2024 Fantasy Baseball Values: Starting Pitchers Who Underperformed SIERA

Nowadays there are so many metrics for fantasy baseball that it can be overwhelming to figure out which data is useful and which is misleading. When it comes to projecting pitchers it can be even more confusing since projection systems have proven to be far more accurate when it comes to hitters than pitchers. With starting pitching, it's best to identify a few stats that you like and understand what data they can present to you. It's rarely all-encompassing, so just let it tell you one piece of the story.

One of those stats for me is SIERA or Skills-Interactive ERA. SIERA attempts to quantify the skills that lead to a pitcher's ERA by taking into account how specific skills (strikeouts, walks, ground balls) interact with each other to help a pitcher limit runs. Pitchers who have higher strikeout rates or lower walk rates tend to have a better SIERA because their raw skills are better. As a result, SIERA has been proven to be the most accurate indicator of next season’s ERA because skills tend to be largely consistent year over year.

Now, it's not a perfect science but looking at the pitchers whose ERAs were far higher than their SIERA in the previous season can sometimes help us to identify ones who are most likely to bounce back in the upcoming season. As with all metric-based analysis, it requires further digging and a leaderboard shouldn't be taken as rankings, but I want to discuss the 20 starting pitchers whose SIERAs had the widest gap from their actual ERA. In doing so, I hope to help us all undercover some potential values when it comes to starting pitchers in 2024.

All ADP is taken from EARTH drafts, which were 11 February drafts of industry professionals in a 15-team league format.

Starting Pitchers 11-20

I've been in on Chris Sale (ADP: 130) for much of the offseason, and so the increased velocity and strong performance this spring are doing nothing to deter me from paying his rising draft price. He was rusty after barely pitching in 2022 due to non-arm-related injuries and then battled a surgery injury early in the season, but he had a 4.30 ERA and 1.13 WHIP without his best stuff. He would throw 95-96 mph early in games but then lose the velocity and feel for his pitches seemingly at random, which led to harder contact than you’d like to see. Yet, he still gave up just a 37.3% Ideal Contact Rate (Barrels + Solid Contact + Hard Groundballs), so he was still better than the league average and also missed a lot of bats with a 14.3% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and 31.5% CSW. I believe a full offseason of health will help iron out those inconsistencies from last year and since a good portion of his recent injuries weren't arm-related, I'm not overly worried about his health this season. Granted, not worried still means I'm banking on around 130-140 innings, but I think they'll be good innings. Plus, he’s been open about feeling that he didn’t live up to his contract in Boston and said he was upset about how he performed. For a player as competitive as Sale, that means he’s been attacking this offseason with something to prove, and I believe we'll see a season closer to his SIERA.

Most of the Red Sox rotation is featured in this part of the leaderboard. I already wrote about Giolito earlier in the offseason (ADP: 239) and why his new slider and revamped four-seam fastball had me buying in on a bounce back, and then we got the brutal news that he tore his UCL and would be out for the season.

However, I'm also in on Kutter Crawford (ADP: 250) as well. The 27-year-old throws six different pitches and five of them grade out as above-average but Stuff+ or Pitcher List's PLV metrics. Crawford has two different versions of a slider that both grade out well, one harder and tighter and the other with more sweep. He also has a four-seam that may only be 93 mph but it has elite Induced Vertical Break (iVB), which means it sinks less than most fastballs naturally do as they approach home plate. He may have performed better as a multi-inning reliever last year, but he has the arsenal to last as a starter. He's locked into a rotation spot for the Red Sox and should outproduce his value this year.

I also wrote about Jameson Taillon (ADP: 306) being one of my favorite late-round starting pitcher targets here, so I would encourage you to check that out to see why I believe he can pitch closer to his SIERA in 2024.

I was in on both Yu Darvish (ADP: 181) and Kenta Maeda (ADP: 241) as bounce-back candidates this season, but I'm a little bit hesitant about Maeda now. After his late start to the season, Maeda posted a 3.36 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 29% strikeout rate in 88.1 innings from June 1st on. He still doesn’t throw hard, but the splitter remains a tremendous pitch, and he started going to it more as the year went on. However, Maeda's velocity was way down in his first spring start, and his command was also all over the place (bouncing fastballs into the dirt), which gives me a little pause given his track record of arm issues. If that's cleared up in the next few starts then I'll buy back in.

Darvish is somebody I'm still getting shares of. He dealt with a bone spur last year, which limited his innings and his effectiveness, but he shouldn’t be hampered at all in 2024. There was no meaningful dip in velocity, so age doesn’t seem to be catching up with him, and he has so many pitches that he seems to be as good a bet as any pitcher to age well since he can keep hitters off-balance and mix-and-match pitches based on what feels good on a particular day. Darvish's sweeper, harder slider, four-seam, and curveball all grade out above average, but the command of his pitches aside from the sweeper was inconsistent last year. I still think some of that had to do with pitching through injury. I’d love to see him elevate his four-seam a little more and sometimes I think his command wavers because he is trying to throw so many pitches, but the floor in a non-injury season is pretty safe.

