Allocation of Innings for the NFBC Draft Champions Contest

As we enter the heart of draft champions season at the NFBC (50 rounds, no in-season moves) many fantasy team managers will find themselves filling out the back-half of their roster with starting pitchers that currently sit six, seven, or eight on their team’s depth chart. In a 15-team draft champions league, 300 to 350 pitchers get selected during the draft’s 50 rounds. If 65-75% of these are starting pitchers, you would expect around 240 starters to get selected, averaging eight starting pitchers per MLB team. How many innings should we expect from these hurlers?

Looking at 2023 data, we can get an idea of how many innings are thrown by players projected to be SP1-SP8 on their respective depth chart (Table 1), and then also get an idea of how many innings were thrown by the top innings pitched guy on each respective depth chart (Table 2). For example, Taijuan Walker is counted as an SP4 in Table 1, initially projected for the fourth most innings on Philadelphia behind Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler and Ranger Suarez. In Table 2, Walker’s stats are counted towards SP3 as he was third on the Phillies in actual innings behind Nola and Wheeler. You can think of Table 1 as how many innings were thrown by the guys we thought were going to throw the most (second, third most, etc.) innings. Think of Table 2 as, “How many innings were thrown by the innings leader for each team? Second, third, etc.?”

Table 1: Starting Pitcher Rank on Team by Projected innings pitched vs. Actual Innings Pitched

Table 2: Starting Pitcher Rank on Team by Innings Pitched

A couple interesting takeaways from these tables:

1. The guys we think are going to comprise each respective rotation (SP1-SP5 in Table 1) only throw about 550 innings between them.
2. SP1-SP5 fell short of their innings projection by almost 40 per spot, while SP6-SP8 slightly exceeded their projected inning pitched.
3. If we sort retroactively by innings (Table 2), the top five starters covered more like 650 innings between them.
4. Last year, starting pitchers threw 24,984 innings, averaging just under 833 innings per team. Using the data from both tables, we should expect teams to need 180-280 starters innings from players not in their top five.
5. The tables show an SP6-SP8 generally receives about 150 innings of this work by their respective teams.

Can we use this data to unearth any late upside starting pitchers? One of my favorite resources for finding draft champions targets is the Fangraphs Starting Pitcher Depth Chart. I will briefly cover two depth charts and late starting pitchers I find interesting.

Braves Depth Chart

The Braves depth chart is expecting their current top five to cover 810 innings next year. Outside of Strider, the rest of the top five has as many concerns as just about any rotation in baseball. I would estimate the innings output from this group closer to 600 than 800. This should leave Ynoa, Smith-Shawver, and Waldrep with closer to 150 innings to cover than the 80 they are projected. Ynoa projects to above a league-average K-BB%, while Smith-Shawver and Waldrep are both highly regarded prospects that registered above-average Stuff+ during their stop in Triple-A last season. The biggest risk to any of these picks is that Braves add someone in front of them on the depth chart, but given their skills upside, they all make sense as reasonable ceiling picks later in a draft champions.

Orioles Depth Chart

Like the Braves, the Orioles top five are expected to throw an aggressive 750 innings next year. Povich and McDermott are prospects of note that managed average Stuff+ numbers in their Triple-A time last season, while Wells is coming off a 3.64 ERA season with a 25% strikeout rate. Wells is currently projected as a reliever, and Povich inning total seems fair, but all three of these players could return value at ADP (Povich and McDermott both carry ADPs north of 650).