PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Mid-February live batting practice sessions are usually forgettable, but the one held on the main field at Clover Park the day after Valentine’s Day was different for the New York Mets.

Kodai Senga, the presumed ace a year ago, faced four hitters. He threw 16 pitches, touched 96 mph and didn’t appear compromised from the shoulder injury that kept him out for all but 5⅓ innings during the 2024 regular season. Afterward, he shared laughs with catcher Luis Torrens and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner.

“I saw a smile on his face,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “That’s a good sign.”

Last spring, Senga, coming off an outstanding rookie year, was supposed to be a sure thing. Instead, he was shut down with a shoulder injury before appearing in a Grapefruit League game and started just the one game in July.

The Mets thrived without him, even with a rotation full of newcomers and uncertainty, completing an 89-win campaign capped by a trip to the National League Championship Series. But as they look to improve on that finish after a monster offseason, questions around the rotation remain.

Can Senga stay healthy? When will Frankie Montas, shut down for up to eight weeks with a lat strain, return? Will Clay Holmes, exclusively a reliever the past six seasons, successfully transition back to starting games? Will Sean Manaea continue where he left off last season after a midseason delivery change produced elite results? Was David Peterson’s career year — he posted a 2.90 ERA in 21 starts — an aberration?

“I will say, I feel much better about our starting pitching depth sitting here today than I did a year ago,” Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said days before Montas sustained his injury during his first bullpen session of camp. “We made that a priority of our offseason. We brought in a number of players at all levels of free agency.”

All levels but one: proven ace-level starting pitchers.

The Mets’ offseason will be remembered for bookend investments in All-Stars to fortify their lineup: Juan Soto in early December and Pete Alonso the week before pitchers and catchers reported for camp. For the second offseason under Stearns’ direction, though, they had holes to fill in the rotation and did not acquire any of the premium starters available.

A year after their long-term bid for Yoshinobu Yamamoto fell short, the Mets did not aggressively pursue the three top starters available in free agency: Max Fried, Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes. (Fried strengthened an already-strong rotation strength across town, signing with the New York Yankees on an eight-year, $218 million deal.)

Instead, they made low-risk, high-reward short-term investments with an emphasis on depth. They re-signed Manaea to a three-year, $75 million contract. They signed Holmes, a two-time All-Star closer, to a three-year, $38 million deal to become a starter. They added Montas, an injury-plagued right-hander who recorded a 4.84 ERA in 2024, on a two-year, $34 million deal. They signed Griffin Canning, a former top prospect, to a one-year, $4.25 million deal after the right-hander pitched to a 5.19 ERA and surrendered 31 home runs last season, the second-most in baseball, for the last-place Los Angeles Angels.

The additions join Senga, Peterson, Paul Blackburn and Tylor Megill to round out the options for a six-man rotation, which the Mets plan to deploy in large part to accommodate Senga.

“I think our pitching is going to surprise people, even though there’s a lot of talk about starting pitching,” Mets owner Steve Cohen said. “And another thing is we’re flexible. If we have to make changes or improve the team during the year, you saw what we did in ’24 and we’ll do it again in ’25.”

For all the offensive fireworks and Grimace-engineered vibes the 2024 OMG Mets produced, extracting value from the starting rotation was the foundation for their success. Luis Severino, signed to a one-year, $13 million deal, recorded a 3.91 ERA over 31 starts last year after posting a 6.65 ERA with the Yankees the year before. Jose Quintana registered a 3.75 ERA in 31 starts in his age-35 season on a $13 million salary. Manaea dropped his arm slot in his 21st start and pitched to a 3.09 ERA over his final 12 outings before the playoffs.

“[We] want to be a team that can improve players,” Cohen said. “And I think from a pitching perspective, we’re able to do that.”

Hefner pointed to Severino’s jump from 89⅓ innings in 2023 to 182 innings last season as evidence that, with the required work ethic, a successful sizable workload increase is possible.

“I feel like our performance staff does a good job of monitoring guys and not just putting reins on them,” Hefner said. “They’re very much like, ‘Let’s go. Let’s push. How far can we take them?’ As long as they’re recovering and they’re honest with us and they’re staying on top of their programs, we have full confidence that a guy could make a big jump in innings.”

