10/27/16

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

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Leading Off: Question of the Day

• Should Kyle Schwarber play the field? (9:20)

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

• Yoenis Cespedes opting out (19:30)
• Wilson Ramos looking for 4-5 years (30:30)
• James Shields opting in (33:30)
• Christian Bethancourt shifting to pitching (40:30)
• John Lamb DFA’d (45:30)

Strategy Section: World Series Chatter

• CHC gets split in CLE (50:40)
• Front-door sinkers (52:00)
• CLE going 3-man rotation (56:00)

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Chat transcript found below! Join us next week for my first offseason chat!!

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Freddie Freeman had the best season of his career in 2016. He set career highs in just about every stat you can name: home runs, extra base hits, slugging, on base percentage, walks, BABIP and strikeouts. All of that sounded pretty great up until those last two, right?  You wouldn’t be alone if you felt that way.  Freeman has always been a good player, I doubt many have felt otherwise. It seems that every year Freeman marches into the season, puts up solid numbers at first base, shows off his leadership skills on and off the field, and then quietly goes into the offseason. This year was different, though. In 2016 Freeman had a true break out season worthy of MVP consideration. He had a substantial increase in performance across the board, in every major statistical category, and yet, there is still question about his ability to repeat this performance in 2017.  All due, in large part, I think, to one little number: BABIP.  

Freeman posted a .370 BABIP in 2016. This is significantly higher than his career averages .344 respectively, but it certainly isn’t unprecedented for a slugger to maintain a BABIP this high in the major leagues. Paul Goldschmidt, for example, has posted a .369 BABIP since 2014.  J.D. Martinez has hovered around the .366 mark as well of that same time frame.  Neither of these guys are horrible comps for Freeman.  Neither are speedsters, we know that much.  Although both are probably faster than Freeman by a decent margin, and I feel comfortable saying both are better power hitters as well.  We know the key to BABIP is hitting the ball around 14-18 degrees vertically, and the harder, the better.  Those sorts of hits will turn into singles pretty frequently, and if you can knock the launch angle up north of 24 degrees every once in awhile, you’ll hit home runs as well.  It’s easier said than done, but, in general, that is how you’re going to achieve consistently high BABIP over multiple seasons. Otherwise you start introducing the concept of luck.  

I have a few tools to examine just how ‘lucky’ Freeman may have been in 2016, though.  xStats examines each batted ball measured by statcast, and determines the league average success rate by comparing it to similarly hit balls (those with similar exit velocity along with vertical and horizontal launch angle).  So, for example, if the ball is hit 105 mph on a 22 degree vertical angle and 22 degree horizontal angle, xStats will compare that batted ball to all those hit between 104-106 mph and 20-25 degrees vertically and 20-25 degrees horizontally; count how many singles, doubles, triples, and homeruns were hit in that group divided by the size of the group; and then adjust these numbers for the running speed of the batter.  So, these numbers should be, theoretically, neutral for both park and fielding effects. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I had a nightmare. I couldn’t get into a draft room because it was on a new site and Battle.net wanted me to complete a quest first. I had the fifth pick and the first guy was already on the clock. It was the most stressful dream I’ve had in years.

I think it’s pretty clear what Freud would say about it – my subconscious believes I’m not prepared for my fantasy drafts. Fortunately, I have another five months to get ready, and I’ve already built my Way Too Early Rankings. I started last week with catcher. We’ll move on to first base today. Oh, here’s what happened in 2016 at first base.

As a reminder, these rankings represent my first reactions rather than a truly rigorous approach. I’ve used an absolutely objective technique called mental math to compile the lists. I’m assuming a standard 5×5 format.

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Sorry for the title. Let’s move on. At the start of this season, I recommended J.T. Realmuto as someone deep-league managers should target for his speed and his price. At the time, Realmuto was coming off a season in which he led his position in stolen bases during a year in which steals were at a 20 year low. He was also going 17^th overall at catcher in public leagues, despite being picked 10^th in NFBC drafts. Given that Realmuto popped 10 homers while lacking the typical red flags of a regression candidate, he seemed criminally overlooked during drafts and possibly primed for a breakout. So how’d he do?

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Yesterday, we published the final 2016 first base rankings and dollar values. So let’s review my preseason Pod’s Picks and Pans at the position, where I identified those hitters I was most bullish and bearish on compared to the rest of my fellow RotoGraphs rankers.

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Relievers are having a moment. It’s been slowly building for a while, but this year might be the crescendo. Zach Britton foolishly being left out of the wildcard game paired with Cleveland’s excellent deployment of Andrew Miller seems to have ignited something of a reliever revolution. Their importance – especially in the playoffs – has never been questioned, but the prevalence of lockdown relievers throughout many bullpens has changed their value in fantasy leagues, too.

Saves still run the show, but many leagues have incorporated holds as a way of adding value to studly middle relievers and some are just so good that it doesn’t matter if they’re getting saves. Eight relievers logged 100+ strikeouts and only Kenley Jansen was a full-time closer. Seung Hwan Oh had 19, Ken Giles had 15, both Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller had 12, while Kyle Barraclough and Brad Hand combined for one (it was Hand’s).

Today, I have five high upside relievers who could be closing in 2017 or be so good that they’re useful enough without saves. They are listed in order of likeliness to close:

Adam Ottavino

OK, we’re cheating right out of the gate a little bit. Ottavino was just starting to close for Colorado when he was felled by Tommy John surgery in 2015 and he reassumed the role in September of this season after a couple months in a setup role. He finished with the role and will likely start with it again in 2017 while the others on this list will likely need to leapfrog a guy or three to get there.

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We’ll get back into reviewing some of the performances at the hot corner next week. With the World Series currently underway, and myself having explored Kris Bryant extensively this season (and recently profiling Javier Baez), it’s the perfect opportunity to look at Jose Ramirez for the first time in a couple of months. While fans in Cleveland have become well aware of what he has brought to the table with a breakout 2016 campaign, the rest of the nation has really experienced their first exposure to Ramirez throughout this postseason. Not only has he broken out, but the numbers paint him as one of the more clutch players in baseball.

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With 2016 leagues in the books, I’d like to present some league-wide season-ending stats to see what kind of conclusions we can draw about success in the very data-driven game of Ottoneu.  The focus here is one of the more popular scoring formats, FanGraphs Points (FGPTS), and the numbers you see in each of the first two charts represent the average standings data for all teams/all leagues by final 2016 finish.

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2017 Projection: Anthony Rizzo

Rizzo has been an extremely consistent the past three season almost to the point of being eery.

This type of consistency makes creating his projections easy. Except his 2016 projection didn’t seem easy with Rizzo swiping 17 bags out of know where. In his four previous seasons, he only stole a combined 16 bases. Does he keep the numbers going forward or will he go back to his old ways. The key when seeing an unexpected stolen base jump it to basically ignore it.

Here are some the numbers behind such jumps. In all, 16 under 30-years-old players have had a season with double-digit stolen bases which were higher than the three previous seasons combined. They would see an average drop in stolen bases by seven or to about 60% of the previous level in the following season.

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