Some things are great by themselves, but together they are even better. Peanut butter and chocolate: Reese Cups. Chips and cheese: nachos. Vodka and tomato juice: Bloody Mary. Man and spouse: chicka-chicka-bow-bow. Well, today I will take two of favorite baseball topics, aging curves and injuries for hitters, and combine them in an aging curve based on injury history.

A few years ago, I found one issue with projections, they did not know if a player played through an injury during the season. If a batter played through an injury, the next season the player would, on average, exceed his projection. The player was most likely to see an improvement in the power department.

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In the preseason I used Zach Sanders’ method for deriving fantasy value from roto category statistics to see how the Steamer projections valued players from a fantasy perspective. The system essentially compares each payer’s production in each category and assigns standardized values for each player in each category. When you add those numbers up, you get a player’s fantasy value above average. After a quick adjustment for positional scarcity, you’ve got fantasy value above replacement (FVARz). In the preseason this was helpful to get an idea about who might be over or undervalued. Now I’ve taken the Steamer rest of season projections both to see whose value has changed the most in the month or so since the season started and to potentially help with making trades.

Today I want to highlight a few players that were not included in the original Steamer projections. Next week I’ll take a look at the players whose value has increased the most since the start of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Agenda

1. The hidden value of early games
2. Wet Wednesday
3. Thin Thursday
4. Factor Grid (i.e. the table)

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It’s always interesting to see the players who are often available versus owned in the fantasy baseball realm’s popular platforms. At least it is to me. I don’t know why I allow myself to be surprised. The masses flock to results, regardless of the level of talent and statistical support that come with them. That’s where FanGraphs comes in, at least for those who want to know even a little more of the why. I don’t feel as if I fit in, but I enjoy the chance to learn from the experience and hope to share a little something of value along the way.

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If I were to tell you yesterday – when I originally looked at the leaderboard – that Jayson Werth has been the fourth best hitter in the major leagues over the past calendar year would you have believed me? I wouldn’t have believed me.  Despite watching Freddie Freeman on basically a nightly basis, I wouldn’t have pegged him sixth either. On the pitching side of things, it’s pretty cool to see that Scott Kazmir has been a top 20 pitcher over the past year.

I always enjoy looking back using the leaderboards, because no matter how much ball I watch I always miss something/under-appreciate someone. Onto to our task of the day.

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How about an early look at some NL Starter Tiers? With a month down, we already have a better idea of which surprise candidates might live up to the hype. We also have an idea of which veterans are at the end of their rope. And in the middle of all that, we are still waiting on the returns of Mike Minor and Mat Latos.

You’ll notice this is the NL post, so you won’t see Masahiro Tanaka ranked. Despite this, someone in the comments will say “where’s Masahiro Tanaka, you idiot?” Don’t be that person. The tiers should be viewed as tiers, not straight rankings. If I have Liriano and Samardzija in the same tier, but Liriano is ranked higher in his tier, that doesn’t matter. Being in a tier means I perceive those players to have similar value. Finally, I’m going to rank players based on albums I like. The top album isn’t my favorite or anything, I just think they are good albums and maybe you’ll enjoy them too. Feel free to comment, or recommend other albums below. Cool? Cool!

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The beauty of playing in a mono league such as AL Tout Wars is that I am able to see first hand who the hot FAAB pickups are. Rather than scour my CBS league’s free agent pool to find players worth considering, I could browse through the players actually bid on in a deep league. Having said that, only one of the two players here were actually added this week. The other was drafted. I’m sure you could guess which is which.

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The present Roto Riteup author made an appearance on the River Ave Blues podcast, which you should listen to if you like to hear me say disparaging things about people who make way more money than me.

On today’s agenda:
1. A.J. Griffin needs Tommy John surgery
2. Mike Minor back Friday
3. Archie Bradley to the DL
4. Manny Machado to be activated Tuesday
5. Tigers’ fans rejoice: Hector Noesi to start today
6. The Freaky Five

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• It started raining late in the Yankees/Mariners game. It seemed fitting since it appeared Fernando Rodney started to melt to open the inning. Ol’ Crooked Hat was called upon in a non-save situation and notched an easy punchout before giving up three straight hits. Suddenly the tying run appeared at the plate in what was a four-run game. Luckily for the Mariners, Rodney was able to punch out what appeared to be an old man imitating Derek Jeter and got a highly generous strike three call on a full-count pitch to Carlos Beltran to send everyone home. Seattle’s big money man has struck out nearly one-third of all comers in 2014, keeping his ERA predictors down below 3.50. There are a few chinks in the armor which bear watching, however. Rodney’s fastball velocity is down over a mile per hour from last year. Additionally, his SIERA has been boosted by an absurdly high line drive rate so far — batters are whiffing a lot, but they are also making some loud outs. Time to panic? Not particularly, but it would be nice for Rodney to turn a few trends the other direction for the Mariners to make sure they get their money’s worth.

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Episode 113

***There are some audio issues here as there was a bad storm in Orlando during the recording***

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Eno Sarris discuss batters whose strikeout rates have drastically improved or declined so far and the latest fantasy news.

As usual, don’t hesitate to 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.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music. Approximately 46  min of joyous analysis.  

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