Un-Skewing Strikeouts: Using K/9 Rate

The introduction of an IP cap to ALA Fantasy Baseball this year has made gauging a team’s strength in strikeouts more complicated than simply looking at the standings. No longer is winning the strikeouts category as simple as “amass as many Ks as possible” – each team is required to stay under 1500 IP over the course of the season, which places more value upon efficient pitchers with high K/9 IP rates. Using the K/9 statistic is the key to deciphering each team’s true relative strikeout strength.



The above table breaks down each team’s strikeouts, K/9 rate, and IP pace, as well as projecting the number of strikeouts each team would accumulate if each pitching staff were stretched to 1500 IP while maintaining their K/9 rate.

This last sentence is important because it would obviously be easier for some teams to maintain their current K/9 rate than it would be for others. It can be stated with near certainty that Billy Schreyer’s ShrayDay team will win the strikeouts category; his 8.15 K/9 rate is substantially higher than that of his competitors. Moreover, he has managed to significantly reduce his IP count, as he was on pace to amass over 1650 IP a month into the season. Billy can thank Edinson Volquez (10.42 K/9, 1st in MLB of pitchers who’ve pitched at least 60 IP) and Josh Beckett (9.31 K/9, 4th) for their contributions. (Along the lines of Volquez: How impressive is 10.42 K/9? Since 2005, only five pitchers have maintained a K/9 rate above 10 for an entire season)

Taking K/9 rate into account, most teams are sitting about where they should be in the strikeouts category. It should be noted that “most teams” does not include Poo Holes, managed by the infamously enigmatic Mike Rennard. Poo Holes is the only team in the league with a K/9 rate that comes close to that of Shray Day; both teams come in right at 8.15 K/9. However, Poo Holes also has 260 less IP than ShrayDay, an enormous discrepancy given that we’re not even halfway through the season yet. Despite having two of the top strikeout pitchers in the game (Tim Lincecum’s 9.03 K/9 is 7th in MLB; AJ Burnett’s 8.87 is 10th), Rennard has failed to surround those two aces with a stable of reliable arms. At this very moment, Poo Holes has only four other starting pitchers on his roster: an oft-injured Rich Harden, a demoted Max Scherzer, an injured Adam Wainwright, and a young-and-still-learning Matt Garza. Considering that Rennard is also currently forcing a demoted Billy Butler and an injured Alfonso Soriano into his everyday lineup, it can be stated with a fair amount of certainty that Poo Holes is intent on proving that last year’s championship was an aberration.