Archive for February, 2015

The Hitters that Baffle the Rankers: Outside The Top 100

Yesterday, I investigated our top 300 consensus rankings and discussed hitters in our top 100 with the most disagreement between us rankers. Today I jump outside that top 100 to identify those we disagree with most among the rest of the hitters.

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The Nationals Outfield: Solid All Around

The Washington Nationals offer talent all over the field and the players who roam the outfield is no different. There are options for speed, power or rate stats, though be cautious of the injury potential. Of what should shake out to be the normal starting three, Jayson Werth has a history of injuries, Denard Span underwent off-season hernia surgery and Bryce Harper was limited to 100 games last season due to a torn ligament in his thumb. Despite the injury concern the upside here is excellent.

Center Field
Denard Span
Nate McLouth
Michael Taylor

Left Field
Jayson Werth
Nate McLouth
Michael Taylor
Tyler Moore
Kevin Frandsen

Right Field
Bryce Harper
Nate McLouth
Michael Taylor
Tyler Moore

In the Minors
Brian Goodwin
Mike Carp

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Miami Marlins Rotation Depth Chart

Thirteen pitchers started games for the Miami Marlins in 2014 including retreads like Brad Penny, Randy Wolf, and Kevin Slowey. They gave 150 innings to Brad Hand and Jacob Turner who combined to be pretty much replacement level, they lost sensation Jose Fernandez to the dreaded Tommy John, they hung Anthony DeSclafani and Andrew Heaney out to dry. And still, the Marlins beat almost everyone’s expectations thanks in large part to surprise contributions from Nathan Eovaldi, Henderson Alvarez, Jarred Cosart, and Tom Koehler.

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The Angels Rotation: Garrett Richards and Downside

It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

Thanks in large part to a breakout performance from Garrett Richards, the 2014 Angels rotation was around league average according to WAR, which is quite a bit better than they were expected to perform. Unfortunately, Richards went down with a knee injury in August. How quickly he can return to the mound and how healthy he is when gets there will be a huge part of how good this staff is this year. Past Richards, the Angels have three fairly reliable if unexciting pitchers projected to throw 190-ish innings. Just from writing up a few other teams for our depth chart discussions, I can tell you that’s not a luxury too many other teams have. So despite Richards’ absence early in the year, this staff is more settled than most. Read the rest of this entry »


Tyler Matzek – Deep League Sleeper

Tyler Matzek’s 2014 is why teams are so reluctant to ever give up on a guy, especially if he’s left-handed. It was a grim outlook for Matzek. Like, really, really, really grim. His minor league numbers in total have him with a 4.33 ERA which isn’t the worst, but then you keep looking and your ipecac-fueled vomit-fest starts to kick in with a 1.58 WHIP and impossibly-high 15 percent walk rate in 549.3 innings. And most of that was done before even getting to Triple-A.

The former blue-chip prospect (twice a top 35 prospect at Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America) had a 21 percent walk rate in 97 innings back in 2011. Again, he had a TWENTY-ONE PERCENT WALK RATE in a real amount of innings. That was on the heels of being ranked 34th and 32nd at the two outlets in the preseason.

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xK%, History and Speculating on Dellin Betances

I’d like to talk to you about Dellin Betances.

Wait! Wait. No. No, I wouldn’t. I’d like to talk about Mike Podhorzer first. Mike has published a lot of great work covering the fundamentals of the xK% (and xBB%) metric for pitchers (and hitters), so if you are unfamiliar with or falling behind on his work, I recommend you first click here, here or here. But if you’re lazy, the short of it is: xK%, or expected strikeout rate, is an equation birthed from a linear regression that measures how a pitcher’s looking, swinging and foul-ball strike rates as well as overall strike percentage correlates with his strikeout rate. It doesn’t predict future strikeout rates as much as it retrospectively adjusts past strikeout rates; thus, it is a good tool for identifying pitchers who potentially benefited (or suffered) from good (bad) luck in a previous season – say, 2014.

Like many other metrics completely unrelated to xK%, however, there is evidence that certain players consistently out-perform (or under-perform) what their xK% rates predict their actual K% rates should be. (Mike alludes to this trend in his quip about Jeremy Hellickson, a xK% underachiever, in one of the articles linked above.) Similarly to how a power hitter will post consistently higher ratios of home runs to fly balls (HR/FB) than a non-power hitter, or how Mike Trout will probably post some of the highest batting averages on balls in play (babip) in the league for years to come, it appears there is some skill, or perhaps a particular characteristic, inherent to pitchers who consistently best, or fall short of, their xK% rates.

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Could the Strike Zone Change?

We’re living through an era where pitching is king. Nobody disputes it. A number of reasons have been cited. Velocities are increasing due to better training. Teams and players better understand the relationship between strikeouts, walks, and success.
One cause may stand above them all, the strike zone has grown in recent seasons. The zone has increased by 40 square inches in the last five years, according to Jon Roegele. The growth is in one direction, down. As this becomes common knowledge, the league may discover a simple solution to inject more offense into the game – shrink the strike zone. Read the rest of this entry »


Cleveland Outfield: The Stud, the Slugger and the Stealer

It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

Projection systems are usually pretty great when it comes to veterans. The players have typically accumulated a fair amount of stats during their career, making it easier to peg their expected value for the upcoming season. The Indians will open the season with three veterans in the outfield. The Indians outfield is incredibly difficult to project.

There are reasons for that, of course. One of their players is coming off what looks to be an exceptional career year, another spent the entire second half injured and the third is hoping to reverse course after two disappointing years. There could be a lot to like in Cleveland’s outfield, but there are also plenty of questions.

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The Hitters that Baffle the Rankers: The Top 100

Yesterday, we published our consensus top 300 players, including the breakdown between the five rankers. Naturally, there are some players with more disagreement between us than others. So I decided I would investigate those very players. I calculated the standard deviation of the five rankings and sorted. Unfortunately, players lower in the rankings will almost always have higher standard deviations, even though the difference between a rank of 180 and 220 is much smaller than 1 and 15. As such, I split the group into those inside the top 100 and those outside. What follows is a selection of hitters ranked within the top 100 whose rankings are all over the map.

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RotoGraphs Audio: The Sleeper and the Bust 2/17/2015

Episode 195

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss some news, dive into some of Eno’s pitchers, and wrap up the AL Central with KC and MIN.

Relevant to today’s show:

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed. Please rate & review the show in iTunes letting us know what you think!

Thanks to Ian Miller, aka Teen Archer, for the intro music. Approximately 96 minutes of joyous analysis.