Homers can win you a daily pool. There’s no way around this, as they’re worth, at the minimum, seven DraftStreet points (four for the home run and 1.5 for the run and each RBI). But they’re usually expensive or somewhat unpredictable – Alcides Escobar, for example, has three taters this year but hasn’t got one since April 28. Two of them were in the same week and one was off Justin Masterson, who hardly allows home runs himself.

In all, there have been 3,047 home runs this year, with probably only a small portion of those being of a predictable nature. On the other hand, there have been 1,700 stolen bases, and my guess would be that those steals are a bit more predictable because even fewer players attempt steals. (447 players have homered and averaged 6.8 as a group, while 317 players have stolen a base and averaged 5.4 as a group.)
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Today is the last weekend Roto Riteup before the non-waiver trade deadline. To go with the theme of last weekend things, here is Bill Hader’s final appearance as Stefon on Weekend Update and as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.

On today’s agenda:
1. An update on Omar Infante
2. Just 10 more starts for Matt Harvey
3. Ivan Nova continues to roll
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-Apparently, Joe Nathan is the newest closer on the trade market. It’s being reported that the Rangers have had “internal discussions” about dealing from an area of surplus to possibly increase the supply of relievers available to other organizations in order to acquire the offensive spark they covet. If by chance the Rangers moved their ninth-inning man to a team like the Tigers, Red Sox or Dodgers, Texas could slide former closer Joakim Soria, Alexi Ogando or even Neftali Feliz into that role. Nelson Cruz’s association with the Biogeneisis scandal could have accelerated this process as well.
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Disclaimer: Apologies for the truncated, late post this week. I’m presently vacationing in rural northern Minnesota, where I’m playing in a baseball reunion with former big leaguer Kerry Taylor.

Here are this week’s recommendations:

Felix Doubront – 16.5% ESPN – v. TBR (.329 team wOBA), v. ARI (.311)

Doubront is presently working on a 13 game stretch — dating to mid-May — in which he hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in any start. In that time frame, he carries an impressive 2.71 ERA, 7.7 K/9, and perhaps most importantly, 2.1 K/BB rate.

In that stretch, Doubront has faced Detroit, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Seattle (who have hit well in July), and the Halos. In other words, he’s not stumping total schlubs. Read the rest of this entry »

If you go on the Weather Network website, it’s easy to just type in “Chicago” and get a weather forecast. Right now, for example, it’s 63 and sunny with an 11 MPH wind blowing Northwest. Later, it might rain. Sounds good, right? The Cubs and White Sox are playing in low temperatures with strong wind and a chance of rain.

Except that, y’kno, Wrigley Field and U.S. Cellular Field are 10.5 miles apart, Wrigley to the north and The Cell to the south. That might not seem extreme, but also consider that the parks face different directions. Batters at Wrigley hit the ball north-east while those at U.S. Cellular hit it south-east.

Thus, it’s important to look at each individual park’s weather, using a site like Daily Baseball Data or something similar. Just how big a difference can the parks make beyond “Chicago weather?”
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Tomorrow, July 28, will be the seventh anniversary of the excellent movie John Tucker Must Die. That the present author owns two copies of this movie — one DVD and one Blu-Ray — probably does not surprise the reader.

On today’s agenda:
1. Derek Jeter won’t be activated today
2. A complete game shutout from Randall Delgado
3. Mike Zunino to the disabled list
4. Time to buy (David) Lough?
5. The New New York Mets rotation
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They say that a person’s true colors are often revealed during high-pressure situations and with both the MLB and your league’s trade deadlines rapidly approaching, this is about as high-pressure as it gets for fantasy owners during the season. The haves and the have-nots have separated within the standings and those who are in contention for their league title are caught in a seemingly high-stressed dogfight with some fierce competitors. Trade talk is abundant and the days can be filled with boatloads of anxiety, especially when your competition makes a deal that could either vault them past you in the standings or extend the lead they may already have over you. And while many of you are more than capable of rolling with the punches, there are numerous who are exposed as both petty and immature, no better than a petulant child who takes his ball and goes home when things don’t go his way during the game. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point, we’ve run out of superlatives to describe the season Mike Trout put together last year. He had the best age-20 season in the history of baseball, and many considered him to be the AL MVP. Reflect on that for a moment. Many people argued Mike Trout was the best player in baseball last season. He was 20 years old. That’s not normal. We all got swept up in Puig-mania this summer and have basked in the glory of Matt Harvey, but we all witnessed something truly special in 2012.

Trout’s supremacy wasn’t limited to the WAR stat, though. In ESPN leagues, he was the number-one fantasy player in all of baseball — and he didn’t even play a big-league game until April 28. The young man essentially gave the entire league a month’s head start and still finished the season in the number-one slot.

Naturally, fantasy owners were left wondering if lightning could strike twice. Considering his price tag on draft day, would it be wise for owners to invest so heavily into a 21-year-old outfielder who may suffer from the dreaded sophomore slump? Opposing teams had ample time to make adjustments this offseason. Would he make the counter-adjustments and replicate his magical rookie season, or would he experience a dramatic year-two decline like Jason Heyward in 2011?

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In the preseason I wrote a piece in which I took a look at the pitchers who throw a particular pitch a lot but not particularly. I also looked at the hitters that are the very best against certain pitches. Because this is around the 20th daily fantasy piece I’ve written this year, I’m quite frankly running out of ideas. So I’m going to update the piece from the preseason.

The process is fairly simple. I started by taking all qualified starting pitchers since the beginning of 2011 (min. 300 IP) and pulling their pitch mix data for that time period. I then took each pitcher who threw a specific pitch at a rate more than one standard deviation above the mean and pulled their pitch values to see if that was a positive pitch for them. Below you’ll see all the pitchers from 2011 to present who threw a specific pitch at a rate much higher than normal and who had a negative pitch value. The idea is that you can choose hitters in daily contests that fair very well against that pitch type when facing these pitchers. I’m only looking at fastballs, sliders, curves and changes to prevent this from being too long. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the spring, each of us here at RotoGraphs participated in a “Ten Bold Predictions” series for the upcoming season. As you can imagine, there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek in all of those, because you don’t want to say something blatantly obvious like “Miguel Cabrera is going to be great”, for example, but you also want to stick with something that may vaguely be realistic, too.

We’ll probably recap those for everyone following the season, and I’m the first to admit I have some real clunkers in mine. But we can get into the rest another time, because for now, I want to focus on this one: my “bold prediction” that Justin Smoak would be a top-15 mixed league first baseman. Read the rest of this entry »