Since the May 10 Roto Riteup falls on a day where the despicable capable Zach Sanders is responsible for it, I’ll use today to note The Starting Line’s second album, Based on a True Story, was released on May 10, 2005. Somewhat off-topic, Sanders made a joke on Twitter the other day about the two of us creating a podcast and I begrudgingly decided to hear him out. I’m just not sure the world is ready for our potential podcast.

@davidwiers Roto Riteup Radio! And in every episode I introduce myself as host and say that unfortunately you’re joining me.

— Zach Sanders (@zvsanders) May 5, 2015

On today’s agenda:
1. Don’t panic over Corey Kluber
2. Michael Bourn to be platooned
3. Yasmani Grandal’s big day
4. Streaming Pitching Options
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Andrew Miller worked around a leadoff walk to Steve Pearce — his eighth free pass allowed this season — to remain a perfect 12-for-12 in save chances for the Yankees this season. Following Pearce, Miller sat down three straight Orioles including strikeouts of Ryan Lavarnway and Caleb Joseph to notch the save and secure the 4-3 victory. Dellin Betances also dished a clean frame in today’s contest to maintain his perfect 0.00 ERA (1.30 FIP) in over 16 innings on the bump this season. Miller and Betances are anchoring a Yankees’ bullpen that was tops in the league in strikeouts (107) and fifth-best in ERA (2.19) entering today’s action.
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Episode 226

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss the injury news surrounding Coco Crisp, Jayson Werth, J.J. Hardy, and Nick Swisher. They dive into the performances of Corey Kluber, Chris Sale, Drew Pomeranz, Mike Fiers, James Shields, Joc Pederson, Yasmani Grandal, and Andrelton Simmons before closing with a couple of Arizona transactions.

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• Stephen Strasburg was removed from his last game with shoulder irritation.

“As [Strasburg] finishes pitches, it grabs him every once in a while. Tonight it got a little bit worse,” Williams said. “He said he feels like there is a rib out, like an alignment issue. We didn’t want to take a chance and have him change mechanics and hurt something.”

It appeared that something was wrong with Strasburg from the outset. In the top of the second, with two outs and the Marlins leading, 2-0, Williams, pitching coach Steve McCatty and athletic trainer Lee Kuntz went to the mound to check on Strasburg. But he stayed in the game until right-hander Doug Fistercame in as a pinch-hitter in the third inning. Fister singled to right field in his lone at-bat.

There was no signs of a velocity decline. I looked for possible injury factors and didn’t find any. Even without any glaring red flags, I have my concerns about his health. In the 2013 Hardball Times Annual, I found hard throwers had major arm injuries between 400 and 900 innings after Tommy John surgery. Strasburg right now is at 633 IP.

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Man, I am having a blast with the Baseball Info Solutions batted ball data that was recently added to the batted ball leaderboards. Sure, there are reasons to complain: the batted ball spray and contact quality statistics lack context, leaving you in the dark about how spray and contact intersect. For example, there’s Hard%, and there’s LD%, but how many of a hitter’s balls in play are hard line drives? (You can actually find this data on individual player pages under the “Splits” tab — just not on the leaderboards.)

Just because the available data aren’t as granular as one might wish they were doesn’t make them worthless or unusable. Yesterday, I demonstrated that we can still achieve small gains in our understanding of batting average on balls in play (BABIP) using the new data.

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We’re a month in and it’s time to update the NL SP tiers. A month can and definitely has changed things, but we need to be careful not to overreact to what we’ve seen so far, for better or worse. It’s a fine balance, though. We don’t want to overreact, but if we stay married to all of our preseason notions too long, we could miss the boat on guys, again for better or worse.

For May, I’ve got 10 tiers covering 70 names. I realize that there are 75 guys currently in rotations, but 10 of them just didn’t make the cut. Meanwhile, five injured arms not currently in rotations did merit a spot, thus the 70 count. I don’t yet have a fun theme for naming the tiers, but if the tiers are named by the time you read this, it means I came up with something and didn’t edit out this sentence.

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The other night was just another typical evening for Clay Buchholz. Five earned runs, including four early, caused frustrated fantasy owners to see 7.11 ERA, 1.74 WHIP in the box score. A quick Twitter search for Buchholz shows the bandwagon (if there was one) has emptied fast. Mass media is feeding the frenzy, especially with the Red Sox performing so poorly over the first few weeks of the season. Buchholz continues to say things about not getting breaks, such as “…ground balls when you want to get them hit at guys for double plays. It seems like the ball is finding a lot more holes right now.” But is he lying?

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Episode 24 – The Flopping Aces

The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Brad Johnson are joined by Paul Sporer to discuss collecting all of the hosts from The Sleeper and The Bust, getting birthday-burned by Ubaldo Jimenez, a big homer day on Wednesday, a strong split slate on Thursday, purposely making non-obvious picks, closer looks at Jose Iglesias and Dee Gordon, more thoughts on hitter vs. pitcher histories, not giving up on struggling veterans, dealing with being a new Alex Rodriguez fan in 2015, and Joey Votto’s entertaining rage and ensuing apology.

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The title of the article is an allusion to Schott’s Miscellany, which you should definitely check out if you never have and feel compelled to know that a group of larks is called an exaltation or that a member of the 32nd degree of Freemasonry is known as a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

–Shift Candidates by Oppo%–

The question of whether teams should use defensive shifts against certain batters is complex. Even applying the term defensive shift fails to do the decision justice because defensive positioning is not limited to either yes or no. However, we do know that teams are more and more willing to deploy defensive shifts. According to the Fielding Bible—Volume IV, shifting has nearly doubled every season since 2011, and early indications are that trend will continue this season.

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Agenda

1. Farnsworth on Marisnick
2. Daily DFS – Martinez
3. GB / FB Splits
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Karns, Gonzalez, Uggla, Stubbs
5. Factor Grid

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