Episode 131

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is now live! Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss Clayton Kershaw‘s no-no, Matt Holliday’s decline in power, Jeff Samardzija, Jason Hammel, Jake Arrieta, Alfredo Simon, Danny Duffy, Kyle Gibson, Kris Bryant and Javier Baez, Kevin Gausman, Yohan Pino as placeholder for Alex Meyer and Trevor May, and Anthony DeSclafani.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them on our next episode.

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Remember Bold Prediction season? Billy Hamilton was a popular subject, with nearly everybody (except me) weighing in on how the controversial speedster would perform. The most common view was a flop. After all, he left winter ball because he couldn’t hit breaking balls. How could he possibly succeed at the major league level?

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• Reader Cason Jolette asked about Jason Kipnis possibly still being hurt. He basically lost the entire month of May because of a strained oblique. Since coming back off the DL, his injury indication stats show he may still be injured.

Stat: Pre-injury, Post-injury
ISO: .160, .037
HR&FB Dist: 272ft, 257ft
K% (contact issues): 14%, 18%

It would be nice to see him hit more than two extra base hits over the time frame. For owners looking to see if he gets back, there two places I would look. Go to Baseballheatmaps.com’s individual player batted ball distance page, set it to the past couple weeks and see if his distance is improving.  Also, check out his ISO graph here at FG and look to see if it starts to final trend up (not stay constant).

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Enjoys long walks at more appropriate places in his fantasy baseball league’s standings. Must love dogs. (I do like me some Diane Lane, one of the more underrated Hollywood beauties of her time, in my opinion.)

This is kind of like the personals section of your local Craigslist, minus the creep or latent possibility of disease, death or need for a restraining order. There’s also practically a 0% chance that this entry ends up as a prompt for a category on the hilarious Comedy Central program “@midnight.”

I’m tired of wins. Not just because the stat has quote-unquote screwed me out of a rotisserie league title, although I’m sure it has at one time or another. Not just because of all the good arguments for why it’s a terrible statistic for individual pitchers. Not just because I’m tired of hearing people complain about why it’s a terrible statistic for individual pitchers. I’m over that stuff, for the most part. I’m just tired. And kind of bored.

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Agenda

1. A Leaderboard
2. Daily DFS
3. Friday Picks
4. Table

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There’s been a good deal of talk on these pages (especially on the Fangraphs side) about trusting in rest of season projections of late. Brett Talley talked about this a little on Monday, and despite Justin Verlander trying his very best to shred Brett’s point to pieces, it still stands – ROS projections are a very effective tool, and using them with a little bit of your own analysis (match ups, weather, and so on) can provide real value.

Should we be less trusting when it comes to young players, though? It seems that projection systems would struggle more in translating minor league stats than major league ones. I don’t have the data chops to determine to what degree that’s true, but it certainly makes sense logically – there’s a lot more noise happening at the minor league level, and the difficulty gets turnt up in the majors.

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Entering spring training, Jake Odorizzi did not have a starting rotation spot in hand. But then an elbow injury to Jeremy Hellickson opened up a spot and Odorizzi won out over Erik Bedard and Cesar Ramos. A popular sleeper choice in a presumed good situation in Tampa Bay, Odorizzi hasn’t exactly impressed, having posted a 4.72 ERA and 1.38 WHIP over 14 starts. Surely the former top prospect was expected to perform better.

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Y’all have stuck with me for four straight days this week, and you will be punished for doing so by having David Wiers back at the Roto Riteup this weekend. I didn’t do this to you; you did this to yourself.

On today’s agenda:
1. Kyle Gibson finds his strikeouts
2. Jake Arrieta Watch
3. Jarrod Saltalamacchia back from DL
4. Fun with arbitrary endpoints
5. The Forceful Five

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Some quick bullpen notes in a pinch-hit effort this evening:

With Glen Perkins unavailable for the Twins in the bottom of the 10th due to a sore back, right-hander Casey Fien earned the nod with a 1-0 lead in the save situation. Manager Ron Gardenhire called upon Fien last week to complete a four-out save — his first of the season — but this evenings effort failed to turn out as nice. He induced a fly out to Dustin Pedroia to leadoff the inning, but surrendered back-to-back homeruns to David Ortiz and Mike Napoli to blow the save and take the loss, 2-1. Despite the blown save, usage indicates that Fien should indeed jump Jared Burton on our grid (change should be reflected below) and would seemingly get the next look if Perkins’ soreness develops into more than a one-day issue. Fien is now 1-of-2 in save chances this season with 11 holds, a 2.76 ERA (3.50 FIP) and a ~18% K%.
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Yesterday Dave Cameron posted his early picks for the AL All-Star Roster, which got me thinking about how I’d vote for the All-Stars if I bothered to do so. I’ve always been of the opinion that All-Stars should be selected based on who has performed the best since the last All-Star game. It’s usually just perennial All-Stars and guys who got off to a fast start in the first couple months of the season. But the guys who killed the back half of 2013 will get no love. So I took all the results from the past calendar year and ran them through the Zach Sanders z-score method for calculating fantasy value to see who has been the best in the last 365 days.

Let me point out a few things to preclude any trolls from doing so in the comments. Yes, I know that the past calendar year includes games that were pre-All-Star break in 2013. But because we don’t have a “post-All-Star break to present” split on the leaderboards, I’m using 365. Also, I’m unsure of the exact roster construction rules, if there even are any. I’m picking twenty hitters per league with at least two players at each infield position but no more than three at any infield position. Finally, I’m aware that fantasy value doesn’t necessarily mean All-Star. But this is Rotographs after all, and after I post the would-be rosters, I’m going to do a quick bit of fantasy discussion based on the results so that this post somewhat belongs under the RG banner. So without further ado, here is what the All-Star rosters would look like (hitters only) if you simply chose the teams based on fantasy value above replacement level over the last calendar year. Read the rest of this entry »