Starting Pitchers 1-10

There are a few interesting names here I want to break down in detail, so we'll get some quick hitters out of the way first.

We know Spencer Strider (ADP: 7) is elite; however, he will likely always have a SIERA lower than his ERA. The reason behind that is that Strider doesn't give up a lot of contact, but he does give up hard contact because of the lack of depth in his arsenal. I covered it a bit more in detail here, so you can read up on why that is but it shouldn't impact your desire to draft him at all.

Hunter Greene (ADP: 139) finds himself in pretty much the same boat except his stuff is less dynamic than Strider's and he gets hit even harder. I covered Greene in this article here and discussed why I'm not bullish on him, even with the rumors of his new pitches, until I see them in action.

Matthew Boyd (ADP: N/A) is an intriguing free-agent name to monitor. He has battled injuries for a few years now and his surface-level numbers weren't good in 2023, but he does appear on this list. He registered a 15.3% SwStr% last year; yet, none of his pitches graded out as above-average, so it's unclear what we're going to get from the 33-year-old.

Oh, look another Red Sex pitcher in Nick Pivetta (ADP: 174). Some people may be tired of Pivetta flashing some upside and then falling on his face and you could be "over" drafting him. I would encourage you to reconsider that now has a whole new pitch that he learned from his teammate, Chris Martin, which drove his second-half success. I discussed Pivetta and his “whirlybird” slider in this article on second-half changes, so I hope you read that to see why I'm high on Pivetta this year.

Brandon Pfaadt (ADP: 202) was the darling of March drafts back in 2023, but he came up and was unable to find much success early, primarily because his four-seam gave up so much hard contact, and he didn’t have another pitch besides a sweeper that he had trouble commanding in the zone. Well, as the season progressed, Pfaadt started mixing in a sinker and reducing his four-seam usage. While the sinker itself is not a great pitch, it induces more groundballs and gives up less hard contact to righties than the four-seam and can allow Pfaadt to set up his sweeper more consistently since he believes the sinker creates better tunneling with his best pitch. We also had a great story from MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert about how Diamondbacks’ pitching coach Brent Strom moved Pfaadt’s position on the rubber mid-season. “Before, he was throwing balls out of his hand which became strikes,” explained Strom. “Now we have pitches that are strikes that can become balls, which is what I was trying to achieve.” While I worry that Pfaadt still really only has one plus pitch, these changes worked for him, and I think he's in for a much better season in 2024. However, I still have him outside of my top 50 starting pitchers, so I'm not banking on him making an ace-level leap.

Hunter Brown (ADP: 166) is tricky for me. He looked really good to start the year, but then the bottom fell out with an ERA barely under 7.00 over his final 16 starts. Perhaps it was fatigue since he’d never thrown over 130 innings before or perhaps it was just the inconsistencies that come with a pitch mix in flux. In the second half of the year, Brown went to his curveball more as he lost the feel for his slider, and then he also toyed around with a sweeper. He mixed in a splitter more in the second half too, but lost some velocity and iVB on the fastball as the year went on. Yet, he started going to that fastball more as the year went on, and it caught way too much of the plate. It's not uncommon to see a young pitcher tinker with his pitch mix to find the version that works best against MLB hitters, but it does make it hard to know which version of Brown will show up in 2024. If he can command his secondaries and doesn’t need to rely on the fastball as much, then he’s the low-to-mid 3.00 ERA arm we saw in the first half of the year, but if he can’t harness his breaking balls then he’s at risk of imploding again.

Of course, Brown and the next name on this list were pretty good in comparison to other rookies in 2023.

Betting on Taj Bradley (ADP: 246) is essentially betting on the Tampa Bay Rays. Even though, as you see above, the underlying metrics say Bradley pitched better than his results last year. There were a lot of concerning trends as well. Bradley's four-seam and cutter are the only two pitches that grade out as plus pitches. But he rarely throws his cutter inside or high, so he's not using it to get in on the hands of lefties, but rather as a swing-and-miss pitch. Yet, there is no real location pattern with it, which is a bit of a concern. It's almost like he's just aiming for the strike zone and nothing else. He also threw the pitch for a strike at a below-average rate and that speaks to the lack of consistency he showed with all of his pitches in 2023. His raw stuff is great and he has flashed a potentially elite curveball as well; however, he also struggled to command all of those pitches at times in 2023. He could certainly get a better feel for them over the offseason, but I also have some concerns about his innings. We know Bradley will start the year in the rotation, but Shane Baz should be back by June and then both Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen are slated to return in July or August. Obviously, that gives Bradley a few months to iron out the kinks, but if he still struggles with consistency, he's not a lock to remain in the rotation all year.