Ryan Vogelsong and Roy Halladay have returned to the big leagues. Both have had decent results so far, and ones that can’t completely be explained away by matchups. On the other hand, the underlying realities of their arsenals right now combine to make a powerful argument against trusting either veteran with a crucial late-season start for your fantasy team.

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Owners of Alex Wood in long term leagues will have some type of dilemma on their hands entering next year. There are so many types of keeper leagues that it is difficult to write specifically toward any type of league set up, but generally I notice keeper leagues allow free agent pick ups to be kept in round (x).
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Most of the time when I’m picking a daily lineup, I make a custom leaderboard of the starting pitchers for the day to see which starters are most homer-prone. But this can be a tedious task to do day after day. So I’ve created the chart you see below which shows the most homer prone starting pitchers. I had a post a few months ago where I had charts showing hitters with reverse splits and the splits of switch hitters that I still reference often. Hopefully this post will be a similar bookmark worthy tool.

There are three columns. One for starters that are currently in a major league rotation with at least 1320 career batters faced (which is the point at which HR stabilizes) against batters of any handedness . The players listed have a HR rate against all batters that is two or more standard deviations above the mean. And then there is a chart for starters with 1320+ BF against lefties and against righties. The players listed in those charts have a HR rate against batters of that particular handedness that is one or more standard deviations above the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

With just over a month to go, time is running out for offensive disappointments to get back on track and start showing the type of power projected of them before the season began. When a hitter goes through a power drought, there could be a number of explanations, such as an injury, aging effects or good ole’ random variation (read: bad luck/fluke). These five hitters have seen their ISO rates plummet the most compared to last season. Let’s try to figure out what went wrong.

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Today’s Roto Riteup welcomes readers into the last week of August.

On today’s agenda:
1. Roy Halladay returns, looks mediocre
2. Howie Kendrick still hurt, progressing slowly
3. Some Facts about Eric Stults
4. Dustin Ackley’s on fire

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(I tried to come up with a good Sunday night *NSync joke but couldn’t…)

• Not a good day to be a Kevin Gregg owner. After the Cubs finally scratched out the first two runs of their game versus the Padres this afternoon in the top of the 13th, Chicago’s “still” closer promptly coughed the runs back up, meaning the 3,000 fans left at Petco had to stick around for another few innings if they wanted to see a resolution. Gregg has been bad — to put it mildly — over the last couple of months, posting a sub-1.00 K/BB (0.69) and a 5.62 xFIP (not including today) since the all-star break. He somehow has racked up nine saves over that span, but has allowed multiple baserunners in most of them. Talk about walking on the edge. There hasn’t been too much chatter as to how hot “the goggled one’s” seat is, but even if he was assured the ninth inning job, I don’t know if I could stomach the ERA/WHIP hit (and marginal K loss) as the roto season enters its final stretch.

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Episode 55
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs contributor Colin Zarzycki. We discuss a trio of men returning from injury and perhaps the next step in player projections.

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 42 min of joyous analysis.

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There are a few nuances in the DraftStreet scoring system that are worth remembering when setting a lineup – “best hitter” isn’t always the same as “best fantasy pick” for several reasons.

That is, you can’t just look at, say, OPS to gauge a player’s daily value. Instead, things like strikeouts (bad), stolen bases (good) and how they get their slugging points all have a major impact. If we compare the list of top OPS earners to the list of top DraftStreet earners, a few things stand out.
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Thirteen years ago today the beginning of a great franchise was born. That’s right, Bring It On was released on August 25, 2000 and eventually launched four sequels. Does anyone else feel that? Brr, it’s cold in here…

On today’s agenda:
1. Welcome back, Lucas Duda
2. Derek Jeter to return tomorrow
3. Starling Marte to the disabled list
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Make hay while you still can.

It’s getting to be about that time where baseball gets really unpredictable, with rosters expanding and teams experimenting with young players and odd lineups. It means there might be more opportunity for bargains in daily leagues, but it also means there’s far more uncertainty.

Consider the graphs after the jump that show the amount of batters and starters used month by month over the past few years.
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