In Holmes, the Mets will attempt a more extreme escalation.

The Yankees’ former closer has totaled 337⅓ innings over his seven-year career, including 63 innings each of the past two seasons. He hasn’t started a game since September 2018. To get through a lineup two or three times, Holmes said he plans on incorporating a changeup — a pitch he started tinkering with in bullpens last season — for the first time and using his four-seam fastball more often to complement his sinker (his best pitch). The goal is to build up to 90 pitches by Opening Day.

“I would say now it’s starting to get a little different,” Holmes said last week. “I threw three innings the other day. It was probably the first time I’ve done that in a while.”

Relievers have successfully made the jump to starter. Hall of Famer John Smoltz famously converted from starter to closer back to starter. For the Mets, a club with World Series aspirations, it’s a risk they decided is worth taking.

Of course, that risk won’t matter if they can’t keep their starting pitchers healthy — and that starts with Senga, who, alongside Manaea, will top a rotation the Mets hope will help lead them back to October.

“He just needs to be healthy,” Mendoza said. “As long as he’s taking the ball. But we got some good options. And we talked to him about that. He doesn’t have to be the hero, feeling like he’s the ace of the staff, because we got some options. And we like those guys at the front end of the rotation.”

Fantasy baseball season officially ended at the end of last September and myriad managers likely tuned out far earlier than that, choosing to focus on preparing for their fantasy football drafts. Well, we hope your football team(s) thrived!

Still, baseball is the best and, as we prepare for the 2025 campaign (with some of us wondering when the sun and warm temperatures will take over), it seems like a good time to recap the big stories of this long, cold winter.

A lot has happened since October’s MLB playoffs began, so allow us to catch everyone up on what they’ve missed with the 2025 guide for lapsed fans.

Yeah, we know you were paying attention when 1B Freddie Freeman and SP Walker Buehler made history in the five-game Fall Classic destruction of the New York Yankees, but it never hurts to remind you.

A limping Freeman homered in each of the first four games of the World Series and ended up knocking in 12 runs in total. The Dodgers needed it, as DH Shohei Ohtani (a.k.a. the best player in the sport) delivered only two hits over five games. Buehler, at the end of a frustrating season leading into free agency, won Game 3 with five shutout innings and also saved the clinching Game 5, because, well, that’s baseball.

Fantasy managers are smart enough to know that Freeman and Ohtani — and Mookie Betts, of course — are wonderful fantasy options regardless of how they performed over less than one week of late-October baseball. The same goes for Yankees OF Aaron Judge, who dropped a critical Game 5 fly ball and hit just .222 with one home run in the series. Buehler, however, turned his brief success into a lucrative, one-year contract with the Boston Red Sox. Whether you judge Buehler’s future fantasy value based on his 5.38 regular-season ERA or his World Series moxie is entirely up to you.

… then they loaded up in free agency

Money was no object for the now-defending champions as they added two-time former Cy Young award winner LHP Blake Snell, speedy Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim, veteran OF Michael Conforto and worthy closer options in LHP Tanner Scott and RHP Kirby Yates. The Dodgers also re-signed OF Teoscar Hernandez, IF/OF Tommy Edman, RHP Blake Treinen, UT Enrique Hernandez and LHP Clayton Kershaw. Oh, and let’s not gloss over this very relevant newcomer to the big leagues: young Japanese ace RHP Roki Sasaki. Well, of course he chose the Dodgers.

Fantasy managers love the Dodgers — Ohtani is the clear No. 1 pick, Betts, Freeman, C Will Smith, Snell and RHPs Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow will all be near universally rostered. Still, there are some questions. The Dodgers employ so many starting pitchers and they can’t all make 30 starts. Will any of them do so? Scott and Yates can’t both save 30 games. Can any prospects, such as C Dalton Rushing or LHP Justin Wrobleski, break through?

