Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: quality starts versus wins in roto 5x5 leagues

Overall

We chopped up the data and dumped the numbers into a few different buckets, but let’s start with the general assessment.

Over the past three seasons, baseball has enjoyed more than 7,500 quality starts, but starting pitchers have notched wins in those QS only 54 percent of time. We’ll get into the inning-by-inning breakdown in the next bucket, but for quality start win percentages to be slightly better than a coin flip places fantasy owners of said “quality” pitchers in a predicament when quality starts don’t equate wins at a higher rate as a reward for the owner's efforts on draft day and thereafter.

By Inning

This bucket of quality start data focuses on pitchers who leave after recording 18 outs and allowing three or fewer runs.

The saying “if you want something done right, do it yourself” comes to mind, but isn’t an apples-to-apples idiom in this sense. However, it would appear pitchers providing their offense six innings to score runs and/or requesting the bullpen to hold onto leads in the later innings is asking too much.

This bucket of quality start data focuses on pitchers who leave after recording 21 outs and allowing three or fewer runs.

As one would assume, when you add one extra inning for the offense to score and omit one extra inning from the bullpen to hold, the odds a quality start from a pitcher results in a win improves - but only by eight percent. Still, I think some who have embraced fantasy baseball roto wins as a reward for their starting pitcher may find it a tough pill to swallow when seven-inning quality start result in a win only 54 percent of the time.

The eighth and ninth inning quality start win conversion rates are higher, but with a much smaller sample sizes over the three-year window as one would expect.

By League

My hypothesis for these two buckets was quality starts in the National League over the past few years would result in wins at a higher rate. Welp, despite nearly 300 more quality starts came from NL-pitchers (see: pitcher friendly league with no DH), the theory was wrong and held more of a balanced win ratio.

After jumping down the rabbit holes and digesting this data, the idea to replace “Wins” for “Quality Starts” should become easier to sell to fantasy league mates. I’m sure some of you owners embraced this years ago, bucking the norm and welcoming the new. Yet, there are still fantasy owners and commissioners out there fuming on a regular basis because their “Quintana’s” failed to notch the win every fifth day because the bats were too quiet on offense or too loud after they handed the ball off and hit the showers.

Embrace quality starts and bench wins as your league’s new normal in 2016.

(Footnote: if you do start using quality starts, don't forget to adjust starting pitcher ADP, as they'll probably go earlier in 5x5 roto drafts)