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On Wednesday, we took a look at two 2B who appear very similar while possessing vastly different average salaries throughout the Ottoneu universe. While Kipnis and Forysthe appeared nearly identical in many ways, today I want to look at two outfielders who are similar in several regards, but not nearly as identical as Wednesday’s test-cases.

One of the major differences between today’s Mr. Name Brand and Mr. Generic is their respective ages. Why is this important? If you’ve played Ottoneu (or any dynasty slanted format) for any amount of time, you will likely find that the majority of owners are biased against the aged. While age is typically viewed as a premium, this can be detrimental when pricing comes into play as owners will chase after the shiny, younger, new toys. Given the 10 year age difference between our name brand and generic option, it is likely that these two will never be considered in the same tier.

The $38 price difference across Ottoneu leagues also confirms this – and while age is not the only reason for this price gap – it should help us determine that Mr. Name Brand is priced as if he is one of the most elite players in Ottoneu. While both are power hitters, our name brand option displays otherworldly power, but also strikes 13% more than our generic option. He also had 40 points of BABIP on Mr. Generic. Let’s dig a little deeper.

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Back in the day, I used to spend my summer mornings playing Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. That’s the first one for N64 and not to be confused with Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball (SNES). The N64 version was the first to allow trades. The AI was…not smart.

Teams could roster exactly 25 players. No more, no less. There were no salaries. Three-for-one trades were allowed and the computer assigned no value to opportunity cost. The team acquiring three players would be forced to make a couple immediate cuts. I got in the habit of trading a player, let’s call him Robin Ventura, with Rich Aurilia and David Weathers for an incremental upgrade, like Alex Rodriguez. The computer said no to Ventura for A-Rod. It said yes to the trio. Then it cut Aurilia and Weathers. I picked them back up off the wire. Rinse and repeat.

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12/15/16

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

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @paulkastava

12/15/16

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

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @paulkastava

 Leading Off: Question of the Day (6:30)

• Where will Edwin Encarnacion sign?

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

• Dexter Fowler to STL (20:40)
• Kenley Jansen and Justin Turner back to LAD (28:00)
• Welington Castillo to BAL (34:00)
• Odubel Herrera signs extension (40:00)
• Derek Holland to CWS (47:30)
• Koji Uehara to CHC (52:00)
• Mike Dunn to COL (57:00)

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Johnny Cueto: Sabermetric Anomaly

I am on a mission, to try to explain why some pitchers don’t fit into normal molds. I created pERA to help explain the advantages pitchers who have a mix of high and low groundball pitches experience. I tackled the Robbie Ray/Michael Pineda group of pitchers who can only throw their fastball for strikes. The next pitcher whose production can’t be explained by the above methods is Johnny Cueto. He just a hard player to figure out and here is why.

• Over the past six seasons, his ERA-FIP is the 4th lowest (-0.59) among all starters with at least 600 IP. The other pitchers surrounding him are low ground ball pitchers (and R.A. Dickey) who will see their BABIP suppressed because flyballs and popups are easy outs. Cueto’s 48% GB% is by far the highest among the ERA-FIP leaders until Doug Fister says hi at #22. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year I made my first attempt at integrating horizontal and vertical launch angle in addition to exit velocity.  As I explained in my first post, I split batted balls into 5 degree by 5 degree launch windows, then split each window into buckets based upon the exit velocity, and in doing so I created an array of buckets that is about 20 units wide, 36 units deep, and 60 units tall. So, in other words, each batted ball could fall into one of 43,000 buckets, give or take. I then found the success rates of each bucket, how many go for singles, doubles, triples, home runs, errors, or outs, and I assigned each ball in the bucket the same probability.

This system has some strengths and quite a few weaknesses.  For its strengths, it is easy to implement and debug, the code runs pretty fast (it can classify about 50k batted balls per second while running on a modest computer), and it gave results that both made sense and outperforming similar stats.  However, this method draws a hard and firm line between potentially similar batted balls merely because one crossed an arbitrary threshold and landed in an adjacent bucket which could have radically different average success rates.  This problem is best expressed visually with a chart for Value Hits. Read the rest of this entry »

So Chad Young and I have been trying to sell Gerrit Cole in the dynasty league we co-manage. It’s not that we’re concerned about Cole. The shoulder doesn’t worry us, and we expect him to bounce back from his worst year in the majors. He’s entering his age 26 season. Aside from the injury blip, he has everything we could possibly want from a dynasty pitcher.

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Let’s return to reviewing my Pod Projections, this time diving into popular preseason sleeper, Taijuan Walker. Though he posted a poor 4.56 ERA in 2015, he had been a heavily hyped prospect and averaged over 94 mph with his fastball. So that made him a favorite target with serious breakout potential in 2016. In April, he made his newly minted owners proud, as he posted a microscopic 1.44 ERA and 2.69 xFIP. But then the wheels fell apart and he ended up missing time due to a foot injury. Sadly, the strong April wasn’t enough to keep his ERA from finishing above 4.00, and now he gets to start 2017 on a new team and in a new league. Let’s what what I projected for 2016 and how it compared to his actual results.

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Yesterday, I wrote up Rich Hill’s 2016 season, declaring him The Leader of Baseball’s Movementarians. In researching the piece, I dove deep into Baseball Prospectus’ Pitchf/x leaderboards. I wanted to find out what makes Hill’s fastball so dominant, despite its unremarkable velocity, and his curveball so effective, given its unimpressive whiff rate. I’m not an expert in pitching mechanics. I can’t breakdown video or tell you much about grips. For that, talk to Eno. But I found that Hill enjoys two distinct advantages that make his (essentially) two-pitch arsenal play up.

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Pitching is a fickle market. Consider that just three years ago we had Anibal Sanchez, Hisashi Iwakuma, and Cliff Lee in the top 10 for ERA. Perhaps more remarkably, Shelby Miller, Andrew Cashner, Travis Wood, and Kris Medlen were all in top 20 while James Shields and Mat Latos were just outside. Life comes at you fast as a pitcher.

Obviously, injuries are the biggest factor in changing the fate of a pitcher and most of the names suffered an injury or three in the interim that has seriously altered their path. Tyson Ross put up 516.7 IP of a 3.07 ERA from 2013-15, but missed essentially all of 2016 with a shoulder injury that eventually gave way to thoracic outlet syndrome surgery and led to his being non-tendered by the Padres. He’ll latch on somewhere and remain on the radar as he works his way back, but sometimes guys just get squeezed out and collectively forget about them.

It isn’t always due to injury, either. Poor performance, a dimmed prospect star, or just a lack of prospect status in the first place can all push a guy to the side in the crowded pitching market. Here are four arms you should keep in mind for deeper leagues (more than 10 teams) in 2017:

Homer Bailey | Reds

Bailey has essentially missed two seasons to Tommy John surgery and the subsequent recovery. It came almost directly on the heels of him signing a 6-year, $105 million dollar extension, too. He has three guaranteed years left at $63 mil plus a $25 million dollar option for 2020 which seems like a pipedream now and is much more likely to result in the $5 million dollar buyout.

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