The platoon advantage is a well established concept. And it’s one of the most important factors, if not the most important factor, when picking hitters in daily fantasy contests. When I pick hitters, I start at the bottom of the list at each position and scroll up until I find a hitter that is facing a pitcher of the opposite handedness who also happens to not be very good.

The problem with this strategy is that not all hitters have a normal platoon split, and others have about the same level of success against both LHP and RHP. The other issue is with switch hitters. Every day I have to look up a switch hitter’s splits from each side.

Below are two charts I’ve created to make this process easier. The first shows the players who are either better against pitchers who throw from the same side from which they hit or players who have roughly equal success against pitchers of either handedness. The second shows the splits for switch hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

Has there been a more frustrating player over the last few years than Adam Lind? He had a breakout 2009, hitting 36 homers with a nice .396 wOBA, giving Toronto hope that they’d found a pillar of their offense for years to come. The next year he collapsed under a pile of strikeouts and poor BABIP, and while he managed to retain some of his power, three years of nearly identical — and lousy — wOBA marks of .309, .316,  and .316 ended with a demotion to Triple-A in 2012. Lind’s Toronto career seemed over; his fantasy relevance almost certainly was. Read the rest of this entry »

Being the StarCraft fan (read: nerd) that the present author is, the onus of informing the masses about the ongoing World Championship Series Finals falls upon these narrow shoulders. Check out arguably the best StarCraft II players in the world as they compete for their share of the $150,000 prize pool. If you have any free time this weekend, please take some of it and watch any one of free available HD streams.

On today’s agenda:
1. Will Middlebrooks‘ uncertain future
2. Daniel Descalso’s hot streak
3. Assorted roster moves
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Just a few notes on a relatively slow night from the bullpen arms (at the time of this writing, at least)….

Jose Valverde needed just nine pitches in the bottom of the ninth-inning to close out the Rays and save a gem for starter Max Scherzer today. The Tigers stopgap last took the hill on 5/31 in Baltimore where he served up two long balls, leading to four earned runs and his second blown save of the year. So, it’s a safe bet that Detroit’s brass and his fantasy owners alike, took a deep sigh of relief at the conclusion of tonight’s efficient outing. With that said, Valverde’s velocity appears to be down a tick or more on both his fastball and splitter, entering tonight he’s been missing fewer bats (8.8% SwStr%) through 14 appearances versus his career 12.8% SwStr% and he’s been getting a bit lucky on balls in play (.156 BABIP). Hate to say it, but I see this glass as half-empty, and I’d be looking to add him as a sweetener in a larger deal with an owner in need of saves.

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Episode 22
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss the latest news in the wonderful world of PEDs and the updated positional rankings.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star).

Approximately 44 min of joyous analysis.

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A little bit of everything today, a few pitchers returning from the disabled list, HURT rankings (I will do a different subset of players every report) and a couple of injury related articles. I am hoping to introduce PAIN, the pitcher injury predictor on Monday.

• I found two injury-related articles interesting this week. The first is on the Nationals being too “macho” to go on the DL. The other deals with the intense schedule and the inability of players to keep up with it.

• Josh Johnson returned from the DL and Ben Duronio covered his return in detail yesterday.

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Julio Teheran is owned in just 52% of Yahoo! leagues but I expect that number to jump up pretty swiftly after last night’s performance. If he’s available, it’s time to put a claim in on him and offer up a hefty amount of FAAB if that’s how your league operates. The one concern around owning Teheran and investing a lot into him this season was the return of Brandon Beachy. With Teheran’s sixth straight quality start, he has all but assured he will remain in the rotation when Beachy returns in the next two weeks.
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It’s time to update the catcher tiers again as we enter the month of June and look towards closing out the first half of the season soon. Two months in, things are starting to take shape a little more. The sample size of data is more plentiful and we’ve now seen those who started off slow begin to heat up finally while some of those hot starts have cooled significantly. Let’s take a look and see where everyone is falling into line. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday in this space, I spoke about not being too clever in daily formats. My point was that you have a daily budget, not one that spans a week or month or season. If you think an ace is going to have an ace-like game, then select him, and ditto for hitters. There’s no point in leaving money on the table just to show that you’re clever.

At the same time, it also doesn’t make sense to spend money just because it’s there. It’s certainly possible that what you see as an optimal line-up for the day only fills about 90% of your budget. Consider the following example where you have a $100 to spend on two pitchers.

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On May 17th of last year Yan Gomes of the Toronto Blue Jays became the first Brazilian to ever appear in a Major League Baseball game. Chicago White Sox prospect Andre Rienzo is a strong candidate to be the second – and the first pitcher.

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