Updated points-league rankings: Sale, Kluber among aces off to poor starts
It’s Monday. For fantasy baseball managers, this means a crucial weekly exercise is about to take place, where you take stock of your roster, see where it might be lacking and then scour the waiver wire in the hopes that better options lie within. And, thankfully, without a ridiculously early Boston affair — or any afternoon game, for that matter — you’ve actually got a few moments to think about your decisions before your lineups lock.
Most teams have played around 20 games thus far. That’s still not the largest sample size in the world, but with most starting rotations now heading toward their fifth time around (if they’re not already there), the statistics are starting to tell a story for 2019. It’s not a finished story by any means, so while Chris Sale and his 0-4 record, 8.50 ERA and 1.56 WHIP shouldn’t be cause for cutting the ace, neither should it mean you can simply dismiss his sad start to the season.
Every pitcher needs to be judged on his own merits, but Sale has certainly earned some extra rope before getting thrown overboard, thanks to seven consecutive seasons with a top-six finish in Cy Young voting. A disappointing April has been a bit of an epidemic across the league thus far, with Gerrit Cole, Corey Kluber, Noah Syndergaard and Aaron Nola just a few of the other big-name starting pitchers with ERAs over 5.00.
Yet, even when you combine these unfortunate outliers with some of the offensive superlatives — Christian Yelich, Cody Bellinger, Khris Davis, Tim Anderson, Anthony Rendon, just to name a few — the truth is that pitching is not nearly as dire as the focus on these top stories may make it seem. The leaguewide ERA is only slightly higher thus far (4.34) than for all of 2018 (4.14), and the league-average hitter is actually doing slightly worse in 2019 (.245 versus .248).
In other words, there’s good pitching to be found out there. As always, my particular method of identifying which pitchers to consider for points leagues can be simplified down to a very easy-to-remember single number. That number is seven.
Once the games get rolling, the number of starting pitchers who qualify for what I call the “Rule of 7” tends to settle in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 names at any given time. That’s a fairly exclusive club, despite there being only a few simple requirements: All starters in the club must have an ERA of 3.50 or less and a K/BB rate of 3.50 or more for the season. Current membership (minimum two starts) sits at just 23 names — and two of those (Mike Clevinger, Matt Moore) have taken themselves out of fantasy consideration due to injury.
What makes the list so interesting right now is its lack of expected names. Last season’s final Rule of 7 club included the likes of Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and Clayton Kershaw, in addition to all the 5.00-plus ERA guys mentioned above. Not one of those pitchers is allowed past the bouncer right now.
Today’s list includes the following pitchers, all currently rostered in 90 percent of ESPN leagues or more: Justin Verlander, Blake Snell, Patrick Corbin, Jose Berrios, James Paxton, German Marquez, Masahiro Tanaka, Tyler Glasnow, Cole Hamels and Shane Bieber. Dropping down a bit, in the 80 to 90 percent range, are Jose Quintana and Joe Musgrove.
Three more names sit between 70 and 80 percent and should either be gobbled up if they’re available in your leagues, or conversely, if you’re not a believer, can be sold high before they regress: Hyun-Jin Ryu, Matthew Boyd and Kevin Gausman.
After that, we have just six names left, and these might take a little more convincing for fantasy managers to buy in. Two of them are members of the Rays “opener” squad, so your mileage may vary with Yonny Chirinos and Ryne Stanek. Still, the stats have been there thus far.
As for those of you looking simply to ride a hot hand in a streaming capacity, this would be a good time to focus your free-agent bids on the likes of Caleb Smith, Sonny Gray, Jordan Lyles and Vince Velasquez.
The following list reflects my rankings for points leagues from this point forward. Note that this is different from a ranking of how each player has played thus far in 2019. For a ranking of performance to date, check out the ESPN Player Rater.
“Elig. Pos.” is the player’s eligible position(s). “Pos. Rank” is the player’s ranking at his ESPN primary position. Player ages are as of Opening Day, March 28, 2019.