As draft season arrives and our research begins each year, we always put together a strategy we try to implement and follow during our drafts. Sometimes we stay on course and follow it to a tee, and in others, we adjust to the way picks are flying off of the board. What remains a constant in every draft is the need for depth, especially in your rotation. When the season starts, there are 150 starting pitchers in the majors. And that number may actually be low with some teams electing to give the six-man rotation a try. The Clayton Kershaw’s and the Max Scherzer’s of the world are obviously nice to have, but when they’re gone, where do we turn?

In standard leagues across the industry, you have nine spots available to fill with pitchers. Obviously, we’re not going to fill them with all starters because we’d lose out in the holds and saves categories -- plus there aren’t that many starters in baseball for us to do such a thing. But the fact that we have so many available slots provides us with a lot of opportunity. Within the first couple of rounds, you’ll be able to pick up on some trends with the way pitchers are coming off of the board. It’s imperative you capitalize on at least one top arm early and go from there. By grabbing a top arm off of the board early, you’ve solidified the top of your staff and can take the rest of your rotation in plenty of directions. There are only seven pitchers currently being taken within the top 30 in standard 5x5 roto drafts according to Mock Draft Army ADP.

But after the dust settles and all of the top arms are gone and we’ve now entered the double-digit rounds, where do we go and how do we figure out which arms to take? Well, there a few things we should definitely factor into our decision making. We need to examine all things from ERA’s, WHIP’s, K/9, amongst other stats from years past, to ballpark factors, to average draft position trends, etc. You get the point. But we’re always looking for the Jimmy Nelson’s of the draft later in rounds (Nelson’s NFBC’s ADP in 2017 - 513). What that does for us is it obviously allows us to load up on other positions. Stating the obvious? Sure, but it needs to be reiterated so draft strategies can be tweaked based on the research and time put into everything headed into draft night.

Breaking it down even further, let’s just say it’s round five and you still haven’t taken a pitcher. Here are some names, obviously they’re not the top arms in baseball, but each of them have the potential to be an SP1.

Archer is primed to have a bounceback year, despite the fact he had a good year if you dig deep into the numbers and despite the fact the Rays are an awful baseball team. He’s now had three straight years of 194-plus innings, three straight campaigns of 10.42 K/9 or better -- 2017 was a career year 11.15 K/9 -- and was simply unlucky with a .325 BABIP. Nola could potentially have more upside than all of them despite the fact he pitches in a very hitters friendly ballpark. He induced ground balls at a 50-percent clip last year and only allowed a 14.1 HR/FB mark, which is an excellent number all things considered.

Now we’ll drop down another tier, a tier where we will find a lot of our starters ranging from low-end SP2’s to high-end SP3 guys. Here are four names that are currently being drafted outside of the top-100, which in 10-team leagues, we know would be the 10th round or later:

Lance McCullers, who posted a 10.01 K/9 just last year, would have ranked sixth in the American League in that statistical category if he had been qualified. Instead, Trevor Bauer ranked sixth. All three of the aforementioned names are being drafted as SP3-type pitchers or worse but yet, stack up comparatively speaking to guys with greater name value.

Player X - 17 wins, 4.19 ERA, 10.0 K/9, 16.1 HR/FB, 3.88 FIP

Player Y - 13 wins, 4.74 ERA, 9.79 K/9, 21.2 HR/FB, 4.34 FIP

Player X is the aforementioned Trevor Bauer who’s being drafted at nearly pick 145. Player Y is Masahiro Tanaka, who’s name value is far superior, and is being drafted 92nd, 53 picks ahead of Bauer, for someone who didn’t have nearly as much success.

In 23 games last season, 19 of which were starts, Danny Salazar notched a 12.67 K/9 and he’s being drafted in the 160’s? Whether or not he’s a risk due to health and sometimes control issues, there isn’t any reason to pass up on the potential this late. In a 12-team league, his current ADP projects him to go in the 13th round. By then, you’ve probably grabbed two, maybe three starters, meaning the risk is well worth the reward. When he’s going right, he has SP1 upside. Garrett Richards has unfortunately been bit by the injury bug and has only made 12 starts in two seasons, but flashed electric stuff from 2014-2015 that had a lot of industry people buzzing. His 3.86 FIP, 1.24 WHIP and 7.8 K/9 numbers he posted in 2015 when he started 32 games and won 15 decisions were all numbers worth of an SP3. The unlucky nature of his last two seasons has hurt his draft stock, but with where he’s being drafted he’s well worth the risk.

But what happens when we have to drop all the way down? When the draft has less than 10 rounds to go and we still need starting pitching depth? And not just someone to fill the last few rotation spots, but pitchers that will stick and be there for the duration of the campaign barring they don’t get hurt. Here are some names to look at in the latter stages of your drafts that either have huge upside or are just plain consistent.

The fact of the matter is, we’ve seen all four of these guys flash major upside in years past, Snell and Giolito just last year since 2017 was the first extended big league action we’ve seen of both. Aaron Sanchez was a Cy Young candidate just two years ago and had his 2017 campaign derailed by injuries. Sanchez not only was seventh in the CY voting in 2016, but he was once the 27th ranked prospect in all of baseball back in 2014, so there are two things that pop that tell us that grabbing someone like Sanchez in damn near the 20th round could win us a fantasy baseball championship by years end.

Snell and Lamet were both top rated prospects in their own right, just like Sanchez. Snell from the first-half of the year to the second was night and day as he lowered his 1.64 WHIP to a 1.13 while seeing his K/9 go up from 7.8 to 8.6. Lamet, flashed massive strikeout upside notching a 10.8 K/9 mark in 21 starts. He also gets to pitch his home games at Petco Park, which is the premier pitchers field in the league. Chatwood on the other hand is someone who’s had the unlucky pleasure to call Coors Field his home park. His 5.25 career home ERA says a lot, but so does his 3.31 road mark. He’s not going to wow anyone in the strikeout department, but the .297 road wOBA against him last season is a very telling sign. Chatwood is definitely a guy worth looking at in the latter stages of your draft now that he’s pitching in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field.

With all of that in mind, we should also be keeping a close eye on how rotations shape out as the spring progresses. There are plenty of teams with six, seven and possibly eight guys that are vying for rotation spots, but won’t make the original. Someone like Brad Peacock comes to mind immediately. Peacock was a guy who started 21 games for Astros last year due to injuries and had big upside notching a 10.98 K/9 mark, but won’t make the Houston rotation out of camp this year. Drafting and stashing or drafting and utilizing someone who has the potential to make a huge impact on a rotation if there were any injuries in front of him could be a risk worth taking.

There are a lot of different approaches and routes you can take with your staff, but having depth is crucial. Even if you are someone who enjoys taking the streaming approach, having a solid foundation that you built in the draft allows you the safety and stability to take more risks when adding a player off of the waiver wire. Make sure you are doing you due diligence on pitchers being taken later in drafts and why.