Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Los Angeles Angels
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
Pitchers
Shohei Ohtani
He got better on the pitching side of things in 2022, a truly amazing feat. He’s now put together two consecutive full seasons while doing this insane starting pitcher and DH thing. Truly remarkable.
The important note is that if you’re in an ESPN league where you can change your roster every day, Ohtani will once again be hands down the #1 player to draft, and it will be nowhere near close. He is a cheat code in that situation and you should do whatever you can (cheat) to get the first pick if that’s the kind of league you’re in.
Ohtani is 28, he put up a silly 16.2% SwStr% with a 33.2% K% and a 6.7% BB% in 2022 going for a 2.33 ERA and a 1.01 WHIP. Of all pitchers that threw 100+ innings, only Spencer Strider scored more fantasy points (DraftKings scoring system) per inning than Ohtani (4.46 for Strider, 4.12 for Ohtani - and Javier was the only other pitcher above 4).
He failed to throw six innings just nine times out of his 28 starts. And he made 28 starts. This guy made 28 starts! Wtf! How does a person even do this, it makes no sense.
He has so many weapons:
and was so consistently awesome
So I don’t need to dive much more into his pitching - the guy is an ACE.
But how do we rank him for fantasy purposes in standard situations where he’s only a pitcher or can only be used as a pitcher OR a hitter each week? That is a much more interesting question.
If a guy stays healthy for two full seasons like that, does it mean he’s more likely to do it again in a third season? Or does it make him even more “due” for an injury since has had so little rest and has put so much on his body? Beats the F out of me.
What we do know is that, as a pitcher only, Ohtani automatically projects for a handful fewer starts than the other aces in the league, as he’s in a six-man rotation and typically will have a few times a year where he gets bumped back when he gets hit by a pitch as a hitter the day before a start or just has some other little thing going on that they don’t want to push - so yeah, 28 starts feels like a best case scenario. A fair projection is probably 25, and his injury risk still has to be higher than the other top ranked pitchers just because he’s putting himself at the plate 600 times a year too.
As amazing as Ohtani is, I would probably not draft him as just a pitcher, and I will probably hesitate to draft him in a league where you have to pick pitcher or hitter every week, I just think he’ll be priced really close to his 2022 production, and the injury risks are still very real, and probably more real than people will think given that he hasn’t gotten hurt.
The ranking is easy right now though because he’s the first true ace I’ve run into. He’s #1.
Comps/RankArounds - None
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