However, the Dodgers didn’t get Juan Soto

Soto, who hit .313 in the World Series for New York, is on a clear Hall of Fame track and was the top free agent this offseason. The Yankees desired to keep him, but the crosstown New York Mets exceeded any predicted contract expectations and won his heart (and likely the rest of his career) for $765 million over 15 years. Soto, with a 36.4 career bWAR before turning age 26, joins his fourth MLB franchise, aiming for his first MVP award after finishing in the top 10 of voting five times in seven years. He is a late first-round pick in early ESPN ADP for points formats, where the walks and power help him pile on the points.

Incidentally, other than Soto and Sasaki, there were other free agents who were quite popular on the market. RHPs Corbin Burnes (Diamondbacks), Jack Flaherty (Tigers) and Luis Severino (Athletics) all switched leagues, as did LHP Max Fried (Yankees). Infielders Willy Adames (Giants) and Alex Bregman (Red Sox) and OF Anthony Santander (Blue Jays) moved on but stayed in their respective leagues.

Both 1B Pete Alonso and LHP Sean Manaea stayed with the Mets. First baseman Paul Goldschmidt is a Yankee now. All of these players should show up in your mixed league fantasy drafts. For all the offseason moves from a fantasy perspective, check out our “Hot Stove” guide.

There were some intriguing trades …

Longtime Houston Astros OF Kyle Tucker was traded to the Chicago Cubs in return for IF Isaac Paredes, RHP Hayden Wesneski and 3B prospect Cam Smith.

Tucker, an annual first-round pick in fantasy drafts over the past several seasons as a five-category roto provider, should thrive in his new home before potentially moving on again as one of the highest-profile free agents of the 2025 offseason. The Cubs also traded for Tucker’s longtime teammate and former closer Ryan Pressly. Tucker should bounce back to stardom after injury truncated his 2024 season, while Pressly may handle save duties.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox landed Chicago White Sox LHP Garrett Crochet for the price of high-profile C prospect Kyle Teel, OF Braden Montgomery and others unlikely to affect fantasy in 2025. Crochet, one of just 11 pitchers to register at least 200 strikeouts last year, still hasn’t amassed 150 innings in any season, but expectations should be high for 2025.

Other players traded this offseason included the Yankees welcoming both top closer Devin Williams (from the Brewers) and former NL MVP Cody Bellinger (Cubs), the Arizona Diamondbacks securing 1B Josh Naylor (Guardians), the Washington Nationals adding 1B Nathaniel Lowe (Rangers), the Kansas City Royals leading off with 2B Jonathan India (Reds) and the Philadelphia Phillies acquiring LHP Jesus Luzardo (Marlins).

… but not all players rumored for trades moved

The St. Louis Cardinals made it quite clear they wished to find a new home for perennial Gold Glove 3B Nolan Arenado, but they found it quite difficult to find him that new residence. As of Feb. 20, Arenado remained a Cardinal — and one coming off his worst season at the plate since his rookie season of 2013. Perhaps Arenado, 33, still moves on before Opening Day, but fantasy managers no longer view him as a key option. The rebuilding Cardinals also could move RHP closer Ryan Helsley and RHP starter Erick Fedde soon. Cardinals fans and fantasy managers await resolution!

Home stadiums join players in new places

No, the actual stadiums for the Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays did not move, but the places those franchises will play their home games did.

The controversial Athletics officially left their longtime Oakland home for Sacramento, as they await a future stadium in Las Vegas (perhaps). The Athletics will share Sutter Health Park with the Sacramento River Cats from the Triple-A Pacific Coast league. Fantasy managers should note the change, as Oakland’s former home ballpark was one of the more extreme pitchers’ parks for many years. DH Brent Rooker (69 home runs over the past two seasons, but only 28 in home games) and emerging OF Lawrence Butler (.545 slugging in road games last season) are clear winners. Newcomer RHP Severino may not be.

Meanwhile, Tampa’s Tropicana Field lost much of its roof as a result of Hurricane Milton’s devastating impact. The Rays will play the 2025 season at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Field, the spring home of the Yankees and the Single-A home of the organization’s Tampa Tarpons. Much like Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, left-handed pull hitters recognize known success in this minor league stadium, which should benefit Rays OF Josh Lowe, 2B Brandon Lowe, as well as popular sleeper 1B Jonathan Aranda.

