Episode 134 – Universally Mediocre

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

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss Charlie Morton’s performance, the Kendall Graveman vs. Hector Santiago showdown, Dylan’s not serious questions about the Orioles, predicting how many home runs Joe Kelly is going to allow on Wednesday, Starlin Castro’s reported weight, Dusty Baker encouraging Washington players to run, the concept of keeping DFS fun, and Adam Eaton’s new child.

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast (field-of-streams): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The term means “ambulance dogs.” It’s what the World War I Germans called the dogs they sent into No Man’s Land during lulls in the fighting to find the survivors. And that’s where we are and what we’re doing right now. Our draft and auction battles are over. (Don’t know about you, but it started to feel like a war of attrition to us.) The in-season strategizing hasn’t really begun yet. All the able-bodied players, so it’s thought, are on someone’s roster. Meanwhile, No Man’s Land is littered with the corpses of the guys that nobody wants—the 25th men, the back-of-the-bullpen mop-up pitchers, the mid-level prospects, the 5th starters on bad teams. Can there possibly be, sheltering in some muddy and verminous shell hole, somebody who doesn’t just have a pulse, but is actually fit enough to be on the front lines of tomorrow’s combat?

How about Matt Wisler? Wisler is owned in only 2% of Yahoo leagues and 2.3% of ESPN leagues. Fewer than a quarter of NFBC standard-issue leagues (30 rounds, 15 owners) got around to drafting him. Even on the surface of the stats, it’s a little hard to explain why he wasn’t taken more often. Wisler’s a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher who was universally recognized as one of the top 50 or so prospects in baseball a year ago. He’s got a full repertoire of pitches, though he’s mostly a fastball-slider guy. Originally drafted by the Padres, he was the key to the Craig Kimbrel trade at the start of the 2015 season. He began that season in the minors, got called up to Atlanta in June, and performed creditably if not Fantasy-usefully in 19 starts (8 Wins, 5.94 K/9, 4.71 ERA, 1.46 WHIP), including 4 Quality Starts in his last 5 outings. It’s a no-brainer to project improvement across the board. You like Anthony DeSclafani? What round did you take him in? The 16th or 17th round, we’re guessing. If you got him at an auction, what did you pay? $3, are we right? Well, Steamer projects about the same season for Wisler as it does for DeSclafani. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the debut of my deep league waiver wire column! This is where I share two players who are 10% owned or less in CBS leagues. These players generally should not be considered in 12-team mixed leagues and shallower.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not that anyone should need evidence that the pitcher win is a bad stat at this point, but give this a spin: Noah Syndergaard struck out 12 batters Tuesday. He induced 26 swinging strikes on 99 pitches. He induced 10 on just 15 sliders. One of them looked like this:

Syndergaard’s slider is downright funny https://t.co/gPMK7ceUQk pic.twitter.com/WX1ZLHBl55

— Dan Toman (@dantoman) April 13, 2016

(OK, that’s against a pitcher, but you get it.) And still, Syndergaard drew a no-decision, because his team can’t score. Those 12 strikeouts and lone earned run over seven will just have to keep you warm, as will the knowledge that you probably got a top-10 arm at No. 15 on draft day.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Yeah, Pete Mackanin won’t say it, but Jeanmar Gomez seems to have the Phillies gig until further notice. Pitching for the third time in four days, the 28-year-old tossed a scoreless ninth for his third consecutive save. He’s not whiffing a ton of guys (2 strikeouts over 14 batters faced), but two-thirds of the balls put in play against him this season have been on the ground. I wouldn’t expect the worm-burning ways to continue since Gomez has hovered around 50% GB% the last few years, but if he can minimize the walks (5% last season) he can be a passable reliever (3.79 SIERA last season) who won’t kill your rates. He should be owned if you need saves (and my guess is he’s gone in almost all deeper leagues by now), but he has the skillset that opens itself up to BABIP luck, so be forewarned. It’s tough to see him holding the gig without hiccups all season, so don’t invest heavily on the trade market. Of note, David Hernandez tossed a scoreless eighth and has looked competent since his April 4th blowup against the Reds. He should be snagged in very deep mixed or NL-onlies where save speculation is all the rage.

Read the rest of this entry »

I alleged, behind closed doors, that I would cook up something pertaining to batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and the new shift data FanGraphs now hosts on its leaderboards. But, alas, such allegations — that I, uh, made, against myself — were false. There are more pressing matters to which I must attend.

Such as Gregory Polanco. Polanco, of the consensus top-100 prospect rankings in 2013 and 2014 prior to his debut. Polanco, of the pleasantly solid production that still, almost 1,000 plate appearances later, somehow, somewhat inexplicably, disappoints us.

If you don’t own Polanco, you may not know his weighted runs created (wRC+) currently ranks 8th among all National League outfielders. Better, his wRC+ isn’t elevated by an unsustainable BABIP or home runs per fly ball (HR/FB), like the seven hitters who rank ahead of him (except Bryce Harper, who is superhuman bordering on not human at all). One could argue, with nonzero persuasiveness, that Polanco is the (second-) best pure-hitting NL outfielder in the game at this exact moment. It’s a very specific subset of hitters, yes, but if you bestowed that title on me, I’d be pretty jazzed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Transcript from Tuesday’s chat!

Read the rest of this entry »

My twitter feed is blowing up with questions about pitching. I can’t get to all of them in crazy detail without cloning myself, so what I’ll do instead is something that’s a little more like what we do on The Sleeper & The Bust, the podcast Paul Sporer and I run — I’ll try to put together a few quick facts and an opinion that should help you make your decisions.

So let’s all take a ride, take a ride on the omnibus.

Read the rest of this entry »

Agenda

1. Scooter Story
2. Daily DFS
3. SaberSim Observations
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Eickhoff, Shoemaker, Hicks, Pagan
5. Factor Grid

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 133 – Righty on Wrighty

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

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss Charlie Morton’s weird Baseball Reference nickname, Eugenio Suarez’s enjoyable reaction, Matt and Dylan’s terrible picks on Monday, a typically good DFS matchup at Coors Field, unfortunate puns with Mike Wright, Matt’s weird Twitter follow, the first contest head-to-head matchup, and solving the mystery of Matt’s neighbor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast (field-of-streams): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS