As fantasy enthusiasts, we tend to hunker down for fantasy baseball analysis in January and February, and by the time we are halfway through spring training, we get the creeping sense that we’ve got it all figured out. They don’t even need to play the season, we know that the Dodgers will beat whomever the AL sends to represent them in the World Series and that will be that. Mookie Betts and Fernando Tatis Jr. will battle each other for NL MVP. Jacob deGrom will win the Cy Young even if his pattern of paltry run support continues. We grow so confident in our silos of knowledge that it is easy to forget that our projections are designed to predict median outcomes. But outliers happen all the time. We don’t need to look any further than opening day to find them.
Shane Bieber throws a gem that is absolutely wasted because Miguel Cabrera hit a 2-run dinger in the first inning and the Indians made Matt Boyd look like Steve Carlton. Control savant Kyle Hendricks only lasted three innings against the lowly Pirates and walked three batters in that short time. The world beating Dodgers and their ace Clayton Kershaw were bludgeoned at Coors Field and lost to the folks the Rockies decided to trot out on the diamond Friday. The Rangers and Royals, whom no one would expect to be offensive juggernauts, put up a very NFL-esque 14 and 10 runs respectively.
It’s important to remember that these sorts of things can and will happen with tremendous frequency. Over time of course things will normalize to projections, but each individual day of games will have a few extreme outliers. If we can embrace this for DFS purposes, using leverage and game theory can be extremely profitable. It also means that we shouldn’t be too quick to react to short term fluctuations that will likely correct themselves in their next chances to iterate.
Let’s start with some obvious places to not overreact:
Clayton Kershaw
Kershaw has long and well documented struggles at Coors Field. It’s a hard place to pitch in general, but specifically for his pitching arsenal. Because he relies so much on movement and deception as opposed to pure velocity, and because Coors prevents pitchers from being able to generate the same movement to which they are accustomed, Kershaw struggling is plenty predictable. Yes, he’s older now, but I promise this is not a data point that should lead rational minds to believe that Clayton Kershaw is on some sort of tangible downward trend. If there are future starts that go comparably poorly, perhaps we should examine things more closely, but today’s start alone is zero cause for concern.
Rangers/Royals
What an interesting opening game this was! Each team managed to score 5 runs in the first inning, and didn’t really do it through particularly impressive offense. Just bad, truly awful pitching. The pitching didn’t get much better as the game went on, so if there’s anything to take away from this offensive explosion, it’s that the Rangers and Royals pitching (both starters and bullpen) leaves a lot to be desired, and opposing teams have a good opportunity to clean up against them. Today, they happened to do so against each other, but this is the proper takeaway, not that Kauffman stadium has somehow morphed into some sort of launching pad.
Let’s also dig into some takeaways that may be onto something:
Tyler Glasnow
It is often difficult to pinpoint the moment where potential becomes realized. Especially with pitchers, the changes can be gradual, almost imperceptible, until seemingly out of nowhere an above average pitcher has turned into an ace. Less frequently, the change is abrupt and extremely noticeable. While Tyler Glasnow was dominant throughout the brief 2020 season as well as in the playoffs, a sustained performance over the course of a full 2021 season would truly elevate him to ace status. His debut performance, while against the less than threatening Marlins, had a number of impressive aspects to it, but perhaps most impressive was the efficiency. Glasnow managed to go six innings on only 77 pitches while walking no one. If he can continue to avoid the free pass, he could very well achieve ace status sooner than later.
Reds Pitching
We’ve covered the Reds lack of pitching depth in these parts before, and it didn’t take long to show up on opening day. While Luis Castillo getting blown up for six runs in the first inning alone is certainly an outlier, it was valuable in exposing just how bad the Reds bullpen is and can be expected to be for the near future. Making matters worse, they will continually be pushed to the limit covering for an equally inefficient and unproductive rotation. When your bullpen is forced to go five-plus in order to cover for your ace on opening day, that portends poorly for things to come. Mercifully the Reds had Friday off to recover a bit, but we’ll want to make sure to target hitters against them early and often, especially so when you see the bullpen has been doing yeoman’s work the day prior.
Cleveland Baseball Team
I’m not sure if we’re still supposed to call them the Indians, but it sounds like that might be the plan for at least this season while they figure things out. Whatever you think of that, you would be forgiven if you did not recognize this Indians lineup. While it’s true that they match up pretty poorly with lefthanders in general, as a couple of their more dangerous regulars in Jake Bauers and Ben Gamel happen to hit from the left side, this lineup that was patched together to include an ill-suited leadoff man in Jordan Luplow and a light hitting Yu Chang was far from inspiring. As were the results – being shut out and having scattered six hits against Matt Boyd and the Tigers bullpen. Our memories and biases tell us that the Indians are a dominant offensive team, but that team included Francisco Lindor and Carlos Santana. Two switch hitters that hit high in the lineup and strike fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers who were replaced by lefthanded batters that are at best middling with some upside is a good way to change that narrative, and that seems to be what’s happened in Cleveland. This team is going to have some bad days, like we witnessed on opening day. But overall, it is going to struggle often, especially against southpaw pitching, unless some big changes are made to the roster.
