3/9/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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Strategy Section: Middle Infield Previews

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The Notes took a leave of absence while I was in Arizona for a few days. I spent most of my time on this article updating the spring training velocities, watching a couple pitchers, and waiting for my internet connection to return.

Astros vs. Nationals (3/6/18)

A.J. Cole
FB: 88-92 mph. Straight with nothing on it
CH: 78-81 mph. 12-6 break, threw it a lot, must of been working on it.
SL: 77-79 mph
Overall: His fastball is well below average with little movement or velocity. His breakers all move to the release side (slider), down (change), or both (curve). He no one to get excited over.

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Our staff composite rankings are back! We’re kicking things off with Catcher and we’ll be rolling out a new position each day over the next week-plus. I will still be doing my commentary by position rankings to give a quick little thought, but those will be separate posts. When all the positions are out, I’ll make a spreadsheet that has all of them together with team and league columns added.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Justin Mason

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1. On catchers that wasn’t necessary because we all ranked 50 which made getting a top 40 pretty easy.

Updated March 12th – Paul updated Lucroy with OAK and adjusted his Iannetta ranking after further research.

Key:

• AVG– just the average of the four ranking sets
• Adj. AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings (maybe less necessary with just four rankers, but we had it in past years)
• SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

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Once a preseason, it appears, we decide we like a pitcher, don’t trust our own affinities, and neither write about him nor draft him ourselves. In 2016, it was Rick Porcello, who won the Cy Young award. Last year, less catastrophically, it was Anthony Swarzak. For reasons we’ll detail below, we liked Swarzak going into the 2017 season. What, after all, was there not to like about a 31-year-old middle reliever coming off a season in which he’d had an ERA of 5.52 and an even higher FIP, and spent a month on the DL and two months in Triple-A? Even for us, connoisseurs of the preposterous, this was too preposterous, and we paid no attention to Swarzak in Fangraphs or in our myriad drafts and auctions.

You know the sequel. Swarzak was magnificent in 2017, with a 2.33 ERA, a 1.03 WHIP, more than 10 strikeouts per 9 innings, and no earned runs relinquished in 18 of his first 19 appearances. According to Baseball HQ, he earned $12 in 5×5 Rotisserie—the same as Gerrit Cole and Dylan Bundy, and more than Trevor Bauer, Zach Davies, Masahiro Tanaka, and dozens of others. Read the rest of this entry »

Take a peek at the Diamondbacks reliever depth chart. Archie Bradley sits atop the pecking order. We project 22 saves. Free agent acquisition Brad Boxberger is penciled in for seven saves. Yoshihisa Hirano doesn’t have a player page yet and therefore is not listed. He’s definitely in the battle. The Diamondbacks will have more than 29 saves. Perhaps consider the rest as belonging to Hirano.

By NFBC ADP, fantasy owners believe Bradley will close. His 186 ADP is sandwiched directly between undisputed closers Brandon Morrow (185 ADP) and Blake Treinen (186 ADP). At this price, Morrow is the heist equivalent of successfully robbing Fort Knox, but that’s a subject for another day. Boxberger has a 321 ADP. Hirano is floating at a 395 ADP.

In The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (#TGFBI aka Justin Mason’s baby), Bradley has a 177 ADP. Boxberger has only been picked in two of 13 leagues (295 ADP). Hirano has found love in three leagues (298 ADP). A lot of people play NFBC. Mason’s baby is comprised of 195 self-styled fantasy baseball experts. There seems to be a resounding consensus that Bradley will close.

I wonder if he’s even the front runner to win the job. There are three problems with Archie Bradley the Closer in 2018. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week and earlier this week, I highlighted a group of hitters who my Pod Projections projected stolen base upside and stolen base downside compared to Steamer projections. Until I performed the comparison, I had no idea I was so bearish on steals, relative to both Steamer and to 2017.

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Luis Castillo is one of the most exciting pitchers in this year’s pool. His 89-inning debut has vaulted him firmly into the top 100 picks and top 30 starters. Our good friends over at PitcherList.com have him slotted 20th on their board. I love Castillo, but are we being a little overzealous with the 25-year old righty?

There haven’t been a lot of guys putting up a 3.12 ERA/1.07 WHIP combo with an 18% K-BB rate in 90ish innings during their rookie season so finding comps wasn’t easy, but I came up with some thresholds and we’re going to look at what they did in their second season. It doesn’t necessarily mean we will figure out what Castillo is going to do by looking at these guys, but we will have some reference points and we’ll highlight one of most commonly used comps to zero on some potential results.

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The ottoneu auction season is in full swing, and just as I did last year I’d like to take a look at some interesting early auction results. I’ve gone through and manually pulled the auction data for first year FGPts leagues that have started/finished their auctions, and I like looking at these salaries because they better represent the ottoneu player market values (as opposed to the average salaries page, which includes underpaid keepers and overpaid studs in high inflation leagues).

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Chasing Saves frustrates many owners as injuries and poor performance piles up. Trying to accumulate Saves can be a tiring game with roster spots and FAAB wasted on arms who only keep their job for a week or two while piling up a 5.00 ERA and 1.50 WHIP. Last pre-season, I went through and examined reliever talent and how likely they were they were to keep their job. It’s time to give the 2018 bullpen arms their chances to make it a full season.

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Yesterday, I transitioned my Pod Projections vs Steamer projections series to the pitching side. I compared our ERA forecasts and discussed 11 pitchers with upside in the metric. Today, it’s time to check on a smattering of hurlers I’m projecting for a worse ERA than Steamer.

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