Trade Tommy Hanson now while you still can. (Getty)Getting the leadoff hitter out every inning is the most important box on the pitching checklist. In innings when they do it, pitchers' ERA this year is 2.15. In innings when they fail, it's 7.75.

Put another way, when you let the leadoff hitter on, the opposing team is more than three times as likely to score.

But, of course, pitchers face far more hitters overall than they do to leadoff innings. When he's great at both, there's no action step for us fantasy owners. He's great, period. When he's bad at both, conversely, he should be swept from every roster.

But one very neat way I think to isolate pitchers who may be unlucky in ERA especially is to see where he's good overall but poor against leadoff hitters. There's a pretty good chance that's due to chance. I stipulate that it's possible that certain pitchers just lack the focus to deal with leadoff hitters, who are arguably more intent than usual to get on. But that's complicated and speculative. The simplest answer is that it's Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Taking the lead

Perhaps Chris Capuano can keep up his early '12 success. (Getty)We're well past the quarter turn now so you would think that year-to-date performance greatly influences current starting pitching rankings, even though those rankings are supposed to only consider future performance.

But the relationship between what's actually happened thus far in 2012 with starters and what's expected to happen going forward can be most tenuous.

But which rankings to use? I don't want to go on a witch hunt here. The idea isn't that whoever does the rankings is an idiot. They may well be correct: Maybe Chris Capuano is going to be pretty much non-rosterable for the rest of 2012, even though he's been the fourth-most valuable pitcher in the league to date. So I've averaged three current rankings that will remain unnamed to get a consensus view. I know I'd probably do something very similar if charged with this rankings assignment – put too much weight into my preseason view. While I strive to be hyper rational here, I suffer from the same decision-making biases Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Future tripping

Now is a good time to acquire Ivan Nova's services. (Associated Content)A good barometer for mixed leagues is that all pitchers with a better than 3-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio should be owned. Usually, that gets you very workable averages in WHIP and ERA. (For "only" leagues, the barometer is lower – 2/1.)

Usually is the operative word though, as it usually is in this space. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. But if you buy the rule, you really need to be willing to buy the exceptions. And the best thing is, they are cheap (or at least cheaper than they should be).

It's a very good bet that if the K/BB ratios of the following pitchers stay close to their rate thus far in 2012, their ERAs and/or WHIPS will get much better. For a sense of how much better, consider that thus far in 2012, the ERA of all starting pitchers who have a K/BB ratio of better than 3.0 is 2.94 and average WHIP is 1.08. Even if the following qualifying starters with a K/BB of 3.0 or better with an ERA of 4.00 or worse (through Wednesday) get only halfway there going Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Rules of K/BB ratio

This is the year of the failed fantasy closer. Injuries and poor performance have jettisoned preseason guys from saves duty, or threaten to. So let’s try to chart up the relievers in the best position to be promoted.

The data suggests Aroldis Chapman could thrive as a closer. (Getty)But what are the key metrics? Fortunately, there’s no need to get fancy with relievers presently not getting saves. With starters, we must look deeper because everyone sees the stats that directly relate to fantasy categories. But most of these guys aren’t even rostered in standard Yahoo! mixed leagues and many escape notice altogether.

To make this chart, relievers must have less than three saves and also (1) have thrown 15 innings through Wednesday, (2) have a K/9 of at least 9.00 and (3) walked 4.00/9 or less. (Since 1980, only 10 closers have at least 69 saves with a rate higher than that.) But we also note other key factors – ERA (because no manager is going to go all in on a guy that has an ugly number on the scoreboard for all to see every time he’s summoned),Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Closers in waiting

The purpose of these columns is never to replace the conventional ways we rank pitchers (based on performance in common fantasy categories) but rather to supplement them. We seek simple but meaningful ways to shuffle the deck a little in order to find greater value than is commonly perceived.

The numbers support Cole Hamels' case for elite status. (Getty)There's no worse fake sports feeling than seeing your pitcher give up five or more earned runs. And a super-quality outing of seven-plus innings of two runs or less ease whatever other pain your team caused you that night. So what if we simply ranked the pitchers by their ratio of super starts to rockings? We go back to 2011 and consider all starts through Wednesday. There are some interesting surprises, meaning pitchers who – judging by this statistic at least – are undervalued and thus smart buys.

First, though, I want to clarify some sloppy writing from last week's column. Hat tip to commenter El Grande Culo for catching it. I wrote: "Also, if we accept that hitters controlling outcomes isRead More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Super/bad

I'm very conflicted about Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). It definitely helps quantify randomness in baseball. But it does it so precisely that it beckons us to completely discount pitcher skill in inducing more weakly hit balls and it also discounts projectable defensive skill, as if batted balls randomly find their way into gloves.

We've dealt with this before here, in March, when we noted the BABIP bias against fly ball pitchers. And inspired by Daniel Kahneman's new book, "Thinking Fast and Slow," I was tempted to use it as one of the statistical measures to predict pitching excellence formulaically. In other words, I was going to assume that a good BABIP is really a measurement of skill rather than luck.

But first I needed to compare 2012 BABIP allowed by pitchers to their 2011 numbers. Those who significantly beat the league average both years are less likely to be lucky in this stat and more likely to be skilled – or at least have skilled defenders (think Tampa Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Digging into BABIP

There's nothing flukey about Gio Gonzalez's hot start. (Getty)Small sample sizes still abound. But we have decisions to make and the season for some of us just cannot wait.

Perhaps we can isolate some randomness out of the numbers by looking at who has the best and worst fielding independent ERAs while also comparing them to their actual ERA's. We've noted some limits to FIP here in the past. It has a bias against extreme fly-ball pitchers. It's doesn't factor in pop-ups as 100 percent outs, or near it, as they are. But we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and FIP is a good stat.

Thanks to Fangraphs for the data, which is through April 25th. Let's start with the pitchers with the best FIP ERAs.

Player	Team	K/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	ERA-FIP
Gio Gonzalez	Was	10.27	.228	80.0%	1.52	1.51	0.01
Johan Santana	NYM	12.0	.311	63.6%	3.00	1.57	1.43
Zack Greinke	Mil	10.65	.381	62.9%	4.56	1.72	2.84
Clayton Kershaw	LAD	8.87	.288	78.3%	1.61	1.74	-0.13
Stephen

Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Getting a grip on FIP

Clayton Kershaw is the king of getting Strike One. (REUTERS)The most important thing that pitchers can do is get ahead of batters with the first pitch. But it's not as easy as it sounds: throw a fat strike on the first offering and you get hammered.

This year after a 0-1 hole, hitters have a .590 OPS and just a .276 average on balls in play. Compare that to the overall rates of .714 and .289. But when hitters put that first pitch in play, bad things tend to happen – .820 OPS this year (through Wednesday's action) with a .293 BABIP.

It's early and the usual sample-size caveats apply. But we have to start somewhere with this year's stats and the time is now given that most starters have three games. So let's see who is best and worst at putting batters in the hole. The speculative play here is to target pitchers who are winning the first pitch at a high rate but who are somehow getting pounded after getting ahead 0-1. Of course, there may be reasons for this but they are very hard to rationalize so I would defer to the base rates generally and Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Getting ahead