For more on these new stadiums and how they affect fantasy baseball, check out Todd Zola’s in-depth analysis.

Minor leaguers on the verge of promotion

Fantasy managers always look ahead to which top prospects may make their mark in the upcoming season, and 2025 is no different. We have already seen the Nationals OF Dylan Crews, Yankees OF Jasson Dominguez and Detroit Tigers RHP Jackson Jobe debut, and they should all be full-time players this coming season.

The Red Sox boast enticing OF Roman Anthony and 2B Kristian Campbell, but there are also veteran players blocking their pathways to playing time. The Cubs may present intriguing Matt Shaw with their 3B job, and we should see Pennsylvania RHPs Andrew Painter (Phillies) and Bubba Chandler (Pirates) striking out many a batter at some point this summer.

In addition, while new Dodgers RHP Sasaki is technically a rookie, he has extensive experience in Japan. Fantasy managers will likely make Sasaki the first “rookie” off the draft board, perhaps among the first 100 selections. Be cautious, though, as the phenom has a track record of battling injuries and has yet to approach 150 innings in any season. The Dodgers have the rotation depth to treat his valuable right arm with excessive care.

If you’re the type of fantasy manager who loves promising new players, definitely take a closer look at some of the top fantasy prospects for 2025.

It’s so hard to say goodbye

Among those that found their way onto fantasy rosters in 2024, Colorado Rockies OF Charlie Blackmon is the most notable big leaguer to have since retired from active duty following the season. Blackmon hit .293 with 227 home runs over 14 seasons with Colorado, winning the 2017 NL batting title with a .331 mark. That was his best fantasy season, as he also hit 37 home runs and scored 137 runs. However, Blackmon hadn’t been coveted in fantasy since the 2019 campaign.

Former Cincinnati Reds 1B Joey Votto may well end up in the Hall of Fame. Votto did join the Toronto Blue Jays organization for last season but was unable to play in any big league games. He ends his career hitting .294 with 356 home runs and a .409 OBP, along with the 2010 NL MVP award and six All-Star selections.

Others to step aside (officially) this past offseason include SSs Brandon Crawford and Elvis Andrus, LHPs Cole Hamels and James Paxton, OFs Will Myers, Kevin Kiermaier and Alex Kirilloff (only 27 years old), as well as RHP Daniel Hudson.

On the comeback trail

Atlanta Braves RHP Spencer Strider and OF Ronald Acuna Jr. are two of the more noteworthy fantasy options on the mend from season-ending injuries that befell them in 2024. Strider pitched in two games before requiring internal brace surgery to repair his throwing elbow. The first pitcher off the draft board in most leagues after winning 20 games with 281 strikeouts in 2023, Strider is expected to miss at least the first month of the 2025 season.

Other notable pitchers seeking to return from injury (mostly the more traditional Tommy John elbow surgery) include Miami Marlins RHPs Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez, Baltimore Orioles RHPs Felix Bautista and Kyle Bradish, Milwaukee Brewers RHP Brandon Woodruff, Cleveland Guardians RHP Shane Bieber and Rays LHP Shane McClanahan. Plus, of course, the great Ohtani, who played only as a hitter in 2024, will also attempt a return to the mound.

Acuna, the No. 1 overall pick in nearly all 2024 leagues after hitting .337 with 41 home runs and 73 stolen bases the prior season, tore his left ACL in May and ended up missing more than 100 games. Acuna, who has recovered from a similar injury before, is also expected to have a delayed start to the 2025 season.

Other hitters preparing for a comeback include future Hall of Fame OF Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels (knee), Brewers OF Christian Yelich (back), Reds 2B Matt McLain (shoulder), Giants OF Jung Hoo Lee (shoulder) and Texas Rangers OF Evan Carter (back).

Already gone

Don’t look for Angels 3B Anthony Rendon in your upcoming drafts. Rendon, with an alarming recent history of missing games, may miss the entire 2025 season after undergoing hip surgery. A former World Series hero, Rendon last appeared in as many as 60 games in a season back in 2019, when he parlayed a .319 batting average and 34 home runs with the Nationals into a long-term contract with Los Angeles. It has not gone well.

