Last week I briefly touched on some guys who had been getting raked across the coals in the BABIP/LOB% department, making their raw stats look like something out of a horror film. This week I’ll take a look at the flip side; guys who have sparkling ERAs, but looking under the hood implies that your nice new sports car might not be purring quite as well as you had hoped. Just remember, it’s very early and a lot of the underlying peripherals haven’t stabilized yet; we’re just looking for guys we don’t want to make the mistake of overpaying for.

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It’s time for our weekly look at the best of the worst. That’s right, it’s the deep league waiver wire where I attempt to find value in mediocre players! Today happens to be Astros day. The good thing about being a weak team is that most of your players are unowned in fantasy leagues. So that gives me multiple options for this very column.

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In a random debate of sorts, fellow FanGraphs writer and baseball nerd colleague Mark Smith and the present author spoke on a number of things via twitter, culminating in the following question: which is better Backstreet Boys or N’Sync. What say you, reader?

On today’s agenda:
1. Potentially bad news for Dylan Bundy
2. A setback for Matt Garza
3. The Atlanta Braves gain a player, lose a player
4. Andrew Cashner to the rotation
5. Shaun Marcum’s return

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• Colin said it last night, and I don’t really have all that much to add so, “All aboard the Edward Mujica bandwagon!” Adam Wainwright couldn’t quite complete what he started and Mujica came on for the two out save, his third of the year. I’d be interested in betting some gummy bears or Jelly Beans on Trevor Rosenthal finishing the year with the ninth inning role but sometimes a pitcher can just run away with the job once he gets a hold of it and for now, Mujica has that opportunity.  Mujica has always had fantastic control (career 4.1% BB%) and this year he’s striking out a few more batters than he has in years past (28.6% K%) on the heels of an increased SwStr% of 14.9%, which would be  a career high. Small sample size warnings obviously apply, but if Mujica maintains any improvement in missing bats, it will go a long way in cementing him not only as the closer in St. Louis, but a particularly good one for fantasy.

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Episode 3
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We debut some new segments and talk young pitching and power outages. But wait…there’s more! A surprise breaking news announcement interrupts my closing at the end of the show.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via the feed. iTunes coming soon.

Approximately 36 min of joyous analysis.

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Consider this a bit of a twist on what usually appears in this space. Rather than a player who is outproducing his expected value, today we have a player who is being rapidly added in leagues where he will probably cease to provide the kind of value for which his new owners are hoping. Especially in light of reports that Chris Johnson wouldn’t lose playing time now that Freddie Freeman has returned off the disabled list at the expense of former platoon-mate Juan Francisco, there seems to be a sense that he’s worth rostering in nearly 100 percent of leagues; in the last seven days, Johnson has been added in over 72 percent of ESPN leagues and the only reason he isn’t atop the Yahoo! trends is because he’s already owned in a majority of leagues at this point. While Johnson may well have more value than it appeared he would on draft day, he’s unlikely to finish as one of the 10-12 best third basemen this season.

The obvious red flag with Johnson is his .468 BABIP, which is so ripe for regression it has almost spoiled on the tree. Since 1995, just two players have finished a qualifying season with a BABIP over .400: Manny Ramirez, who had a .403 mark in 2000, and Jose Hernandez, who managed just a .288 batting average despite a .404 BABIP in 2002. So yes, regression is coming, but expecting Johnson to slide all the way down to .300 is probably a mistake for a couple of reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last three or four years, it’s become pretty clear the Yankees have one of the better pro scouting departments in the game. Everyone offseason they acquire some retreads and somehow turn them into useful players, like Bartolo Colon or Eric Chavez or Marcus Thames. They seem to revive guys from the baseball graveyard, and this year they might have done their greatest work, turning Vernon Wells back into a legitimate big league player.

Wells, 34, was hilariously bad with the Angels the last two years. You know that. He hit .222/.258/.409 (82 wRC+) in 791 plate appearances from 2011-2012, his only saving grace the 33 homers he swatted from the right side. Wells was effectively done as a MLB caliber hitter, someone who kept his job only because of the tens of millions of dollars still owed to him. Fantasy owners didn’t even have to think twice about dropping him from their roster or consider him on draft day.

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With the early part of the season past us, and almost 90% of the season left ahead, perhaps it’s time to talk strategy. You’ve drafted your squad and — even though April is a small sample — perhaps you have a clearer picture of your team, and its strengths and weaknesses. You may be out a shortstop thanks to an injury or two, or maybe you’ve suffered from too many Carlos Quentin-induced starting pitching injuries. You had a nice team to start, but now you’ve got a weakness either on the offensive side or in terms of pitching, and you’re ready to make a change.

Well, today I’d like to consider a few possible deals. Oftentimes, we look to trade from a position of strength to cover up a position of weakness. That’s what we’ll explore today: a couple of possible one-for-one (or similar) deals that might be a valuable swap of pitcher-for-hitter or vice versa. Perhaps that will help determine what a reasonable return might be from one perspective when swapping one side of your 5×5 team for another. Always, your mileage will vary based on you league and the population of trade partners available.

Trading a Hitter for a Pitcher

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Those of us who write for Rotographs know that inspiration is all around us. I have all sorts of places I often look for something to write about, including ongoing ottoneu auctions, recent call-ups, and more.

But nothing “inspires” me more than players whose struggles are sinking my fantasy teams. And this morning, I am writing an article looking at fly ball distance, inspired by Jay Bruce.

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Yes, it’s still quite early, but I simply cannot help myself from analyzing my favorite advanced pitcher metric — the swinging strike percentage, or SwStk%. The majority of starting pitchers have only started three or four games, but a metric like SwStk% stabilizes relatively quickly, so the typical small sample size caveats don’t necessarily apply to the full degree. The following five pitchers have enjoyed the largest surge in SwStk% as compared to last year. Let’s see if they are doing anything differently, or if it just seems to be a good run.

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