This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
The first thing we discussed was the impact of "The Opener" strategy on fantasy baseball. I took the opportunity to once again beat the drum for the Times Through the Order Penalty (TTOP).
The Opener has lovers and haters; I fall in the former category. The haters will say that strategy only looked great for Tampa Bay because Blake Snell was incredible and heavily influenced the team's ERA. To wit, the team had a 3.49 ERA from the first time Sergio Romo opened a game until the end of the season. That figure was the third-best ERA over that time, trailing only the Dodgers (3.19) and Astros (3.37). If we remove Snell's contributions to that body of work, the Rays' ERA drops to 3.73, which would have dropped them to seventh best league-wide.
The simple fact is The Opener can work, depending on matchups early and the down-boxscore effect later. It allows the normal starter to miss the better bats in the lineup right out the gate, and limits those hitters from extra exposure to the normal starter within that game. I discussed this impact in an article just before the All-Star Break, but this is what the TTOP numbers look like for the 2018 season for starting pitchers:
| TTO | PA |
The first thing we discussed was the impact of "The Opener" strategy on fantasy baseball. I took the opportunity to once again beat the drum for the Times Through the Order Penalty (TTOP).
The Opener has lovers and haters; I fall in the former category. The haters will say that strategy only looked great for Tampa Bay because Blake Snell was incredible and heavily influenced the team's ERA. To wit, the team had a 3.49 ERA from the first time Sergio Romo opened a game until the end of the season. That figure was the third-best ERA over that time, trailing only the Dodgers (3.19) and Astros (3.37). If we remove Snell's contributions to that body of work, the Rays' ERA drops to 3.73, which would have dropped them to seventh best league-wide.
The simple fact is The Opener can work, depending on matchups early and the down-boxscore effect later. It allows the normal starter to miss the better bats in the lineup right out the gate, and limits those hitters from extra exposure to the normal starter within that game. I discussed this impact in an article just before the All-Star Break, but this is what the TTOP numbers look like for the 2018 season for starting pitchers:
| TTO | PA | ERA | wOBA | K-BB% | LOB% |
| 1st time | 43296 | 3.45 | .304 | 16% | 79% |
| 2nd time | 41138 | 4.17 | .316 | 13% | 73% |
| Thereafter | 26034 | 5.52 | .335 | 19% | 63% |
The trend is clear; the longer you are in the game, the higher chance you have to allow runs and more offensive production. A part of the point I made in defending the use of The Opener was that Major League Baseball is a copycat league. When a team wins it all doing something, other teams try to follow suit. The Royals slashed and dashed their way to a World Series title, and other teams tried to mimic. The Astros tanked in a way we had never seen before, and now multiple teams are racing to the bottom to hit the reset button on the franchise. I firmly believe we will see more usage of The Opener, or some teams looking into tandem starting where they'll take the marginal pitchers they have to turn them into tandems.
I'd like to look at some pitchers that paid an extreme TTOP last year and how having their usage adjusted in 2019 could lead to a turnaround as well as some pitchers that were very successful late into outings that may be in for a regression in 2019.
Jake Odorizzi
"Eggs" should be the face of the TTOP as he has had a historical issue with it. Odorizzi is essentially a two-pitch pitcher with a riding fastball and a falling split-change. He has a cutter and curveball too, but neither pitch is near league quality and are more show-me pitches that batters will spit on more often than not. 2018 was much like earlier seasons in that the longer Odorizzi remained in a game, the worse his numbers became:
| TTO | TBF | ERA | HR | wOBA | K-BB% |
| 1st | 288 | 2.71 | 4 | .278 | 17% |
| 2nd | 280 | 3.39 | 4 | .290 | 14% |
| After | 143 | 11.44 | 12 | .473 | 4% |
This should be an easy win for new manager Rocco Baldelli to take on with the team. Baldelli saw the benefits of the opener as well as aggressive usage of relievers in Tampa Bay the past couple seasons, and this situation screams for mimicking what Kevin Cash and the Rays did. The challenge with Odorizzi is that he exhausts his pitch count with a high number of foul balls so he is both tired and overexposed later in games. The next pitcher should be warming up with the 15th hitter of the game comes to the plate. Great managers will talk about pulling a pitcher a batter early rather than one too late, and Baldelli would be wise to do that with Odorizzi in 2019. It will ding his strikeouts a bit (struck out 26 3rd time through), but the ratios will be in much better shape.
