How new pitches from Spring Training should impact how you draft pitchers in 2024 Fantasy Baseball leagues

Spring Training brings excitement as it means we’re inching closer to the Fantasy Baseball season as well as your 2024 drafts. Earlier, we discussed the impact of velocity readings for pitchers in Spring Training and what that means for how you should draft pitchers in 2024. We also took a look at the impact of injuries and how that should alter your draft strategies. 

It seems like every pitcher in the league is throwing a new splitter this spring, a trend MLB.com’s Mike Petriello has been following on Twitter. It’s always worth noting when a pitcher is working on a new pitch, but we shouldn’t just assume it’ll be a panacea, and I’ll point to two Mariners pitchers to highlight that point.

Both Logan Gilbert and George Kirby added splitters to their arsenals last season, and they were both immediately very good pitches: Gilbert’s was the 18th-most valuable splitter in the game, while Kirby’s was 22nd, per BaseballSavant’s run values stat. In each case, it was the pitcher’s best swing-and-miss pitch … and yet Kirby’s strikeout rate actually went down in 2023; Gilbert’s went up slightly, from 22.7% to 24.5%, but his ERA also rose more than a half-run. 

Which is to say: Even when a pitcher adds a new pitch, and even if that pitch sticks in their arsenal, and even if that pitch is a very good one, it might not be enough to dramatically alter their outlook. I’m glad to see talented but limited pitchers like Bryce Miller and Hunter Greene are working on expanding their repertoires, and if they look good in the spring, that might be a reason to give them a tie-breaking edge over a pitcher in their same range of the draft.

But we should be careful not to assume those new pitches will immediately lead to drastic improvements. That’s not necessarily how it works. 

But man, it’s fun to dream of how this new curveball might make Spencer Strider even more unhittable, huh? As if he needed the help. 

Ultimately, it’s important to consider new pitches just like we consider velocity readings from Spring Training, but the overwhelming evidence suggests that if we put too much weight on the impact, it will cost us value in our drafts. This is what makes Spring Training so tricky specifically as it pertains to drafting the pitcher position.