What happens in a land of midgets, when one giant shows up?
I decided to do a little experiment to find out.
You see, the pitching landscape heading into 2021 is as unpredictable as it's ever been coming off last year's shortened season. Six-man rotations, decreased innings — it's chaotic. We all know buying volume (innings) will be both tough and valuable this year.
Here's the experiment I set up: I took Steamer's projections (not because I think they're the best projections but because everybody can access them publicly) and took every starting pitcher they have a projection for and prorated their statistics over 150 innings. Doesn't matter who they are, they get the same 150 innings and assume all their other projected statistics prorate accordingly.
I then ran the adjusted projection through a valuation model (I use SGPs for 15-team mixed leagues — if you have no idea what that means, don't worry about it, it doesn't matter for the purposes of this experiment). I then sorted all the starting pitchers from first (still Jacob deGrom) on down.
Then I went to the 100th ranked starting pitcher — it happened to be Brady Singer (it doesn't matter if you have him ranked much higher, or lower than 100th in your rankings, this is a math debate, not a player one). Singer is suddenly a giant amongst the midgets — he gets 200 innings pitched, compared to every other starting pitcher's 150. His ERA is still the 4.46 Steamer