Robbie Ray
Ray's season was shortened by injury as he made only 24 starts and fell well short of earning what many fantasy owners invested into him last season. His 3.93 ERA was a near perfect settlement between his inflated 4.90 ERA in 2016 and his fortunate 2.89 ERA in 2017. That said, it could have been much better with more credence to the TTOP:
| TTO | TBF | ERA | HR | wOBA | K-BB% |
| 1st | 212 | 2.81 | 5 | .273 | 20% |
| 2nd | 207 | 2.59 | 3 | .284 | 17% |
| After | 107 | 9.13 | 11 | .444 | 15% |
It is one thing for Odorizzi to be left in too long as an American League pitcher because managers do not have to worry about lifting them for pinch hitters in most outings. That excuse is not there in the National League, so leaving Ray in deeper into outings in the face of that data is perplexing. Ray has a 6.88 ERA and a .379 wOBA for his career after two times through the order, so this is not a new problem for him. His 24 percent strikeout rate after two times through the order shows he still has the stuff, but the 2.1 HR/9 rate also shows that when he doesn't miss the bats, he gets hit hard.
When Ray's ERA was 4.90 in 2016, he had a 9.91 ERA after two times through the order and allowed 12 home runs to 200 batters faced. The lower ERA in 2017 was due to the fact his ERA plunged to 3.02 in that same split and he allowed four home runs to 184 batters faced. He is capable of doing either again in 2019, but that 2017 season looks more like an outlier that influenced his usage by Torey Lovullo last season. Ray has three pitches, and we saw how that can still work when everything is right in 2017. His two breaking balls are both above-average pitches, but he needs the fastball to be in top shape to limit the TTOP. It was not there last year, hence the struggles.
Luke Weaver
You will recall I was bearish on Weaver last season and rightfully predicted he would not be a top 50 starting pitcher in 2018. The basis for the prediction had nothing to do with TTOP worries and was based upon the fact Weaver's peripherals did not support his inflated strikeout rate. That played out last season as his strikeout rate in 2018 was more in line with his peripherals. Last season, his stats were a bit unstable, which is to be expected from a young pitcher. His numbers got better the second time through the order, but then exploded if he was left in the game too long:
| TTO | TBF | ERA | HR | wOBA | K-BB% |
| 1st | 258 | 4.30 | 4 | .334 | 10% |
| 2nd | 230 | 3.19 | 8 | .304 | 16% |
| After | 121 | 10.50 | 7 | .421 | 5% |
Weaver's repertoire is much like Odorizzi's in that 80 percent of his pitches are fastballs or changeups. Like Odorizzi, Weaver can flash a cutter and a curve, but they're not pitches he will use when he is down in the count. Weaver is particularly reliant on his fastball later in outings, as evident by the below chart:
Weaver very much needs one of his other pitches to take a step up if he wants to do better later in games.
It should not come as a surprise that the pitchers with the best numbers deeper into games are the ones that are staff aces. Yet, the leaderboard for limiting offensive production after two times throught he order is peppered by some surprising names. The table below is the top 20 pitchers by wOBA, but sorted by the difference between the pitcher's expected wOBA and their actual wOBA after two times through the order:
| PLAYER | TBF | ERA | wOBA | xwOBA | Diff |
| Dan Straily | 111 | 3.77 | .223 | .306 | .083 |
| Reynaldo Lopez | 230 | 2.98 | .277 | .350 | .073 |
| Dereck Rodriguez | 117 | 2.76 | .257 | .323 | .066 |
| Ian Kennedy | 129 | 3.00 | .279 | .330 | .051 |
| Sean Manaea | 170 | 4.19 | .271 | .318 | .047 |
| Alex Wood | 139 | 3.71 | .271 | .318 | .047 |
| Trevor Williams | 149 | 2.56 | .238 | .275 | .037 |
| Corey Kluber | 260 | 3.36 | .247 | .282 | .035 |
| James Paxton | 174 | 2.09 | .210 | .242 | .032 |
| Walker Buehler | 118 | 4.40 | .263 | .290 | .027 |
| Gerrit Cole | 223 | 3.21 | .275 | .292 | .017 |
| Noah Syndergaard | 194 | 2.44 | .264 | .280 | .016 |
| Carlos Rodon | 157 | 2.35 | .271 | .283 | .012 |
| Steven Matz | 133 | 3.55 | .266 | .277 | .011 |
| Max Scherzer | 272 | 2.78 | .269 | .269 | .000 |
| Aaron Nola | 237 | 2.54 | .251 | .249 | -.002 |
| Jacob deGrom | 275 | 2.65 | .269 | .263 | -.006 |
| Mike Clevinger | 235 | 3.41 | .262 | .253 | -.009 |
| Matthew Boyd | 161 | 4.43 | .278 | .256 | -.022 |
| Chris Sale | 158 | 2.79 | .246 | .214 | -.032 |
There are a few interesting names on this list to look at for 2019.
