A Happy, Sad, Wonderful, Terrible April

If you’re anything like most fantasy players, you may find yourself investing in similar players across multiple leagues. If you’re anything like me, those players seem to get injured more than others. If you are me, this year you invested in Mat Latos and Doug Fister everywhere you could… and are furious.

But if you need a placeholder for April while your starters heal, full-season projections might not be as relevant to your replacement decisions. While it’s always smart to go with skill as your primary determination, often the free agent pitching pool is fraught with pitchers that are more similar. In such instances, the pitcher’s April schedule could be of use. If you need a pitcher for one month and one month only, his May – September prospects are of little concern.

Either because I’m a simple man, or because I’m receiving $0 in compensation for this short piece, I decided a fair estimator would be to simply use the FanGraphs 2014 Projected Rankings and input each opponents Runs Scored per Game (RS/G) for each team on a schedule grid for the month of April. I then averaged out the projected RS/G of all opponents for each game in April. This is what I found.

Team	Division	Games	Opponent Avg RS/G
Atl	NLE	27	3.979
Cin	NLC	28	3.999
Was	NLE	28	4.000
Col	NLW	29	4.004
Mil	NLC	28	4.058
Ari	NLW	29	4.063
StL	NLC	29	4.070
NYM	NLE	27	4.087
ChC	NLC	27	4.093
LAD	NLW	26	4.095
Pit	NLC	28	4.110
Mia	NLE	27	4.127
Phi	NLE	28	4.153
SD	NLW	29	4.174
LAA	ALW	27	4.190
Tex	ALW	28	4.194
Det	ALC	26	4.195
KC	ALC	27	4.196
SF	NLW	28	4.203
Cle	ALC	29	4.212
Oak	ALW	29	4.244
Tor	ALE	27	4.254
Min	ALC	26	4.267
Sea	ALW	27	4.284
TB	ALE	29	4.301
ChW	ALC	29	4.318
NYY	ALE	27	4.319
Hou	ALW	28	4.345
Bos	ALE	28	4.370
Bal	ALE	27	4.383

What do we see here? First, as expected, on average the AL teams face more projected runs. You’re welcome for that valuable information. One interesting note, though, is that the San Francisco Giants will face an even tougher aggregate offense than four AL teams. What do we take from this? Maybe if you’re thinking about Tim Hudson vs. Marco Estrada in a shallow league for a rental, you take Hudson. In a shallower league in which this is a real decision, however, you can probably stream matchups with a high efficacy throughout the month. But as a FanGraphs reader (ego-stroke), there’s a fairly high probability that your most difficult decisions come in deeper leagues. So we shall redirect our attention to pitchers farther down the ranks.

“But DomRep,” you might smirk, “aren’t AL/NL differences factored into preseason rankings to a large degree?” Yes, observant reader, they are. This is why this table is much more useful when comparing pitchers in the same league. The NL is below:

NL Rank	Team	Division	Games	Opponent RS/G
1	Atl	NLE	27	3.979
2	Cin	NLC	28	3.999
3	Was	NLE	28	4.000
4	Col	NLW	29	4.004
5	Mil	NLC	28	4.058
6	Ari	NLW	29	4.063
7	StL	NLC	29	4.070
8	NYM	NLE	27	4.087
9	ChC	NLC	27	4.093
10	LAD	NLW	26	4.095
11	Pit	NLC	28	4.110
12	Mia	NLE	27	4.127
13	Phi	NLE	28	4.153
14	SD	NLW	29	4.174
15	SF	NLW	28	4.203

In the NL, there may be a built-in feeling that, when two pitchers are similar, you’re probably better off just taking the guy from San Diego. Poppycock! San Diego will face the Dodgers, Brewers, and two AL teams this month (Tigers and Indians). Exclamation point! It should be noted that San Diego likely has a less pitcher-friendly park factor than they used to, but even still, a quick glance at the table above should help you decide to maybe choose Jhoulys Chacin, Taylor Jordan, or Tanner Roark over Eric Stults if you think they’re similar pitchers.

Here’s the AL:

AL Rank	Team	Division	Games	Opponent RS/G
1	LAA	ALW	27	4.190
2	Tex	ALW	28	4.194
3	Det	ALC	26	4.195
4	KC	ALC	27	4.196
5	Cle	ALC	29	4.212
6	Oak	ALW	29	4.244
7	Tor	ALE	27	4.254
8	Min	ALC	26	4.267
9	Sea	ALW	27	4.284
10	TB	ALE	29	4.301
11	ChW	ALC	29	4.318
12	NYY	ALE	27	4.319
13	Hou	ALW	28	4.345
14	Bos	ALE	28	4.370
15	Bal	ALE	27	4.383

In the A.L., one might take a quick gander and be encouraged to use Garrett Richards over Bud Norris because they face the easiest and toughest April pitching schedules, respectively. Pseudo-sleeper Tyler Skaggs might also be expected to start out well.

As we mentioned before, preseason rankings and projections take league into consideration. So when considering two pitchers in different leagues, it might even help to take a quick peek at their respective schedule rankings within their own league. For instance, while San Diego (#14 NL schedule) can be expected to face less run-scoring potential this month on average than Anaheim (#1 AL schedule), this will be the case the whole season and is, therefore, factored in when rankings show Tyson Ross and Tyler Skaggs in similar places. But the rankings eke out that Ross’s month should be harder than his average month while Skaggs’s month should be easier.

If you’re in a position to stream relatively strong pitchers throughout April, this is probably useless to you. The sample size of a month’s worth of starts can also blow all of this up. It’s common practice to look at September strength of schedule for pitchers, but everyone tends to ignore April because their eyes are focused on the whole season. But if you’re anything like me, and Latos/Fister are giving you fits, hopefully you’ll keep strength of schedule in mind.