As for the pitching side of things, the Dodgers will be without valuable RHP Gavin Stone, an 11-game winner in 2024, due to right shoulder surgery. Padres RHP Joe Musgrove, Mets RHP Christian Scott and Marlins LHP Braxton Garrett are all on the mend from elbow injuries and not expected to perform in 2025, either.

New managers

Terry Francona, a three-time manager of the year who led the Red Sox to a pair of World Series championships and also skippered Cleveland to an AL pennant in his 11 seasons at the helm there, takes over for the Reds. Francona inherits a team with many exciting, young players coveted in fantasy circles, but the Reds last won a playoff game in 2012 and last won a series in 1995. Also new to their teams are former MLB OF Will Venable with the 121-loss White Sox, while Clayton McCullough now leads a rebuilding Marlins club.

Another early opening, this time in Japan

And now, it is nearly time for baseball. Pitchers and catchers have already reported to spring training and fantasy managers anxiously await statistics that actually count for their teams.

While the traditional Opening Day is generally in late March, that’s not the case in 2025. The Dodgers and Cubs will play a two-game series in Tokyo, Japan, on March 18 and 19, so make sure you get your lineups in early if you invest in players from those teams. These teams feature more than a few Japanese stars, led by Shohei Ohtani. If you draft after mid-March, your statistics will be backdated.

As for the other MLB teams, there are 14 home openers scheduled for Thursday, March 27, while the Rockies visit the Rays to finally kick off their 2025 on Friday, March 28. Batter up!

After a couple of seasons spent reacting to some of the most substantial rule changes that Major League Baseball has instituted in quite some time, the baseball world seems to be settling into a new status quo entering 2025.

Changes adopted in 2023, which most notably brought us things like the pitch clock, restrictions on defensive shifts, larger bases and limitations on pickoff throws had a dramatic impact upon game play, the history books and our fantasy league strategizing.

Average game times shrunk by 28 minutes from 2022 to 2023. Baseball saw both its first 40/70 and 50/50 players in history in 2023 (Ronald Acuna Jr.) and 2024 (Shohei Ohtani), respectively. And fantasy managers who began 2023 by going all-in on Corey Seager, predicted to be one of the hitters most helped by the new shift rules, enjoyed what would ultimately be an 82-point jump in his batting average to a career-high .327.

Across the league, statistical trends generally remained constant in 2024, fueling this feeling of a new “status quo.” While league-wide run production declined by more than four-tenths of a run per game, the league-wide BABIP (.291) finished within six points of its 2023 number (.297), batting averages on pulled ground balls and line drives were within six and two points for left- and right-handed hitters, and the league averaged over 0.7 stolen bases per game for the second straight season — the highest SB rates since 1999.

All that said, the 2024 baseball landscape — and its 2025 outlook — wasn’t completely absent of fantasy-relevant change.

This is where Inning 7 of the Playbook comes in, putting the league-wide trends that have influence over your rankings, draft-day preparations and in-season strategies under the proverbial microscope. If you’d prefer to skip ahead to a specific area of interest, the links below will take you directly to each.

Baseball is enjoying a new normal

Whereas change had been the name of the game over the past half-decade in MLB, 2024 saw only minimal tweaks to the aforementioned 2023 rule changes, while only two additional, minor rule changes have been announced thus far for 2025. For the record, neither of these latter two is likely to carry much weight in the way of fantasy relevance.

After the successful implementation of the pitch clock for 2023, MLB adopted another reduction to these in 2024, shrinking the time with runners on base from 20 to 18 seconds. Across the league, average game times further shortened, with 2024’s two hours, 36 minutes reflecting an additional decline of four minutes compared to 2023, as well as the league’s shortest such time since either 1984’s two hours and 35 minutes. Additionally, the league’s monthly averages remained steady — two hours and 37 minutes at their longest, in July, August and September — after a 2023 that saw gradual, month-over-month increases.

Interestingly enough, that change to the pitch clock did not result in a spike in violations. In fact, violations dramatically declined in 2024, further fueling the status-quo feeling. Last season, there was an average of one overall violation — whether by the pitcher, batter or catcher — per 9.0 games, and for pitchers the average was one per 11.7 contests, both significantly down from 2023 (5.1 and 7.1, respectively).

