Yonder Alonso has been going nuts for the Athletics, and it’s no secret. Jed Lowrie has been operating in his shadow, yet he’s off to a solid start with some impressive batted ball numbers. Like Lowrie, Brad Peacock has been playing at an impressive level in the shadow of another teammate. Chris Devenski has earned the attention he’s gotten with his brilliant play, but Peacock hasn’t been a slouch. Read the rest of this entry »
I had to double check to make sure Xander Bogaerts indeed hit his first home run of the season, but that’s exactly what happened Wednesday night against the Rangers. He’s coming off of a 21-home run season in 2016, but this year is looking a lot more like 2015 when he hit just seven with a .320 AVG. His .335 AVG is sustaining his fantasy value right now.
Dave Cameron highlights Bogaerts’ weirdness calling him the Joe Panik of the east coast. That’s not a negative comment at all. Read the rest of this entry »
My Twitter handle is @BaseballATeam. Did you really think this wasn’t going to happen…
AGENDA
Episode 266 – Return Of The Clevinger
The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!
In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss Dylan and Matt’s amateur plumbing repair, Adrian Gonzalez’s power outage, being scared of Twins hitters, Dylan being half right on Lucas Duda, the Cubs’ cold bats this year, the wheels falling off on Joe Biagini, one of the “affordable speedsters,” a strong disagreement on trusting Joe Ross, solving the mystery of Yolmer Sanchez, investigating Leury Garcia, Matt’s softball opponents’ unique strategy, and Matt’s recent Twitter absence.
Podcast (field-of-streams): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Today at the Prospect Stock Watch, we take a look at a former Red Sox prospect making good in the Brewers system, a Dodgers prospect that no one is talking about (but should be) and a top-of-the-rotation arm on a collision course with the Indians big league staff.
Mauricio Dubon, SS, Brewers: Dubon was on my list of 2017 sleeper prospects as a guy that might sneak up into the majors and help the Brewers this year. A career .306 hitter, the former Red Sox prospect already has 53 hits on the year in just 45 games in double-A. He hasn’t hit for much power — just 11 extra base hits — but he’s made a ton of contact and struck out just 24 times. Putting the ball in play is a good approach for this fleet-footed infielder; he already has 23 steals (in 29 attempts). The club’s starting infielders up the middle — Jonathan Villar and Orlando Arica — have struggled but backups Hernan Perez and Eric Sogard have been very good, which is bad news for Dubon. Still, he has to added to the 40-man roster at the conclusion of the season anyway so the club will likely give him at least a cursory look later in the year. He has a chance to be a solid table-setter at the top of the order for the club.
5/25/17
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER18!
Follow us on Twitter
Leading Off: Question of the Day
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
After being stuck in baby purgatory — trust me, I mean that in a good way — the past couple weeks, I’m back with a nine-day old beauty (see below) and a three-man slate this week that I don’t totally love, but think could work due to some matchup stuff.
Here’s how we’re doing so far this season (through half of Week 7)
16-10 record
4.10 ERA
8.2 K/9
2.1 K/BB
1.43 WHIP
14 quality starts
Here are this week’s recs (with team wRC+ for this season in parentheses):
LHP Matt Moore – 31.8% ESPN – v. WAS (113), @PHI (90)
It’s hasn’t been a great season for Matty Mo — 5.28 ERA, 4.93 FIP, 1.53 WHIP — but here’s what we’re tapping into this week. The tougher of the two matchups for the 27-year-old lefty is at home against the Nationals. Moore’s splits carry about the biggest discrepancy you could imagine, as he’s got a 2.57 ERA at home and a 1.14 WHIP, while on the road he’s got a 7.80 ERA and 1.90 WHIP. Facing the Phillies at home should be a much easier matchup that can cushion that road ERA, but don’t be surprised if he holds down the Nationals while still allowing a good day to Bryce Harper. Somehow, lefties have hit the lefty hard this season: .404/.469/.825.
