Fantasy baseball win vultures – Seven relievers in position to pick up wins

A full turn of big-league rotations is in the books, and here’s the harsh reality: Take those starting pitching returns and simply throw them all out. Right in the trash, all of them, at least as far as anything that’ll cause you to make any rash decisions, especially if said decision has to do with cutting said player.

The reality is that starting pitching workloads aren’t even close to where they should be at this time of year, and the statistics reflect it. Thanks to the 99-day lockout, spring training began a good three-plus weeks late, with the exhibition seasons beginning 18 days late and shortened to just shy of three weeks, rather than their traditional four-to-five.

Doing the math, that means starting pitchers lost effectively two whole rotation turns traditionally spent in Arizona and Florida ramping up workloads, and that’s on top of those lost February throwing sessions in advance of spring games. If we’re talking about a typical spring ramping-up timetable, then by a starting pitcher ramping-up timetable, today would be the effective equivalent of March 20-25, and that’s being aggressive considering the lost February time.

Worse yet, if you’re a longtime fantasy baseball manager, surely you’re aware of the dreaded “dead arm period” that often strikes even the most prominent pitchers, which typically arrives at that particular stage of season. That’s why I can’t get too worked up over Shane Bieber’s 2-mph drop in average fastball velocity through two starts, though that trend absolutely has landed him on my list of players to monitor.

Here’s the rough statistical truth, averaging out starting pitchers’ workloads through the first six days of each of the past three seasons:

• 2022: 76.7 pitches, 4.38 innings, 18.8 total batters faced per start, 10.7% quality starts

• 2021: 82.9 pitches, 4.90 innings, 20.8 TBF, 27.4 QS%

• 2020: 73.5 pitches, 4.43 innings and 18.8 TBF, 20.3 QS%

Considering the 2020 season was played under somewhat similar circumstances, with an…