However, the “pizza box”-sized bases continued to have a sizable impact upon stolen bases, which is easily the most fantasy-relevant development of the past two seasons.

While the league-wide stolen base success rate declined last season, dropping from 80.2% in 2023 (the league’s highest rate since World War II) to 79.0% (trailing only 2023 and 1948’s 79.2% during that same time span), players continued to run wild on the base paths under the new rules. Baserunners attempted a steal on 6.8% of their opportunities last season, up from 6.3% in 2023, which itself was up substantially from the league-wide 4.6% rate from 2019-22 combined.

The result: A whopping 24 different players successfully stole at least 30 bases in 2024, the most in any single year since 1999 and a number previously approached this century only by 2012’s 23. Elly De La Cruz‘s league-leading 67 stolen bases last season were tied for the seventh-most this century, and we’ve now seen three of the 21st century’s eight best single-year totals occur in the past two seasons (Acuna’s second-best 73 and Esteury Ruiz‘s tied-for-seventh 67, both in 2023).

While this has softened the overall demand for stolen bases in fantasy leagues, the statistic’s return to relevance has again shifted our need to fill the category in rotisserie leagues. Using Player Rater metrics, a 30-SB performer brought 51% greater value in that specific category in 2019 than in 2024, but there were also twice as many 30-SB players who finished in the top-100 overall (12) than in 2019 (6).

Points-leagues managers, too, should appreciate that the league-wide rise in steals provided some sneaky value in their format. After 2023 saw 14 of the league’s 18 total 30-SB performers total at least 300 fantasy points, 2024 had 13-of-24 accomplish the feat. Additionally, 6-of-14 in 2023 and 4-of-13 in 2024 both scored 300-plus total fantasy points while accruing at least 10% of said points as a result of stolen bases alone.

This phenomenon was most recognizable with elite speedsters such as Brice Turang, whose 50 stolen bases accounted for 15.7% of his 319 total fantasy points, Jazz Chisholm Jr., whose 40 steals represented 12.0% of his 333 points, or Maikel Garcia, whose 37 steals reflected 12.0% of his 309 points.

Using ESPN’s projections, several candidates for both 30-plus stolen bases and 300-plus total fantasy points could provide similarly sneaky value: Turang (projected for 40 steals and 283 fantasy points), Anthony Volpe (35 and 298), Garcia (34 and 316), Dylan Crews (34 and 275), Xavier Edwards (32 and 282) and Jake McCarthy (31 and 281).

The death of the complete game

Declining rotational workloads has been a theme across the past decade, as starting pitchers are increasingly not finishing what they started.

The 2024 season saw the fewest complete games in MLB history (28), even fewer than there were in the COVID-shortened 2020 (29). And while, yes, 2020’s total was influenced by rules shortening doubleheader games to seven innings apiece (13 complete games in 2020 were seven innings or shorter), consider that there were still fewer complete games of 100-plus pitches in 2024 (17) than in 2020 (20).

Extending that further, the 2024 season became the sixth consecutive season in which the league’s quality start rate was below 37% (36.1%). To put that into perspective, 10 years ago (in 2015), just better than half of all starts across the league met the quality-start standard (six-plus innings, no more than three earned runs allowed).

Increasingly, teams are taking a Tampa Bay Rays-like, specialized approach to their pitching staffs, attempting to maximize the output of every batter faced. The overwhelming majority rostered the league’s maximum of 13 pitchers, meaning five starters and eight relievers, last season, enhancing teams’ opportunities to lean on their bullpens in the middle-to-late innings.

There’s perhaps no greater example of the effect on starting pitchers than this: In 2024, only 248 of the league’s 4,858 total starts (5.1%) saw a starter allowed to face an opponent’s lineup more than three times (meaning at least 28 batters faced). That was by far the fewest in any season in history, and nearly 1,000 fewer than there were 10 seasons earlier (1,244 in 2024), as teams continued to recognize the wide disparity between starters’ performances the first two times facing a particular opponent (.320 wOBA, 19.4 K%) versus the third or more (.341, 16.0%) this century.

