round on the road. Didn't matter. The Panthers got through Tampa Bay in five games, Toronto in seven and Carolina in six to reach the final for a third consecutive year. They then beat McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers again, this time in six to go back to back. 'Everybody wrote us off from the start of the playoffs,' veteran winger Brad Marchand said after becoming a two-time champion. 'They had everybody beating us in every round. We just had that fire. We knew we had something special.' Matthew Tkachuk, whose arrival in the summer of 2022 along with coach Paul Maurice coincided with Florida becoming an NHL powerhouse, went as far as to use the 'D' word. 'We've got to be dynasty now,' Tkachuk said. "Three years in a row finals, two championships. This is a special group.' Retired goaltender Cory Schneider called the Panthers 'one of the best teams I think I've seen in my lifetime.' 'They're the epitome of depth, skill, structure,' said Schneider, who worked the final as an NHL Network analyst. 'A lot of teams have good players. but it takes the attention to detail and the sacrifice to do it all the time. Teams want to play easy hockey sometimes and get their chances, but Florida does that while also committing to playing a complete brand of team hockey.' BetMGM Sportsbook lists the Oilers as a slight favorite to win next season's championship over the Panthers. The NHL hasn't had a three-peat since the New York Islanders won four in a row from 1980-83. Draft and free agency The league is having its first in-person, de-centralized draft in Los Angeles on June 27-28. The New York Islanders after winning the draft lottery have the first pick, and new general manager Mathieu Darche could pick defenseman Matthew Schaefer, an inspirational story off the ice. With the salary cap getting the first of several big jumps thanks to record attendance and revenue (increases to $95.5 million this summer), player movement could be fast and furious. Free agency opens July 1, and teams in markets from New York and Toronto to Los Angeles, Anaheim and Utah have cap space to use. Milan-Cortina Olympics The 12 countries taking part — Russia is banned — have already unveiled the first six players on their Olympic rosters. The International Ice Hockey Federation has released the schedule of games, with the men's tournament starting Feb. 11, 'When you're growing up when you're watching as a kid, it's Stanley Cup finals and it's Team Canada,' said Reinhart, who scored four goals in Florida's Cup-clinching game the day after getting named to Canada's roster. "Those are the two things that you dream about playing for. To have that opportunity is pretty exciting.' The NHL went to five consecutive Games from 1998-2014, then skipped 2018 and pulled out in 2022, leaving teams those years without any active league players. Milan-Cortina will be the first Olympics for players like McDavid, MacKinnon, Auston Matthews and Jack Eichel. 'Getting another opportunity to bring generations that have a Sidney Crosby and a Connor McDavid together to play internationally, it's just great for the fans and great for hockey,' Armstrong said. 'Players are so excited to be part of this. ... It's neck and neck with the Stanley Cup right now of wanting to win that event.' Tkachuk was named to the U.S. team along with brother Brady. With the two becoming household names for new fans after the fight-filled 4 Nations, it feels a little like hockey is in its Tkachuk era. Italy is the next stop on their journey. '4 Nations was good, and hopefully Olympics will be great, as well,' said Matthew after becoming a two-time Cup champion. 'I feel I've been the luckiest guy in hockey.' ___ AP NHL: recommended
