If Pablo Sandoval’s shoulder injury, which cost him the entire 2016 season, didn’t put an unofficial end to his time with the Boston Red Sox, then the emergence of Travis Shaw very well may have. A player that was already set to supplant Sandoval at third base even before he went on the disabled list for the year, Shaw has experienced a quiet emergence for a rebounding Red Sox ballclub. As we begin to head into the final stretch of the month of May, he’s not only establishing himself as a quality starter at the position for the Red Sox, but is currently among the game’s best at the hot corner from a statistical standpoint. For now.

That was way more ominous than I may have meant for it to be. Nonetheless, we’re going to approach Travis Shaw with a sense of foreboding, as his regression would seem to be inevitable at this point.

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Matt Bush’s story is a story of seconds and inches. A couple of seconds, a couple of inches different and it would have been a very different story.

On June 7th, 2004, Bush was drafted first overall in the MLB Draft by the San Diego Padres. He signed a contract with a $3.15 million signing bonus, the second largest bonus ever given by the Padres. The world was seemingly at his fingertips, but there was trouble in paradise. Matt Bush is an alcoholic.

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It was suggested that we should celebrate the day that stats stabilize. Today is Grounder Day! Eat a sloppy joe while sitting on a blanket. Drink one of these, or some of this, but I don’t know about having any of this. Grounder Day!

Well, we actually aren’t all the way there. Only about twenty players have officially reached the stabilization point for ground ball rate. But that’s fine. It actually serves as a reminder that stabilization is not something that magically happens at one point. Stabilization happens over a spectrum, and today we know a little more than we did yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll know a little more.

But! Relative to *other* stats on our leaderboards, we know a good deal about a player’s ground ball rate by now. And the beauty of that news is that just knowing a player’s change in ground ball rate can tell us a good deal about what sort of power we should expect from them going forward.

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One of the useful things about Ottoneu is its integration with the Fangraphs leaderboards.  I’m on the leaderboards here constantly as is, so the ability to use them, while having data specific to a fantasy league is an added bonus of the format. One of the filter’s I find myself using often on the leaderboards is the “Last 14 Day” filter. This is admittedly a smaller sample than anyone should use to make significant decisions, but I like to use this filter to help isolate players – especially pitchers – who have had recent hot streaks.  Ottoneu uses large 40 man rosters, so often I will use the last few roster spots to preemptively buy some of these early hot streaks. Especially if you’re a first place team – or a team near the top of the standings – you are will lose any tie-breaks on free-agent auctions so being the first team to buy into a player (or auction a player) can be key to keeping reinforcements on your bench in the event of an injury.  Today, we’ll look at several pitchers who are near the top of the current “Last 14 Day” leaderboard and look at a couple lessons we can learn from this group.

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Agenda

1. The Three Standard Methods
2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard
3. Daily DFS
4. SaberSim Observations
5. Tomorrow’s Targets
6. Factor Grid

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Episode 159 – #MikeClevinger

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

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Scott Strandberg discuss Shawn Tolleson probably losing his job as closer, a weird four-game early slate, boring options at second base, Jimmy Rollins being even more boring, the Coors Field hangover, Jimmy Nelson’s new approach, not fearing the Royals as much anymore, Chase Anderson’s amazing (and frustrating) outing, Dylan learning not to trust Ross Stripling, Scott identifying one of Dylan’s “catch phrases,” the excitement of utilizing Mike Clevinger in DFS, and how to welcome Steve Adams to Thursday’s show.

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For the Confetti among us—a more colorful term than “Streamers,” don’t you think?—Colorado starting pitchers are easy. You use them, if at all, when they’ve got good matchups on the road. For Rotisserians, it’s not so simple. Sure, if you’ve got a deep enough roster, your league has a liberal enough substitution policy, and the Rockies have a starter worth using under any circumstances, you can sit the guy when he’s in Coors and start him when he’s not. But that trifecta is hard to hit, and otherwise you’re asking for disaster.

Can there possibly be any exceptions to this? Maybe one: Chad Bettis. Everyone recognizes, in a general way, that he’s a pretty good pitcher. He’s owned in roughly 10% of Yahoo and ESPN leagues, which seems high for a Rockies starter. What may not be known is that he’s just about as good in Coors as he is on the road. On July 7, 2015, Bettis had one of the very worst outings by any starting pitcher during the past two seasons. He was in Coors, of course, and in 2 1/3 innings gave up 8 hits, including 4 home runs, 1 walk, and 10 earned runs. Why, having given up 8 runs in the first two innings, he was allowed to start the third inning and give up two more, we’re not sure. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to an all Astros edition of the deep league waiver wire! With a series of roster moves, opportunities abound.

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When your third home run of the night is a walk-off grand slam, you can celebrate however you damn well please. With the nearby Golden State Warriors in the conference finals, Khris Davis opted to pay homage to Steph Curry with the pull-up on the third base line.

That ended a three-game hitless streak for Davis and pushed his wRC+ back above 100 (102). He’s hitting just .228 but has 11 home runs and 28 RBI though 37 games.
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Here’s the transcript of today’s chat. Lot’s of fun topics.

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