In case you didn’t read the title, this piece is about what happens to MLB All-Star pitchers in the second half of the season. It’s 100 percent inspired by J.J. Calle’s fantastic Narrative Calle on the second-half production of Home Run Derby participants and is just something that I’m putting out relatively quickly. It’s not a complete and thorough answer to the question I pose in the title. It’s the beginning of the answer. And it’s much more focused on ‘real baseball,’ but there is definitely DFS application.
This is the 69th installment of The Labyrinthian, a series dedicated to exploring random fields of knowledge in order to give you unordinary theoretical, philosophical, strategic, and/or often rambling guidance on daily fantasy sports. Consult the introductory piece to the series for further explanation.
The Ambling Preamble
Basically, three things can happen to MLB All-Star pitchers after the All-Star Game:
— They get better.
— They stay the same.
— They get worse.
Come for the analysis, stay for the banality . . . I call it ‘banalysis.’
And of course these three potential outcomes can be thought of as occurring in two separate yet adjacent universes:
— “Real Life” MLB, with performance being judged on the basis of wins, losses, earned run average, walks plus hits allowed per inning pitched (WHIP), etc.
— MLB DFS, with performance being judged on the basis of Plus/Minus, Consistency, and Upside.
If these All-Star pitchers get better in the second half of the season — or even if they stay about the same — it’s pretty easy for us to shoehorn an explanatory narrative into that boot.
If these pitchers do worse after the All-Star Game, that would be 1) more intriguing than if they improved or stayed the same and 2) could be explained with the following narratives:
— Pitching in the All-Star Game (or not getting to rest to the extent that non-All Star pitchers do) negatively impacts these pitchers.
— As the season progresses, these pitchers naturally wear down (regardless of the All-Star Game), just as any group of random pitchers might.
— These pitchers regress, having been chosen to pitch in the All-Star Game in the first place because in the first half of the season they were throwing the ball much better than even good pitchers regularly throw it.
— DFS platforms price these pitchers with more accuracy in the second half as the sample size of the season grows, and so they lose value from a salary-based perspective.
All of this raises the question: What happens to All-Star pitchers in the second half?
The Research
In answering this question, I am relying on our free Trends tool as well the All-Star Game data at Baseball Reference.
A couple of items:
— I will be looking only at pitchers who actually threw a pitch in the All-Star Game. I’m sure that being an All-Star pitcher who doesn’t ‘get’ to appear in the game is its own kind of burden . . . but for the purposes of this study I don’t really care about those pitchers.
— I’ll be looking at only the 2014 and 2015 seasons, because 1) if I want to get this piece out today that’s all I have time for, and 2) I’m sacrificing depth for breadth, as we have full data for DraftKings and FanDuel going back to only the 2014 season. If I cared about FanDuel only, I could go back to the 2012 season, but I’d rather see how both sites have priced All-Star pitchers.
Here we go . . .
Baseball Reference Findings
In 2014 and 2015, we saw 19 starting pitchers appear in the All-Star Game. Here’s how they collectively did (in mostly ‘real baseball’ terms) before and after the event:
These differences are fairly marked. In almost every way, these pitchers were better before the All-Star Game than after it. You could say, “Well, they’re striking out more batters per nine innings” — but they’re not pitching as many innings per start. You could say, “They’re actually throwing more pitches per outing” — but they’re not lasting as many innings and so they’re being more inefficient with their pitches.
In the second half of the season, these All-Star pitchers (on a per-start, -inning, and -pitch basis) are winning fewer games, pitching fewer innings, allowing more walks, hits, earned runs, and home runs, and ultimately scoring fewer fantasy points.
The Baseline Information
How do these numbers compare to the first- and second-half numbers of all the non-All-Star pitchers? Although I can’t find all the data points I want to use via the Pitching Split Finder at Baseball Reference, I can find enough information to answer the question.
To create pre- and post-All-Star Game baselines truly based on pitchers relatively comparable to our All-Star cohort, I’m using the following criteria:
— In the pre- and post-All-Star baseline cohorts, I’m considering only pitchers who start every game in which they appear within the timeframe.
— In the pre-game cohort, I’m using only pitchers who start between 15 and 21 games before the All-Star Game.
— In the post-game cohort, I’m using only pitchers who start between 10 and 16 games after the All-Star Game.
As a point of reference: The 19 All-Star pitchers start an average of 17.9 games before the event, 13.2 games after it, and never appear in relief.
The Baselines Themselves
Here are the baselines, along with pitcher count, games started, and games started per pitcher. Given the number of games they start (and thus their importance to their teams), the pitchers in these baseline cohorts are as comparable to the All-Star pitchers as we’re going to get:
A couple of items that you might notice:
First, at no point in time are the All-Star pitchers ever not the superior pitchers in any category. I know that I phrased that idea as a double negative, which technically isn’t correct, but that fact is so significant it deserves the double negative. The ‘better’ pitchers are actually and always the better pitchers.
Second, the non-All-Star pitchers are pretty d*mn close to being the same before the All-Star Game as after it. The percentage of wins, innings pitched, WHIP, ERA, strikeouts per nine innings, and home runs per nine innings are incredibly comparable. These guys basically are what they are for the entirety of the season. Which means that . . .
The Differentials
This might hurt your eyes:
The All-Star pitchers are in a relatively disadvantaged situation in the second half of the season. In the ‘Differentials Table’ above, green represents the subgroup that has the edge in any differential metric. On a percentage basis, we can see that the non-All-Star pitchers stay more or less within a five percent range of change. The All-Star pitchers, however, radically change — and not for the best.
In the second half of the season, All-Star pitchers regress substantially. Their winning percentage drops by more than 10.5 percent. Their WHIP increases by more than 5.5 percent. Their ERA jumps an unholy 16 percent. And they allow home runs with just under 12 percent more frequency.
The data here is pretty clear. At least over the last two years, All-Star pitchers have been substantially worse in the second half of the season — and their peers haven’t.
The Trends Tool
I don’t want to belabor this. You see where all of this is going.
On DraftKings, all pitchers are about average (+0.01 Plus/Minus) all year and slightly below average (-0.05) August through October. The All-Star pitchers have seasonal numbers that look great (+3.38) — but they really tail off in August through October (+1.25).
On FanDuel, all pitchers are about average (+0.06) all year. They drop notably (-0.59) in August through October. Of course, that drop isn’t nearly as notable as the one we see at that time of the year for All-Star pitchers (+4.22 to +1.10).
What’s going on here?
For one, as we’ve seen from the Baseball Reference data, the All-Star pitchers regress. Also, the platforms (ironically but unexpectedly) — having seen these studs do so well for half of a season — continue to price them up exactly as the pitchers start doing worse.
Literally, as these pitchers start to perform worse, they maintain their salaries or even start to become more expensive. For fear of getting fired, I can’t even use the analogy that comes to mind right now.
The Takeaway
Here’s the thing: These All-Star pitchers are still the best pitchers available on a consistent basis. They’re not bad — they still provide value in the second half of the season — just not as much as they did in the first half.
So what does this mean? In cash games, you should continue to use them but should also temper your expectations. In tournaments? Ownership arbitrage whenever possible, as these guys are likely to be rostered more than they should be.
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The Labyrinthian: 2016, 69
Previous installments of The Labyrinthian can be accessed via my author page. If you have suggestions on material I should know about or even write about in a future Labyrinthian, please contact me via email, [email protected], or Twitter @MattFtheOracle.
