TINSTAAPPers step aside. Pitching speculation lives.

There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. An acronym encapsulating a lot of truths about this Dungeons and Dragons form of baseball we are addicted to. Pitchers get hurt, bust, fluctuations of effectiveness, (etc.) at a higher rate than hitters, thus find an alternative to farming. For the better part of two decades, I embraced this notion on some level, but I’m giving it up. In the end, you pay for what you get and I want more pitching sustainability. No pushback here regarding your truths, TINSTAAPPer, I’m just not going about them the same way anymore.

The fantasy world, in general, has shifted so far toward this negative pitcher bias, I want to start gobbling up the gains it’s leaving me, motivated to flip my prospect pitching ways upside down (or at least 180 degrees). Discoveries on how to tackle offense and some historical research regarding fantasy success rates play into this motivation as well, but that is a story for another day.

I am not pretending to have the answer to how we get better at pitching speculation, but I do have the motivation to put more work in. So like many coaches I had, after getting it handed to us, I wanted to get back to fundamentals and try to break it down as simply as possible, to stop trying to run before crawling. I put the spreadsheets down and wore out my MILB.TV subscription. Watch more, think less. Embrace your new addiction of sleuthing these arms and connect all the dots you can to paint a picture.

One can’t possibly thoroughly watch all of the thousands of pitching prospects out there, but I compiled a list of about 220 players I wanted to know, or had been watching during the season. Seeking the story of the progression of a player through the 2021 season, some fell off the list due to there being nothing available to watch. Some I turned on for a start or two and shut off. I tried to let what I was seeing naturally draw me in or out. Then I either watched all that was available of a player (anything from a few innings to full seasons), watched enough outings from the beginning, middle, or end of the season, or picked out particularly good and bad box scores to view until I had enough on a player to start forming an opinion.

In the end, from May through yesterday, the number of outings viewed has to have exceeded four digits. I point this out to illustrate just how laborious and hard it is to try and get a feel for what I was after. So much watching, you’d think you’d feel much smarter about all this, but I’m not so sure I do.

After you watch a player enough, two things almost always happen; you love the good things more and their warts get bigger. Every pitcher on this list has to figure out how to throw more strikes against better hitters. (I dare say significantly better hitters.) If anything hit me in the face, it’s that major league hitters, even the “bad” ones, are typically really good. The list I am sharing here is a culmination of this video review, lining up who I watched in the manner I’m valuing them right now.

During the upcoming in-season installments of PPL&R I will be sharing reviews of two to three outings a day, dropping my observations once a week. I will be looking to review arms from this main list, aka “Darlings,” arms I refer to as “Grinders” — mostly Triple-A arms vying for MLB innings in 2022, thus coming into play as streamer types in redrafts — and a tier I’m calling Shiny Green Balloons (SGB), which are “pop-up” arms, new guys getting full-season action, arms with fantasy helium, or arms I simply want to see more of. We will also provide a weekly sheet of all the minor league stat lines of starts (and extended relief outings) in every org for the week.

PPL&R is in the setting roots stage, and my hope is it becomes an interactive team effort between you and I to try and get better together. You will see names omitted who belong on top prospect lists, but our process starts with full-season ball and broadcasts available from it. I know there are arms yet-to-be-reviewed who are probably better options than some here. And despite how the fantasy world makes it sound sometimes, there is a ton of talent around the minor leagues. Don’t underestimate some of these guys with names you’ve never heard of. We’ll get there. Here are the rules I wrote for myself:

PPL&R’s 11 Rules of Evaluation

(Interesting all-breaking balls K vs. Elian Miranda on 9/3.)

(K vs. Griffin Conine on 5/18.)

(HR allowed to Jeremy Eierman on 6/20.)

(K vs. Cam Shephard on 6/2.)

(As Boston’s broadcast team was gushing about the changeup, he went to it twice in a row starting off Leury Garcia on 9/11.)

(K vs. Jose Miranda on 5/22.) (K vs. Manny Pina on 10/3.)

(K vs. Jhonny Santos on 7/21.)

(K vs. Grant Witherspoon on 9/14.)

(10th and last K of the day vs. Adley Rutschman on 9/7.)

(Double allowed vs. Julio Rodriguez on 6/29.)

(Ks vs. Christian Franklin/Kevin Made/Jordan Nwogu on 9/2.)

Featured image by Shawn Palmer (@PalmerGuyBoston on Twitter)

Nate is an advocate of drafting more pitchers. Originally from the planet Eternia, he aspires to become the Master of the Prospect Universe....or just watch baseball, share observations, and have an enjoyable dialogue about this great game, particularly the young players trying to make the major leagues.

Love the write-up, keep them coming!

Definitely looking forward to more.

Excited for this new series Nate. Good work! I’ll be following.

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