Day 2 of the season always offer a light slight because the Midwest and Northeastern venues have the built-in off day to account for potential weather problems, as we saw in Chicago with the Tigers-White Sox debut getting pushed from Monday to Tuesday. We still got nine games of action with eight of them seeing the road team emerge victorious.

On the Agenda:

1. Baseball’s Supercouple In Midseason Form
2. McCullers, Carrasco, and Arrieta with NSFW stuff
3. Dull Provides Excitement… for the Angels

BASEBALL’S SUPERCOUPLE IN MIDSEASON FORM

Justin Verlander was in Cy Young form during his 2017 debut, allowing just two runs in 6.3 innings with 10 strikeouts against the White Sox. The high fastball was instrumental in his brilliant 2016 campaign and he wasted no time deploying it on Tuesday. His 239 PA that ended on a high fastball last year were 2nd-most to Jake Odorizzi (244) and his .499 OPS and 41% strikeout rate were 8th and 3rd, respectively, among the 65 pitchers with at least 100 such PA. The Sox went 0-for-7 with a walk and four strikeouts on high heaters Tuesday.

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The New Standard Velocity

Fantasy owners are going to need to understand how velocities are now being reported. MLB Advanced Media is now reporting only StatCast collected velocities, not Pitchf/x. These StatCast values are calibrated five feet closer to the pitcher than the old values and therefore will be a small bit faster. All broadcasts and I am pretty sure all stadium values will use these new higher values as well. The big question is that with almost 10 years of Pitchf/x information already collected, what adjustment needs to be made?

Dave Cameron noticed that reported velocities were up 1 mph. I went and dug a bit further and with the help of Jared Cross (Steamer’s creator), we came up with the increase closer to 0.77 mph. This morning MLB.com’s Tom Tango released an explanation and had the difference in the same range depending on initial pitch speed.

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For fantasy purposes, ottoneu rosters are large. (40 rosters spots that can be split between hitters and pitchers, including all minor league players.) This leads to many platoon players and prospects being rostered as ways to fill our rosters. Many times, these back of the roster types end up being $1 plays on prospects who are many years away. However, what if we took a different approach and went with players who could have an MLB role entering 2017, while still offering some potential upside?

Certainly, the argument can be made that these prospects are really just trade chips for rentals in season, and I buy that argument. However, I don’t think that every prospect owned is a trade chip, or at least an enticing one. Generally, there are the prospects most teams want (the top-20 or so) then various options throughout the rest of most top 100s that appeal to different owners depending on their biases. Could we be better off going with uncertain MLB players to fill these spots in place of the less notable minor leaguers?

Today, I wanted to go through several players I am rostering as $1 plays in several of my leagues. Thought process being, that I will have a pretty good idea of if they are a $1 player, or useful piece some time within the next month or two. At that point, I can cut them if they don’t pan out, and pick up the prospect I would have drafted originally. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to The Daily Grind, an all-you-can-eat DFS buffet. Today’s listed prices are for FanDuel.

AGENDA

1. Analyzing a Winner
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. Fade Fade Fade
5. SaberSim Says…
6. TDG Invitational Returns!

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As difficult as it is to keep up with during the spring, my Pod Projections reflect a hitter’s expected position in the batting order. For the best projections, they must, as all the counting stat forecasts are affected by a hitter’s spot. And yet even when we think we know where a hitter is going to slot in, when the games finally start to matter, there are always surprises. So here are a bunch of hitters whose spot in the batting order differs from my projection and whose value would therefore be affected meaningfully if it sticks.

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• Addressing the committees (again). Cam Bedrosian should be the closer for the Angels but Scioscia is calling it a committee for now. While one should be inclined to believe what the coach says, the other alternatives for saves are currently the oft-injured Andrew Bailey and the currently injured Huston Street. Even when Street returns, the chances of him pitching particularly well don’t seem particularly high. I would suspect this is an early season hedge by Scioscia and consider Bedrosian fairly safe for now, in spite of the dreaded committee tag.

Similarly in Oakland, the A’s might be running a committee approach after Santiago Casilla received the first save chance. Ryan Madson was originally our designated closer but he came on in the eighth to get Mike Trout, leaving Casilla to the ninth which is the kind of mix-and-matchup one would expect in a committee. While the Angels seem to be playing pretend, I’m calling the A’s an actual committee. Expect Madson to see the higher leverage situations not necessarily in the ninth inning (especially against righties) with Sean Doolittle and Casilla also in the mix.

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I don’t mean to over-hype anyone. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I seek to provide an adequate amount of hype and keep things in perspective. That said, I’m pretty excited about Josh Bell. You may know him, you may not; he’s slated to be the Pirates’ primary first baseman, maybe with a little bit of backup outfielding thrown in. Josh Shepardson talked about him and his general skill set in November. Bell’s young and a several-time top prospect, although the highest he ever reached on any given list was MLB.com’s, at No. 34 overall prior to 2015. Nothing to sneeze at, but he never carried the same hype as, say, Yoan Moncada currently does. He’s Eric Longenhagen’s No. 50 prospect this year and KATOH’s No. 25. Knowing the gory math that goes into KATOH, I’m very partial to it. Also, all of this suggests I’m not early to any kind of party here. I’m reluctant to claim as much. I just can’t help but produce my own tributes every now and then.

Bell walked more than he struck out last year. As a rookie. That’s what gets to me. Not that it’s never been done before, and it’s not like it was a huge sample size — 153 plate appearances. I found plenty of examples in the last 25 years to compare; Bell’s rookie season is almost a dead ringer for that of Doug Mientkiewicz, a first-ballot Surname Hall of Famer but otherwise mediocre ballplayer with a decent three-year peak.

Where Bell diverges from Mientkiewicz — and everyone else, for that matter — is his hard-hit rate (Hard%). Mientkiewicz decidedly did not hit the ball hard. Among rookies since 2002 (because that’s as far back as our batted ball data from Baseball Info Solution dates) who notched at least a .130 isolated power (ISO), none hit the ball as hard as Bell. Again, small samples, but this is already a decent list to top.

When we expand the sample from rookies to all hitters in that same timeframe, things become even more interesting. Here’s a list of every hitter, in no particular order, who, in any given season, minimum 150 PAs, achieved (1) more walks than strikeouts, (2) an ISO better than .130, and (3) a hard-hit rate better than 33 percent.

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(To the tune of “You Shook Me All Night Long”)

I did a late night draft
Just to have some laughs
‘Cos I’m a big-time expert with Rotographs

The price was steep
The draft was deep
It’s crazy to do this when I should be asleep

I missed Arenado,
Missed Machado and Votto,
The best I could do was Prado and Delgado.

And my head was aching,
My hands were shaking,
The draft was snaking,
I couldn’t start waking up, and

It…took me all night long (when we drafted)
It…took me all night long (I got shafted) Read the rest of this entry »

Leading off and playing shortstop for the Seattle Mariners on Opening Day was one of the most compelling players to watch in 2017. From 2012 to 2015 with the Milwaukee Brewers, Jean Segura batted just .266/.301/.360 with a .290 wOBA and 78 wRC+, amassing 3.4 WAR. In 2016 with the Arizona Diamondbacks, he had a .371 wOBA and 126 wRC+ on his way to a +5 WAR season. What should be made of the breakout? While many people seem to expect heavy regression from Segura, there are compelling reasons to believe he is an entirely different hitter than he was in the past. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’ the transcript for today’s Kendall Graveman/Charlie Morton/Delino DeShields themed chat.

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