Dan Straily
Straily faced 111 batters more than twice in a game last year and limited them to a .140 average, a .148 BABIP, and a 0.84 WHIP. This was a dramatic shift from his career trends, and one that didn't come about from a dramatic change in his repertoire, and only his breaking balls graded out as positive pitches on the whole of the season. There is not much in Straily's overall numbers to bring excitement, but the fact it could have been much worse should scare you off.
Reynaldo Lopez
This one is perplexing because Lopez has some incredibly strange TTOP splits:
| TTO | TBF | ERA | HR | wOBA | K-BB% |
| 1st | 288 | 4.02 | 13 | .311 | 12% |
| 2nd | 281 | 4.65 | 5 | .337 | 9% |
| 3rd | 215 | 2.47 | 6 | .262 | 8% |
When he was on last year, he did very well the third time through against hitters. He held them to a .173 average, a .182 BABIP, and stranded 86 percent of his baserunners. The xwOBA tells you just how fortunate he was during that time, so remember that as you align your draft plans for March as that 3.91 ERA will be very tough to repeat.
Dereck Rodriguez
If you are looking for reasons for Rodriguez to have a sophomore slump, look no further than here. Rodriguez had nary a TTOP last year, and did very well once he got through the order one time:
| TTO | TBF | ERA | HR | wOBA | K-BB% |
| 1st | 171 | 3.00 | 5 | .358 | 6% |
| 2nd | 170 | 2.89 | 2 | .245 | 18% |
| 3rd | 117 | 2.76 | 2 | .257 | 6% |
The second time through the lineup, Rodriguez struck out 24 percent of batters; the third time through, just 12 percent. He becomes incredibly reliant upon batted ball fortune later in games, and that went his way in 2018.
Trevor Williams
This one is very weird because Williams clearly had it, or he didn't, in his starts last season:
| TTO | TBF | ERA | HR | wOBA | K-BB% |
| 1st | 279 | 2.41 | 6 | .260 | 14% |
| 2nd | 273 | 4.28 | 6 | .342 | 3% |
| 3rd | 149 | 2.56 | 3 | .238 | 16% |
His skills the third time through were very much in line with what he did the first time through the order, but that second time through was simply not pretty. Williams and his high spin rate fastball graded out extremely well (21 runs above average), but the rest of his pitches came in as below average pitches. We saw that stretch over the summer where he looked unhittable despite a below average K-BB% in that time. Simply put, Williams has to continue to hit his spots with his pitches, and when it works, the results are there and he had 17 quality starts to show for it last year. When it does not, he allows runs in bunches as he had eight outings with four or more earned runs as well.
Matthew Boyd
I heard his name a few times in Arizona in small chat as a pitcher some were considering later in drafts looking for more upside. Boyd saw his strikeout rate jump six percentage points last season and held hitters to a .226 average and had a 1.16 WHIP. This was in spite of his third time through the lineup numbers coming in higher than they should based on the quality of the contact he allowed.
He held hitters to a .193 average the third time through the lineup with a 13 percent K-BB%, but the 1.8 HR/9 did him in as he had his highest HR/FB ratio during that time through the order.
As with all statistics, some overperform and some underperform. The mean tends to be constant, and as a whole, pitchers have a tougher time with multiple trips through the order. It's smart to focus on the pitchers who are on the extreme ends of both to see what could happen rather than predict which ones will break away from the pack to be the next extreme. Simply put, aces tend to be on the positive side of the extreme and that is why we chase after them because their stuff minimizes risks.
