Better make play on ace in early rounds

ASK ANY number of fantasy baseball experts and they will tell you the exact same thing: Wait on starting pitching. The position is so incredibly deep and rich with talent, you can build a winning rotation without investing in an ace.

Though there is a certain amount of truth to that, the landscape of the starting-pitcher depth this year seems to point toward the contrary. If you’re looking to build a competitive staff, an investment in one of the top six starters seems to be the route you will want to take.

When experts tell you to wait on starting pitching, it is because By HOWARD BENDER they have taken the position and broken it down into tiers, which is a much better way of organizing the different values each player provides. They’re expecting to find strong value in that second tier of hurlers. But that is not the case this season.

The top tier of starting pitching, your aces, is made up of six hurlers: Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Corey Kluber and Noah Syndergaard. The second tier contains the likes of Stephen Strasburg, Masahiro Tanka, Yu Darvish, Jake Arrieta and Chris Archer. There may be one or two more, but that is a debate for another time.

On paper, these second-tier starters look great, but each one has his fair share of red flags — ranging from injury to declining trends in his numbers. Utilizing any of them as your anchor immediately puts your rotation at risk, as any sort of lengthy absence or continued poor performance is going to hurt.

Relying on a second-tier starter as your ace now means you have to invest more heavily in the third- and fourth-tier guys while your ace-owning opposition builds a more powerful offense.

Yes, the pitching position is deep, but with the risk you’ve taken with your anchor, you can’t afford to look too far down the remaining tiers. Your opposition not only can, but will, and in the end not only will outpitch you, but their offense will outslug yours as well.

Howard Bender is the managing editor at FantasyAlarm.com and host of“Fantasy Sports Tonight” on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio( Saturday sat 2 p.m. and Sundays at 8 p.m.). Follow him on Twitter@ ro to buzz guy.