• Jedd Gyorko’s struggles at the plate (.162/.213/.270) could be related to plantar fasciitis in his left foot. He says his foot only started bothering him on May 30th, which I don’t buy one bit.

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Agenda

1. Some words about park factors
2. Daily DFS
3. Friday Picks
4. Table

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There are, naturally, two ways to look at every match-up. A pitcher in a good situation to produce generally means hitters on the other side have a bad match-up, and the same goes for pitchers with a bad match-up. However, the differences in the ways hitters and pitchers are scored is important and can mean the degree to which a match-up is favorable for one side isn’t necessarily proportional to how bad it is to the other side.

On Sunday, I looked at how many daily fantasy points per 38 plate appearances the hitters from each team have produced against right-handed and left-handed pitching. This can be a quick shorthand for “how dangerous is a team against a pitcher handedness,” useful for deciding when to select stacks and when to target or fade certain starters.

The table below re-produces those stats (excluding stolen bases and caught stealing) but now also includes the fantasy points produced by an opposing pitcher per 25 batters faced, the league average for a starter (it excludes points from results, like wins, losses and saves).
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Whoo boy. What a turd of a position.

Sure, in the shallower leagues, you’re okay. There’s about 5-10 shortstops that I want to have and another seven or so that look okay to me. If you waited and picked Dee Gordon (or got him off waivers), congrats. Alexei Ramirez was another great late pick. Jimmy Rollins is resurgent. It looks like a good Alcides Escobar year — not a bad one at least.

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It’s that time again, updated American League starting pitcher tiers! We’re now far enough into the season where I have to finally take skills changes into serious consideration. Velocity changes are real, as are changes in repertoire and various advanced metrics such as the strike type percentages. While I have sometimes in the past concerned myself with rankings within tiers, I am not doing so anymore. They did begin in descending order of my projected dollar value, but it’s simply not all that helpful to determine whether Tanaka is above or below King Felix at this point. So, consider any pitcher within a tier to be worth within a several buck range of each other.

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After a couple days of wife-swapping, the Roto Riteup is back on its normal rotation, making you feel safe and secure in its stability.

On today’s agenda:
1. Carlos Gonzalez to the DL
2. It’s Corey Dickerson time
3. Aramis Ramirez activated
4. Fun with arbitrary endpoints
5. The Faux Five

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• As I write this, another rough outing for Trevor Rosenthal. He’ll technically take a BS in the box score, but he wasn’t given a clean ninth inning to worth with as Mike Matheny tried to stretch Adam Wainwright’s potential shutout all the way through. Rosenthal gave up a hit and a walk, which, combined with a fielder’s choice, allowed both inherited runners to cross the plate. This makes back-to-back hiccup-type outings for the righty, but I remain relatively unconcerned given his velocity (96 mph, 0.5 mph off last year), swinging strike rate (14%, near career norms), and 51% Zone% (which implies his 12.7% BB% in 2014 is probably due to drop a bit).

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It’s a “dudes who have been dropped in a lot of mixed leagues” edition. These two have disappointed in different ways – one with fairly low expectations, one with optimistic forecasts – but both of their outcomes have been roughly equal in terms of suckitude. The signs, lately, both performance-wise and in terms of team dynamics, have given fantasy owners reasons for cautious optimism going forward, though.

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We all know how important the platoon advantage is to daily fantasy. It can be important for those who platoon slots on their roto rosters as well, but it’s a part of almost all decisions made in daily fantasy. We almost always want our hitters to have it with the exception of the elite hitters who can handle pitchers of either handedness and a weirdo here and there with reverse splits like Adam Jones. There are also some pitchers who have reverse splits, and there are some pitchers who follow the traditional split to an exaggerated degree. Below is a chart showing the best and worst pitchers against batters of each handedness from 2012 to May 31. After the chart and the jump I’ll discuss some of the names.

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Rather than get dragged into a pizza-themed battle again, this month’s tiered rankings will be named after my favorite “Futurama” background characters. In order to qualify as a background character, they must appear in at least three episodes and cannot be a main character like Fry, Leela, etc.

Zapp Brannigan

Mike Trout

Still in a tier by himself — despite the recent back pain — even if he does end up on the disabled list. Rather than being his usual incredible self, this year Trout has merely been really, really good. Hopefully his back issues can be resolved without a trip to the DL.
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