Reid Detmers, No Matter What: A Story About Shane McClanahan, Spring Hype, Corbin Carroll, Stuff+, and Opportunity Cost

I recently wrote about my biggest misses of the 2023 fantasy baseball season.

Of everything I wrote about in that article, the call I feel “least bad” about is Hunter Greene. And I mean that from a macro perspective.

As I detailed in my Greene write-up, he did have red flags on a micro level.

But the ADP was affordable, and I’m always looking for players who can CRUSH their draft day costs.

It often works out that it’s younger players who fit this description. Their range of outcomes is bigger, so if you’re buying at a price that comes with little opportunity cost, then you’re looking at a lot of potential upside.

So, directionally, I still think Greene made sense. My lesson learned from him is a little bit about pitchers in Cincinnati and a lot about wanting to be price sensitive.

But I’m going to continue targeting breakout picks in the middle rounds.

In 2021, that led me to going all in on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

In 2022, I encouraged drafters to take Shane McClanahan “no matter what.”

In 2023, I chose Reid Detmers. So let’s talk about it.

Shane McClanahan

Our story begins with a look back at previous year selections.

When I first started choosing “no matter what” players I didn’t have the following I do now. So picking Vlad in 2021 felt low stakes, and was more of an inside joke with my home league buddies.

And then it went really well! So the pressure was on for 2022. And Shane O’Mac delivered.

My favorite part of creating any sort of fantasy baseball content is interacting with the community. It will never, ever get old to me answering questions or just discussing baseball on Twitter/Patreon/Discord. I love it.

So it was really cool this past offseason when I began getting questions about who this year’s McClanahan was.

It also raised the stakes.

Spring Hype

The more I play fantasy sports, the more I realize how noisy spring training or training camp can be.

This was my first year actively trying to avoid training camp news for fantasy football. “Avoiding news” isn’t the right term, but you might know what I mean. I wanted to enter training camp with strong valuation bases that I can be somewhat anchored to, and from there I can move slightly in one direction or another. I thought it went really well.

The nature of my job at Underdog means I see EVERYTHING baseball/football related, so it can sometimes be hard to resist new information, especially with the way social media works.

I didn’t enter 2023 spring training ready to overreact to new info (think about the Jordan Walker and Anthony Volpe value rises), but moving forward I definitely want to use the strategy I had for NFL this season. I want valuations I can anchor myself to, and that starts with doing all the prep work earlier in the offseason.

Regardless, the Detmers drumbeat grew louder and louder throughout March. And I was seeing pay-walled reporting about his new velocities. It felt like an edge not everyone was in on.

"[Reid Detmers] was throwing it 82-84 mph early in the season. After he was sent to Triple-A, he made an adjustment and returned throwing the pitch 86-88 mph. Last week against the Dodgers, his slider was 89-91 mph."

In late February his Underdog ADP was around 200, and it closed in the 130s a month later. He had become one of my guys, a late-round pick I felt would be a key to the 2023 fantasy baseball season.

Corbin Carroll

Yup. I almost chose Corbin Carroll.

If there’s one downside to doing too much early-offseason research/content, it’s that by the time we start drafting more frequently in March, there can be a tendency to forget the biggest lessons learned in November.

And last fall I was beginning to get ready to make Carroll my “no matter what” choice.

If anything, by the time spring training rolled around I thought I was being prudent by resisting the hype cycle, especially on Underdog.

I share this part of the story not to give myself partial credit or anything, but to highlight how thin the margins are for doing this. Even with the standout calls of Vlad and Shane, those easily could’ve misses or wound up as a different player.

It’s a very fun exercise to do each season, picking a “no matter what” player, but realistically that isn’t how fantasy should be played. Everyone is worth considering at a certain price, and what we really want to do is stockpile upside bets across leagues, because when you’re hitting on mid and mid-to-late round picks like McClanahan in ‘22, and you have several players out performing ADP, that’s how you can create a fantasy superteam.

So I just want to ground myself a bit and realize that had I chosen Carroll, I’d probably be thinking of my predictions as can’t-miss in future years. And I also want to have the humility to recognize Vlad and Shane could’ve been misses, whether due to injury or underperformance, etc.

I’m not going to stop picking “no matter what” players. I just want to learn from past choices.

Stuff+

I’m not sure when exactly Stuff+ became so controversial, but within certain fantasy circles it has. It led me to sharing my thoughts on the metric back in May.

I’m a fan of Stuff+ as a tool, but it isn’t everything. Like any other model/metric/stat it’s part of the equation.

But man do I wish I had seen Detmers’ Stuff+ before designating him as a “no matter what” draft day selection.

As shown above, Detmers successfully increased his slider velocity this season. He improved his fastball and curve velos as well. The spring reports were right, and they played out over the course of the year.

But Stuff+ didn’t necessarily LOVE the changes:

His fastball remaining below-average was a huge issue, as it puts such pressure on his breaking balls to carry the arsenal.

Detmers did improve his overall Stuff+, and he improved his K-BB% as well, and it isn’t like he was downright bad this season. But outside of a hot stretch in June, he never made that significant leap I was expecting.

Had I been able to see the spring training Stuff+ on all his pitches, I could’ve backed off my enthusiasm at his increased price.

Conclusion and Opportunity Cost

All this being said, drafting Detmers (even at his peak price) didn’t lose anyone their seasons. As I initially mentioned with the Hunter Greene comp, we’re going to keep taking mid-round shots on potential league-altering picks.

For me, I’m more upset about the opportunity cost of choosing Detmers as my “no matter what” player.

Because it could’ve been Corbin Carroll.

It also could’ve been Gunnar Henderson or Cristian Javier, two others I considered throughout last offseason.

And that is very humbling.

I was recently listening to the Baseball America podcast where Dylan White and Brian Slack discussed their NFBC Main Event overall victory.

And they each mentioned how entering the final weeks, and even the final days of the season, that it could’ve gone a variety of different ways.

There’s an element to playing fantasy sports, I believe, where the true goal should be to continuously put yourself in position to be among the finalists, year in and year out, and then hopefully things break your way more often than not.

It can be maddening at times.

It can also be exhilarating.

And I can’t wait to get started on 2024.