Which was cooler?
Odubel Herrera hit a pitch 0.73 feet off the ground for a HR – the lowest in #Statcast history to leave the park. https://t.co/51KTSacR35 pic.twitter.com/1AWNV5FTiY
— #Statcast (@statcast) August 9, 2017
Or
Get UP, Adam Engel. pic.twitter.com/k7r5QGadkv
— MLB (@MLB) August 9, 2017
• Roberto Osuna has had a rough end of July into early August having allowed 9 earned runs in his previous five appearances but he threw a perfect ninth for his 29th save tonight. A slew of bad outings raised Osuna’s ERA which now stands at 3.40 but he still supports a 1.44/2.54 FIP/xFIP and a 2.04 SIERA proving he remains an elite option. Osuna has been an above average closer since he came onto the scene at age 20 and a few years later at age 22 he’s one of the best. He upped his Swinging Strike rate to 18.8% this year which ranks second among all qualified relievers, only trailing Craig Kimbrel and those swings and misses has led Osuna to a career high 35.4% K%. Given his ridiculously young age we expected Osuna could take the leap this year and he’s done exactly that. The Blue Jays might not offer the same amount of opportunities moving forward as a Kimbrel or Kenley Jansen but in 2018 and beyond, that’s the company he will keep.
This past weekend I spent two days in Boston at the Saber Seminar. As always, it is a great event and here is some the fantasy relevant information I extracted from it (full list of presenters and abstracts).
Note: My notes got a jumbled so there may be a chance the information I attribute to a speaker is incorrect. I apologize to the speakers in advance if I made this mistake.
Rich Hahn: Q and A
He broke some big news at the conference which he stated that Reynaldo Lopez will be starting for the White Sox this weekend against the Royals.
Will Carroll: Saving the Pitcher, 2017: A Data Driven Approach
He was promoting the use of the Motus Sleeve to help measure short and long term elbow stress. He discussed that each pitch has different levels of elbow stress depending velocity and pitch type. As for predicting injuries, I wonder if some general injury guidelines can be created, especially incorporating Motus sleeve data. I’m going to investigate this idea further. If anyone else is interested, let me know and I may be able to share some ideas and/or acquired needed data.
Mike Reinold: An Update on the Effect of Weighted Ball Training on Arm Stress, Range of Motion, and Injury Rates Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s today’s chat transcript covering a wide range of fantasy topics.
| 4:00 |
: Can Godley stop the Dodgers epic run or would you bench him? |
| 4:01 |
: I’m using him in DFS tonight, but that’s mostly a function of his low price tag on DraftKings. Godley handled the Dodgers not too long ago. You can start him against any team |
| 4:01 |
: That’s not to say there isn’t any downside or risk |
| 4:01 |
: but with the way this season’s gone, Godley vs. LAD is a better than average play |
| 4:01 |
: What happened to Kintzler being the closer in Washington? |
| 4:02 |
: I don’t know. It’s certainly a surprising development to see Doolittle still closing. A welcome development at that – I grew up playing against Doolittle so I always find myself rooting for him |
It’s been a big year for hitting without a doubt, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t seen some great pitchers emerge. Guys like James Paxton, Alex Wood, and Luis Severino are winning leagues for people, but there are also plenty of intriguing arms who aren’t necessarily toting gaudy bottom line results. However, their skills and stuff set them up to be next year’s version of those guys and they are the ones you can buy now for a big 2018 payoff. We’ll span league depth with a couple deep league considerations, too.
Danny Salazar | Indians
Danny Salazar has been peak Salazar since his return from the DL and I’m pretty excited about his prospects down the stretch and beyond. He’s allowed just three runs in 20 innings since returning, with 28 strikeouts, five walks, and eight hits! We talked about him on the podcast right around his return, I wrote up his first and second starts in the Roto Riteup, and then Eno wrote up his new approach. We saw what he can do in 2015 with a 3.45 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and 195 strikeouts in 185 innings. Since then, his walk rate has spiked to 11% and he’s been DL’d with both elbow and shoulder injuries, but he’s still just 27 with top-flight skills.
While we feel like pitchers change far more quickly than hitters, that doesn’t mean that hitters never adjust, regress, or improve during the season, moving their true talent level to another level. So let’s take a look at some of the more interesting names on the HR/FB rate leaderboard over the last 30 days.
The Grind – and all other scheduled RotoGraphs content – misfired yesterday due to a WordPress error. Apparently, we’ve all so grown to trust our back end that nobody even checked to see if their work was live until around 5:00pm ET. Today, I’m manually posting my content as soon as it’s done.
AGENDA
To be the best, you have to eat like the best:
Birthday Gift from the boys !! #Angels pic.twitter.com/fRUlEsn07I
— Mike Trout (@MikeTrout) August 7, 2017
As usual, not a full slate of games on Monday but a few things to note…
• After throwing two scoreless innings last night, Trevor Hildenberger was back again tonight getting the first two outs in the seventh inning. Ryan Pressley threw a scoreless eighth, handing the ball off to Matt Belisle. Belisle converted his first opportunity last night and continued operating as the Twins closer tonight as he secured his second save of the year and it sure looks like Belisle is the man to own for saves in Minnesota. He’s not a sexy name but he hasn’t allowed an earned run since June and in his last 22.2 innings, he’s only allowed the one earned run with 19 strikeouts against 5 walks. Hildenberger is still the exciting name to own and probably the best option in the pen but given the recent usage, I’m putting moving this situation to yellow.
If you don’t think baseball is fun, then I can’t help you:
Friday got us like … pic.twitter.com/jzCT0f9HBP
— MLB (@MLB) August 4, 2017