If you’re like me and are always searching for more unique ways to prep for draft season than going through plain old position rankings, then you’ve come to the right place. There are so many position rankings out there, and while they have value, a fresh approach can uncover information your leaguemates don’t know about yet. One area that’s often overlooked during draft prep is analyzing team context around pitchers. It can give you an edge over the competition when planning which pitchers to grab in drafts.

This article started as an exercise to rank a team’s pitchers based on the defense behind a pitching staff, but it quickly evolved into a more all-inclusive approach to ranking pitchers in general, giving special focus to factors like W-L record, defense, bullpen, and run support. It’s not difficult to imagine that the pitchers on the best teams are generally in the best situations, but being able to properly value it can still give clear advantages when you’re on the clock.

 

Beware of Falling into Bad Drafting Habits

 

For those of us who have been playing this game for a long time, it’s easy to think we figured out how to value starting pitching. Speaking from experience, that line of thinking is dangerous for fantasy success. It can easily make us overconfident and fall into bad drafting habits.

As we’ll see below, if you aren’t evaluating the team context around starting pitchers, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage, especially in points leagues. It’s understandable not to want to limit ourselves to only the pitchers on good teams. However, going after the pitchers who are the best skill-wise while ignoring their team contexts is not an advantageous plan. To almost intentionally go for the undervalued starters on bad teams that were being slept on while blindly ignoring team context is not a sound strategy for success. Intentionality targeting starting pitchers who are best set up for success in real life sets up your fantasy team for success as well. In short, even if there is a difference in skill, target a lesser player on a good team over a pitcher with better stuff on a bad team. There is tremendous value in drafting the undervalued volume arms who pitch on good teams. 

 

Explaining the Metric Behind Team Context Rankings

 

The metric used to generate the Team Context Rankings below is an all-encompassing stat that considers defensive metrics, bullpen statistics, and other team contexts. Some specific stats used were W-L records for teams’ starting pitchers, team runs scored per game, outs above average (OAA), defensive runs saved (DRS), and team errors, as well as bullpen efficiency. When ranking bullpen efficiency, the focus was given to how good the bullpen was at preserving wins for the starter. It’s something that can also be used when deciding which closer to target in drafts as well.

The best way to utilize these rankings would be to make them part of your draft preparation when evaluating which starting pitchers to target. There will always be exceptions, but there is tremendous value in this strategy if you truly embrace it.

 

Analyzing the Rankings

 

You will see in these tiered rankings that while the top tier does contain “good teams” and the bottom tier contains “bad teams”, it’s not that way across the board. For example, it may come as a surprise to find that starters on the Baltimore Orioles, San Diego Padres, and New York Mets are actually below average in a lot of the areas relating to team context. Starters for those teams do have their strengths, like good chances at wins, but the defense behind them is really bad.

There is an expectation that the Cleveland Guardians would excel at most, if not all, the things focused on and studied in this exercise. It’s hard to be too disappointed, as they still ended up in the second tier, but most people would likely assume they would be a lock to be in the top tier. The Guardians seem like the epitome of exceeding expectations and winning with less, by excelling at the little things. That is definitely true of the bullpen, so targeting Cade Smith at closer may be a good strategy. While they lead the sport in saves over the last four years, Cleveland is lacking in other areas, like runs per game. It’s a good time to mention that looking at bullpen efficiency in this way allows you to gameplan for closers as well, as another name to target is David Bednar of the New York Yankees.

 

Teams to Avoid

 

Looking at the Baltimore Orioles specifically, they have had one of the worst defenses in MLB each of the past two years. You would have guessed based on how their season went that this was a new development, but the reality is they were just as bad in this area in 2024 during a good season. Most people are encouraged by Baltimore’s off-season moves, so it feels like going against popular belief to fade them in this way. In the defensive metric that included OAA, DRS, and fielding run value, the Orioles rated last out of the mid-tier of teams, and committed the fifth-most errors as well. Taking Kyle Bradish is still defensible because of his swing-and-miss profile and strikeout potential, but there’s not a lot of optimism, especially when you consider newcomer Pete Alonso is not good on defense.

As expected, you do not need to analyze the bottom tier of teams in-depth in order to understand that they are the very worst situations in MLB for starting pitchers. Based on factors like how good the team was, or the specific starting pitchers in their tier, a lot of these teams didn’t have many starters to consider in fantasy, at least in the top 80. The only real exception here is Paul Skenes, but that kind of goes without saying. The Orioles deserved some special attention because it was surprising to find a team that is expected to compete to win the AL East, also being so bad on defense.

 

Teams to Target

 

On the flipside, the very best teams to target who are good across the board are the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs, and Milwaukee Brewers. A few names on those teams to target would be Dylan Cease, Cade Horton, and Quinn Priester.

A bonus team is the New York Yankees, who deserve some recognition for giving their starters the longest leash, allowing them to throw more pitches and go deeper into games. In that same vein, a great target is Cam Schlittler, especially if his ADP continues to be outside the top 30. He has a great chance at wins while going deep into games and providing volume rarely seen from someone so inexperienced. 

 

Check Your Bias

 

A good rule of thumb is always to put analysis and what the numbers say before your own preferences or potential biases. The best way to use the Team Context Rankings is to differentiate between starters inside their tiers. Meaning, if all else is comparable between two players, instead of caring about the name and playing favorites, just draft the pitcher in the safer, better situation. The best way to gain an edge is to take the best value that’s there and to be as name-agnostic as possible. My recommendation is to draft certain archetypes in certain environments rather than target specific players where possible. Bias can and will make you overpay for players you like and think you have to have, and learning to get away from those decisions is a very simple and effective way to gain a competitive edge over the competition.