I traded for Allen Webster and I’m not sure you should too. You see, I traded for Webster in a 20-team 28-keeper league, and he’s immediately my last keeper. Even if he’s the best last keeper, he’s probably no better than 540th. On the other hand, I spent a real-life asset to get him, so, yeah, I’m going to own some Allen Webster shares.
Are you ready to be shocked? I’m having trouble selling my $3 Alex Rodriguez. Also my $7 Billy Hamilton, $5 Shane Victorino, $4 Jesse Chavez, and $4 Neftali Feliz to name a few. Unsurprisingly, nobody is busting down my door to own my collection of down-roster bench fodder. Yet I’m pretty sure a guy like Victorino will go for more than $5 on draft day. Somebody will pony up for the latest shot at a Hamilton breakout. My inability to find back end starters has me ready to keep Chavez for myself. Essentially, I’m confident there is cause for somebody to keep these players, even if they possess a second order sort of value.
This puts me in a bit of a pickle. My latest roster tinker session has me at 29 roster spots (of 40) and $286 (of $400) committed to players I consider to be my core. I need a starting third baseman, some kind of middle infielder, and a couple starting pitchers. And then there are the gobbledygooks. I have something like 13 of them. Nine of them, like Victorino, are on what I consider keepable prices – in a fringy sort of sense. The others might still be somebody else’s keeper.
Episode 184
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
And Jason Collette is back! He and Nicholas Minnix talk about, among other players in the news, Wil Myers, Derek Norris, Will Middlebrooks, and other new Padres; Max Fried; Kevin Jepsen, Steven Souza, and other new Rays; Michael Morse, Martin Prado, and other new Marlins; Nathan Eovaldi; and Jesse Hahn. Don’t worry: There’s a cursory mention of Justin Upton.
As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.
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Why I watched: All over the place in 2014 with some potential.
Game(s) Watched: 9/23/14 vs Royals
Game Thoughts
• What a game to randomly pick, he got his first six outs via strikeout. He ended each at bat with a swinging strike on his change.
• Threw a 93-98 mph fastball which was straight except some glove side run at lower speeds. It is the only pitch he can throw for called strikes.
Duffy ranked 36th on Zach Sanders’ rankings of starting pitchers.
Danny Duffy is one interesting case. His injury history is exclusively ailments of his left arm. Well that, and a lower leg cramp that cost him no time in June of 2012. Seriously, check out his injury history.
The Duff Man was a top prospect between the 2010 and 2011 seasons, finishing in the top-100 prospects for both Baseballs Prospectus and America. Duffy’s minor league numbers were legendary; he fanned 15.2 per 9 in a short Rookie ball stint and at least a guy an inning up the ladder save for a brief stint with Wilmington at High-A.
But like the lady in the postseason ads that burrowed into your brain says: then left arm dysfunction happens. In 2010 Duffy had a UCL sprain that cost him over 100 days. Inflammation in the same hinge cropped up in 2012, and just under two weeks after returning he was sidelined with what ended up requiring him Tommy John surgery.
I’m the type of guy who likes a good challenge. At least, I must be. Why else would I volunteer myself to write about a 33-year-old reliever who made the transition to the rotation, pitched to a 3.44 earned run average in 32 starts, and then got traded?
Let’s begin by just reflecting on how remarkable Alfredo Simon’s 2014 was. He came into the season more than two years removed from his last start, having spent all of 2012 and 2013 pitching out of the bullpen. Not only had he not started in quite some time, but he was never any good at all as a starter in the first place.
I’m not sure I’ve seen this before. As of this writing, the Padres have either completed or began finalizing five trades in the last 48 hours. I feel like we’re living inside a copy of MVP ’05. The Padres are positioned to make still more trades to alleviate a roster crunch. Seth Smith, Carlos Quentin, Cameron Maybin, Will Venable, and Yonder Alonso are currently looking at just three or four spots. Somebody has to go. Then there’s Tim Federowicz, whose role with the club may have been co-opted by the David Ross signing. The Friars have also shown a willingness to re-package players, so we could see an unexpected swap involving Wil Myers, Derek Norris, Justin Upton, Will Middlebrooks, or even Matt Kemp.
This week, Eno presented Pitch Arsenal scores. There were a sundry of impactful responses which will result in a more comprehensive score in the future, such as incorporating pitch usage; a dominating pitch used more should be scored higher than a pitch with the same results that is used less.
The other clear requirement is associating weight to the outcomes in which Eno evaluated: whiff per swings and grounder to fly ratios. That is all this post will get at. It sounds like follow-up scores may incorporate pop-up% and zone% as well. Again, we are looking for undervalued pitchers, but if we want to get more descriptive (simply presenting the results from last year), we could look at HR/FB and LD/BIP on each pitch type as well.
I did something similar in the past, and there are different approaches, but here goes.
Using BP’s PITCHf/x Leaderboard (1oo-pitch qualifier) I first found each pitch type’s Whiff/Swing and GB/FB z-score. I then weighed each z-score by swinging-strike’s (.62) and GB/FB’s (.27) average correlation to ERA, SIERA and xFIP for all pitchers over 70 innings pitched (my lazy attempt to omit relievers). What is not incorporated and should be in the future, is differentiating weights for each pitch type. For example, groundball induction is a more important requirement for Sinkers; Sliders and Change-ups should induce more whiffs as we know from these Pitch Type Benchmarks.
