We here at FanGraphs University always preach patience and to now allow small sample performance weigh too highly on our panicky brains. For the most part, this is a strong principle to adhere to, but not every metric requires hundreds of plate appearances to stabilize. In fact only 100 plate appearances are needed before Contact Rate, or Contact% in the Plate Discipline section, becomes reliable. That makes the metric the second quickest to stabilize, following Swing%. Obviously, all else being equal, the more contact a hitter makes, the better. All things aren’t always equal though, and sometimes more contact could lead to lesser power. So let’s check in on the hitters whose contact rates have surged the most this season compared to last and figure out if we can glean anything.

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A glimpse inside the author’s mind while penning the Roto Riteup: “it’s hot and I hate everything.”

On today’s agenda:
1. Goodnight, sweet prince: The Roy Halladay story
2. The Nats outfield is healing
3. Erik Bedard shifts to bullpen
4. Michael Bourn is rehabbing

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• Just in case anyone was living under a rock the last few days, Jason Motte decided to undergo Tommy John surgery tomorrow and will be out for the remainder of 2013 and possibly (likely?) the early part of 2014. There were red flags implying this seemingly minor elbow issue in spring could prove worrisome for the Cardinals and fantasy owners, so hopefully you’ve already done your due diligence in snapping up Cardinals relievers. With Motte out for the season, Edward Mujica has one less guy peering over his shoulder. He only keeps helping his cause by racking up save after save (even though he’s given up a couple runs in his last three appearances) so keep running him out there on your fantasy squad.

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Episode 8
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features the rock kicker himself, RotoGraphs contributor Howard Bender. We have a very special surprise in store, which is followed by a discussion of all things catcher.

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 34 min of joyous analysis.

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The present author must apologize. Yesterday was Star Wars Day and the RotoGraphs readers went uninformed. Of course, a reasonable assumption could be made that a Venn diagram of Star Wars nerds and fantasy baseball nerds would overlap significantly, but the author digresses.

On today’s agenda:
1. Hanley Ramirez back to the disabled list
2. The return of Didi Gregorius
3. Michael Saunders‘ two home runs day
4. Alex Avila alert (and alliteration)
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With the calendar flipping to May, it’s time to re-visit the catcher tiers. When you’re scoping out players to target in trades, this should help guide towards players of similar value/potential. You’re not always going to find owners amenable to trading, so when you’re unable to pry loose your top target, at least you can find someone reasonably comparable. Though the one month is but a small sample size, let’s see which backstops are hottest moving forward and which ones have cooled in value in the fantasy community’s eyes. Again, these tiers are based not just on recent performance, but expected value moving forward as well. Read the rest of this entry »

In a mere 22 days, Arrested Development will make a triumphant return. In the mean time, the Arrested Development documentary that was released yesterday should be able to hold you over.

On today’s agenda:
1. Neil Walker to the disabled list
2. Drew Stubbs is hitting
3. The return of Jhoulys Chacin
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Let’s first start with results:

Week 1: 1-3, 30 IP, 3.00 ERA, 5.4 K/9, 2.3 K/BB, 1.13 WHIP (Kevin Slowey, Ubaldo Jimenez, Joe Saunders)
Week 2: 2-3, 25.1 IP, 5.69 ERA, 6.8 K/9, 2.4 K/BB, 1.74 WHIP (Joe Blanton, James McDonald, Eric Stults)
Week 3: 1-2, 32 IP, 3.66 ERA, 7.9 K/9, 3.1 K/BB, 1.22 WHIP (Wade Davis, Carlos Villanueva, Patrick Corbin)
Week 4*: 1-1, 16 IP, 6.19 ERA, 7.9 K/9, 2.3 K/BB, 1.94 WHIP (Julio Teheran, Jason Hammel, Garrett Richards)

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Total: 5-9, 103.1 IP, 4.36 ERA, 6.9 K/9, 2.5 K/BB, 1.43 WHIP

A blowup game from Richards kept a couple of 3.00 ERAs in the dark so far this week, and the WHIPs have all been terribly ugly this week. In fact, Richards presently holds the lowest WHIP for this week of the trio with a 1.76. Yikes. Read the rest of this entry »

“May Day” is actually an appropriate call for third base because, holy hell, it has been one trial after the last tribulation. Third base has been so tough to staff on some of you, the consideration of just going without has been more attractive than what’s available on the waiver wire. As far as putting this cast of misfits into tiers, I ought to just have Tier One and then “The Rest” as punishment to everyone outside of Detroit. There have been some pleasant surprises of course, so let’s get to it.

A quick note about this particular batch of tiers. In the past, I’ve always liked to temper the rapid movement up or down rankings in May, suggesting that the tiers should represent something akin to a “if the draft were held today…” line of thinking. But given the dearth of production from some players and the rampant injuries, I’d like to think these tiers are a happy median between on-field performance and what we should expect going forward. The stats after each player are the Steamer rest-of-season projections.

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This week I will examine one pitcher returning from the D.L., four hitters struggling through injuries, two pitcher requests and a pitcher injury I was too late in covering.

• Joel Hanrahan’s post-DL velocity seems fine after two appearances.

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