RHP Mike Clevinger – 24.1% ESPN – v. OAK (103), @KCR (75)
The numbers don’t all exactly match up, but Clevinger has been really good through four appearances for the Indians this season. He’s got a 1.56 ERA (2.75 FIP), and has a 0.98 WHIP despite walking 11 batters through 17.1 innings. You can pretty easily guess why; he’s allowed just a .111/.262/.130 line to the 65 batters he’s faced in the big leagues so far this season. It can be hard to recommend a guy with command issues or just 70 big league innings, but he’s coming off shutting down a really strong Astros offense last time out: seven innings, two hits, no runs, eight strikeouts and two walks. It’ll be interesting to see how the rotation shakes out when Corey Kluber returns. Could Clevinger push someone like Josh Tomlin or Trevor Bauer out? It doesn’t seem impossible.
LHP Tyler Anderson – 11.3% ESPN – v. SEA (101), @SDP (77)
Similarly to with Moore, I’m leaning on the fact that Anderson has done some good work at home, where his tougher matchup of the two will take place this week. In his parts of two seasons in the majors, Anderson has posted a 3.50 ERA in home starts and a 5.52 mark on the road. The Mariners might be a fairly tough matchup, but again I’ll gamble on those splits along with the fact that, when right, Anderson is a groundball kind of guy with good strikeout and walk rates. He’s also been really good in May (.696 OPS against, 3.06 ERA, 25 strikeouts in 17.2 innings) after an awful April (7.71 ERA, 1.005 OPS against, 24 strikeouts in 30.1 innings).
As I have mentioned in previous posts, Ottoneu is a different fantasy game. The format has it’s own scoring settings, based on linear weights, and is hosted here on Fangraphs. However the biggest area of adaption required to play the format well is an understanding of the economics surrounding the game. Hopefully this can serve as a general primer to navigating the differences between formats.
The first place I want to start is with the Ottoneu rules. These appear pretty straight forward and can be easy to understand, however, like all things, the devil is in the details. So let’s comb through some of those.
There is no FAAB budget in Ottoneu. That format does not exist within the game. However, According to the Ottoneu rules, each team has a $400 budget that can be used to acquire players at the annual auction (“draft”). The remainder of these funds can then be used to buy free agents during the year. Read the rest of this entry »
Last season the Cubs pitching had a great BABIP, .255, the best in MLB by quite a margin. This has been attributed to superior defense and great pitching. Both of these seem like good enough explanations. This season, with roughly the same team, their BABIP has dropped to .286, effectively league average.
Now, there is a lot you may assume from these numbers. You may think, of course, BABIP is so unpredictable. Of course a team that was above average one season would return to average the following season. Fair enough, you could say that. Some argue their outfield defense has taken a step back. That might be true.
These are all guesses and assumptions, but fortunately we have a few more tools for evaluating quality of contact, so let’s see what they may tell us about this Cubs pitching staff. We can use Statcast to evaluate quality of contact. When we do so, it paints a bit of a different picture.
| Year | xAVG | xOBP | xSLG | xBABIP | xBACON | xOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | .234 | .290 | .365 | .296 | .318 | .286 |
| 2016 | .233 | .303 | .373 | .289 | .314 | .294 |
| 2017 | .247 | .320 | .395 | .305 | .330 | .311 |
The sheer amount of data points we have at our fingertips these days, while immensely useful, can be overwhelming. Seemingly, any one player, particularly this early in the season, can surge to the top of the leaderboard of your most trusted stat. One of my favorite heuristics for identifying sustainable breakout performances is very simple. Based on a handful of my favorite peripherals, I filter the leaderboards for those performing above average across all of them, in effect isolating standouts while hedging against the inherent volatility of performing well in a single stat. It’s not perfect but it’s a quick-and-dirty methodology that serves its purpose.
Last week, I presented a list of pitchers who were better than average across K-BB%, swinging strike rate, Zone-Contact percentage, and ground ball rate. I focused on a few available starters while promising to cover some of the relievers this week. Lowering the innings threshold a tad (min. 14 IP), here are the relief pitchers all boasting better than average performances across the board in the aforementioned stats along with their ownership rates in Yahoo! leagues.