The seven pitch types incorporated are Fourseamers, Sinkers, Cutters, Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. For Trevor Bauer‘s Screwball and R.A. Dickey’s Knuckleball, I went to Brooks Baseball’s player cards and used their sabermetric outcome z-scores for these two pitch types and combined the weighted z-score to the rest of their repertoire score.
The list will be distinguishable from Eno’s initial list based on the weights, but the names within each cluster will look similar.
When you get Felix Hernandez and Corey Kluber in the top 5 and Kevin Correia dead last, you know we got it right:
Notes:
Results:
Think the Indians aren’t looking on the pitch-outcome level? They have 5 pitchers in the top 55 Repertoire Scores: Carlos Carrasco and Corey Kluber are numbers 3 and 4 respectively! Newcomer Gavin Floyd is #15 on the list thanks to great breaking balls. Danny Salazar is #43 and his per-pitch outcomes were even better coming into 2014. T.J. House is the real deal at #54. And not far off is Trevor Bauer at #75 overall.
I cannot not mention that the Mets have two guys in the top 21: Zack Wheeler (#9) and Jacob deGrom #21). Harvey if healthy should join them.
As it relates to Cahill, for some value-add, I highlighted (red/green) those .50 more or less standard deviations from the mean in SwStr% and GB/FB, but also the three “luck” categories: LOB%, HR/FB and of course BABIP. Cahill ranks well in both SwStr% and GB/FB and was also relatively unlucky when it came to his BABIP and LOB% (about 65 points and 9% respectively from his career average). Cahill is a deep-league…even standard-league asset with some returned control and an ERA closer to expected ERAs below 4.00. I am thinking the magical-mystery-kind age 27 season for Cahill.
Attend to the luck stats. Carlos Martinez has one of the best repertoire scores yet had a 4.03 ERA in part due to a .333 BABIP. His xFIP (3.45) and SIERA (3.54) in conjunction with the #1 overall arsenal score should ensure he is significantly better next year.
The list verifies breakouts: Carlos Carrasco, Garrett Richards, Yordano Ventura and Tyson Ross (all top15). Ross has a devastating Slider (8th best; 100-pitch qualifier) with a solid Change from a whiff/swing perspective, but he induces a ton of grounders with his Change and Sinker (both have top 11 GB/FB rates).
The list also provides hope for Justin Masterson who wound up at #7 on the list with 2.72 Sinker score and .74 Slider score. That 2.72 Sinker score out-summed 205 other full repertoire scores, but again keep in mind that his Sinker whiff/swing of 22.88% might be 3 standard deviations better than the average Sinker whiff/swing, but that rate is under the average whiff/swing rate for Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. This is why it is important to differentiate weights for each pitch type.
If there is a pitcher’s Repertoire score that baffles you, check out the “RepScores” tab to see which pitches were omitted and the individual pitch-type z-scores and weights under the “zWh/Sw” and “wzWh/Sw” columns. Each pitch-type score and repertoire score is in the last column, titled “Wh/Sw_Gb/Fb_Scr.”
Back to the actual value of the content though – we are looking for interesting names and patterns, which I have highlighted in Red or Yellow based on the content below:
Eno already emphasized Carlos Martinez and Carlos Carrasco – both have glorious peripherals within each pitch-type beyond their Fourseams. Every pitch of theirs outside the Fourseam induced 1.5 standard deviations more whiffs/swing than average!
Watch out for Danny Salazar who (by classification) introduced a devastating Changeup in September and should output value similar to or better than Carlos Carrasco based on a haughtier strikeout rate. Salazar was probably a luckier BABIP away from a 3.5 ERA last year. In fact, unsurprisingly, each Indians starter outside of Carrasco had a BABIP .5 standard deviations over the average (70IP qualifier).
Review:
In a recent Quick Looks article on Roenis Elias, I said the following:
I couldn’t tell exactly what was different in his motion, but I seemed to be able to tell the [curve] was coming.
Commenter, Balthazar, then stated:
That is a very interesting observation on Elias somehow telegraphing his breaking pitch. Now that you mention it, I almost recall the same feeling watching him. Part of it was pitch count patterns and situations. The catcher definitely seemed to call for the curve in fairly obvious situations. Part of the effect may then be that the situation cues the observer as much as the motion; the situation called for a curve, and by gum he threw one
Well, two observations exist with on his curve and after looking at the data, we both are probably right.
Starting with a little background on Elias. He attacks hitters with a fastballs, curve and change. For ground balls, all his pitches are above average. The change is the only pitch above average by swinging strikes while the curve is adequate. The pitches work together to give him a barely above average ground-ball rate and a strikeouts rate at 7.9/9 K/9 in his first major league season. The biggest issue he had to deal with was his walks which were at 3.5 BB/9. All the preceding information led to and ERA and ERA estimators around 4.00.
The Cleveland Indians have brought in Gavin Floyd on a one-year contract. He’s guaranteed $4 million and could make another $6 million in incentives, according to multiple sources of that news. That kind of money basically guarantees the right-hander a spot in the Tribe’s rotation.
Fantasy baseball players’ questions about Floyd for 2015 likely have to do with his health and performance this past season. He seemed to demonstrate some real positives (a 2.65 ERA, 19.7 K%, and 5.7 BB%) with the Atlanta Braves in his 2014 return from Tommy John surgery. A fractured bone in his pitching elbow cut this particular triumph short, however.