This has put a greater premium on the quality of outings rather than quantity, placing a greater demand on our selectivity of individual matchups rather than simply loading up on the greatest number of potential starts in a given week or season.

Consider that in the past three seasons combined, 66% of the pitchers (48 out of 73) who amassed at least 180 IP also managed at least 2.5 Wins Above Replacement and a 110 ERA+, both strong measures of pitching quality. That represented a sizable boost over the 59% (59-of-100) who did so from 2017-19, and that in itself was a good step ahead of the 52% (87-of-168) who did it from 2014-16.

For those of you in rotisserie leagues and mired in a debate about the best categories to use, that provides as strong a case for using for innings pitched as a measure of pitching quality as we’ve seen so far this century. Gone are the days of pitchers like Livan Hernandez, Sidney Ponson and Jeff Suppan logging hefty innings totals despite hideous ERAs. In 2024, not a single pitcher who was allowed to throw as many as 190 innings had an ERA greater than 3.60, the first time in a non-shortened season in history that has been true.

For fantasy managers in leagues with daily transactions, this means there’s a greater importance on slotting in relief pitchers of great-to-elite quality in your available spots wherever possible. That’s as true in rotisserie as it is points-based leagues, as exactly half of the pitchers to earn at least a 6.50 Player Rater grade last season — this number specifically chosen as roughly the benchmark for a player to earn a top-100 ranking — were relievers, the highest such percentage in at least a decade.

The rise in velocity

There’s a probable correlation between the aforementioned increased specialization of pitching across the league and the rise in velocity, as teams continually value pitchers’ raw stuff over long-term stamina.

Speaking to velocity specifically, last season MLB saw its greatest overall average velocity across all pitches (89.1 mph), as well as its greatest average four-seam fastball velocity (94.2 mph). Starting pitchers have been especially leaning more upon velocity, as they averaged a record 93.9 mph with four-seam fastballs, while throwing 295 pitches of at least 100 mph in 2023 and another 285 in 2024 — with those two totals being the most in any season for which we have detailed velocity data.

Fantasy managers are well versed in the way in which the league-wide velocity spike has influenced strikeout numbers — the league’s seven best single-season strikeout rates have all occurred in the past seven seasons, with 2024’s 22.0% and 2023’s 22.1% placing in the top five — but with that has come heightened worry about injuries.

From 2021-23, there were 61 pitchers who averaged at least 95 mph with their fastballs and 90 mph with all pitches thrown in a single season (some making repeat appearances on the list). This group would make 11 more IL appearances the subsequent year, averaging 33 more days on the shelf apiece. The group also averaged 28 1/3 fewer innings pitched, and 57.3 fewer total fantasy points scored.

While those numbers might not seem devastating, consider that among these 61 were 12 who spent 118 days or more on the IL in the subsequent season, while an additional six had an IL stint at least that long within the two seasons that followed it. Eight of those 18 total lengthy absences included Tommy John surgery, while Spencer Strider underwent internal brace surgery. Others, like Frankie Montas and Brandon Woodruff, were sidelined due to shoulder operations.

This isn’t to say that peak velocity is the only forerunner of significant injury for a pitcher, but the data certainly hints strongly at a correlation between the two.

With that in mind, fantasy managers should at least remain aware of the league’s current hardest-throwing pitchers, tucking away the possibility of adverse effects in either the 2025 season or beyond. This was 2024’s list of pitchers to meet or exceed the aforementioned 95-plus mph fastball and 90-plus overall thresholds, while also amassing at least 100 innings pitched:

One additional pitcher met the 95/90 mph criteria with at least 100 IP in 2023: Michael Kopech, who was shifted to relief last season. Multiple reports in mid-January raised worries about his right forearm, which began to bother him during the 2024 postseason and warrants monitoring throughout spring training, although the Los Angeles Dodgers claim those concerns are overblown.

A full seven Playbook “innings” are now in the books, so you should be ready to take your fantasy baseball game to the advanced level. In the next edition, we’ll dive more deeply into advanced metrics such as Statcast, defense independent and “luck”-based statistics.