Everyone has different approaches during draft season and those approaches change like the weather. Earlier in the past decade we saw many more pitchers throwing 200 or more innings, so maybe you were heavily investing in bats knowing there would be arms available later in drafts or even options you could pick up and stream.
If you look at the way things have shifted in the past few seasons, the need for pitchers has led to more streaming of bats than arms because all of the arms are scooped up early in drafts. Checking the facts on this by using the NFBC Main Event as an example, every team that finished in the top five selected at least two pitchers in the first five rounds.
Doing a deeper dive, only one of those aforementioned five teams didn’t start their first ten rounds with at least five pitchers. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s about quality after a certain point. If that many quality pitchers are off the board at a position, that’s scarce in general, you’re more likely to find hitting on your waiver wire than you are to find two-start pitchers that will make an impact.
Going back to look at some more tidbits on NFBC, 18 starting pitchers are being drafted in the top 50, and 36 in the top 100 so for anyone thinking about streaming quality arms, you’re more likely to win the lottery. I know what you’re thinking, that’s still two-to-one in terms of bats-to-arms being drafted, but when you think of the composition of a baseball team, that’s obviously going to be the case, but that gap has been closing as the seasons have gone on.
The volatility of pitchers these days should give us a sense of urgency on draft day. Since 2016, there have only been 57 pitchers that have thrown 200-plus innings in a season, obviously multiple guys doing it more than once over that span. The possibility of having two-to-three of those guys in your rotation is crucial. Even taking shots on guys that could springboard over the 200-inning threshold for the first time are worth it, giving us more reason to heavily invest in pitching and wait on the offensive side of things.
Circling back to the quality argument from above, that’s what we’re more likely to find with bats on the waiver wire, so we should be focusing more of our time streaming them over pitching. Just looking at some current up-to-date ADP’s over on NFBC makes it easy to take the same stance we’re taking here:
Each one of the guys above are being drafted 330 or beyond. Each one of those guys have plenty to offer in a streaming setting, because when streaming hitters, you’re prioritizing specific match-up’s they have coming up. Obviously the list above are seven of many others, but take Pillar and Cron for example. Cron has a career .819 OPS against left-handed pitching while Pillar’s has been up over .820 against southpaws in each of the past two seasons. Streaming guys like Nate Lowe and Alex Dickerson present us with multiple home run upside in a single week.
Lost in all of this is the fact that we simply get to use the batters we’re streaming for longer. In an ideal world we’ll be able to find two-start pitchers each and every week that will just be waiting for us on our waiver wire, but that’s obviously not plausible to think. The availability of the power hitter playing in Camden Yards or platoon lefty playing at Coors Field is far more likely than the former discussion.
There is a case to be made for both sides of this coin, but we should be careful on how we use our draft capitol and which approach we end up taking. With slim pickings on the mound and a plethora of potential 30 home run guys falling into our laps on the waiver wire, the choice isn’t too difficult at the end of the day.