The Big Maple for the win!!!!

Eh-mazing! pic.twitter.com/mw7BKJZ2QY

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) May 9, 2018

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It’s an all Mets edition of the deep league waiver wire! I could hear the excitement through my computer screen.

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If you scooped Fernando Romero off your waiver wire on Sunday night, you were paid immediate dividends as the 23-year old righty threw six scoreless innings in St. Louis on Monday night, allowing just three hits and three walks while striking out nine. He now has 11.7 scoreless innings to open his MLB career and has many wondering if he can be a game-changing rookie for both the Twins and your fantasy team. He has consistently been a Top 10 entrant in Twins prospect lists for the last couple years including 7th by Eric last year and will place top five for this year’s list, which is coming soon. Let’s take a closer look at the electric righty.

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Here’s today’s chat transcript.

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My focus is on lineup position and the amount of regular play each hitter get. I’m not concentrating on positions played. Also, if a team isn’t listed, I didn’t find any new information.

Note: I highlighted what I consider to be the seven most important findings.

Angels

• Zack Cozart’s value is taking a major hit as he’s been drawing the short straw when Shohei Ohtani DH’s.

Astros

• Evan Gattis owners may need to start looking for a replacement as his struggles with the bat (.187/.260/.275) has led to him starting three times in the last 10 games.

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Strikeouts are up again this season, but there’s another trend affecting pitchers that has received less attention. As we approach the six-week mark of the 2018 campaign, pitchers are notably wilder than they have been in a long time.

For each season between 2011 and 2016, the average Zone% for the major leagues hovered between 44.2 and 44,8 percent. Last season, pitchers were less wild than they had been since 2010, locating in the strike zone at a 45.0 percent rate. So far this year, pitchers are wanting to have much less to do with the strike zone, as their collective Zone% has dropped to 43.4 percent.

Subpar control is not an early-season thing. Last March and April, pitchers combined for a 44.8 percent Zone% and in the previous March/April, pitchers were practically trolling hitters into swinging, posting a 47.3 percent Zone%. Another thing that mark from 2016 shows is that there is still plenty of time for Zone% to regress to its norm this season.
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FanGraphs hosts a statistic for pitchers called ERA Minus FIP (“E-F”), which is as advertised. FIP being a (somewhat) adequate measure of pitcher over-/under-performance, one could look to E-F to identify pitchers who may, as they say, be due for regression. FIP’s correlation with ERA, however, is weaker than that of xFIP due to the former’s inability to account for the volatility inherent to home run-to-fly ball ratios (HR/FBs). To take it a step further, xFIP’s correlation with ERA is weaker than that of SIERA due to the former’s inability to account for a pitcher’s ground ball rate (GB%) and how it interacts with his strikeout and walk rates (K%, BB%).

Alas, I often use SIERA, rather than xFIP or FIP, to identify pitchers who may be ripe for regression. ERA Minus SIERA (“E-S,” henceforth) is not the be-all, end-all by any means, and I would never consider making a roster decision based exclusively on that metric. Player evaluation is a holistic endeavor, which you likely know yet I still intend to demonstrate. Three names stood out to me — four, if you include Luis Castillo, but I covered him a week and a half ago — as interesting E-S targets, but I came away from this feeling good about only one of them.

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Not a particularly busy or thrilling night across the bullpens so here are a few nuggets of interest from last night…

• The Padres lost to the Nationals last night but Phil Maton threw a scoreless inning with a walk and a strikeout. In 13 innings this year Maton has 14 strikeouts and an unimpressive 7 walks leading to a 2.86 FIP and 4.10 SIERA but his minor league strikeout rates and 15.5% SwStr% this year suggest there is room to grow in the K department. We have Kirby Yates and Craig Stammen on the grid below but if Maton can up his strikeouts without walking the world, he could become a sneaky contributor in deep leagues.

• Keone Kela has struggled a bit of late in the ERA department, allowing five runs in his previous two appearances but he threw a scoreless inning last night, striking out two batters for his 7th save of the year. While Kela supports a 6.00 ERA rings the alarm, his 2.75 FIP and 3.40 SIERA suggest brighter days ahead. If Kela is able to string together a few good outings we will remove the yellow tag on him in the grid. Jose Leclerc pitched in the eight allowing a hit and an unearned run but also struck out two batters, lowering his ERA to 2.45. Jake Diekman pitched in the eighth, throwing a scoreless inning while also allowing a walk, something that is a legitimate issue as he now has issued 12 free passes in only 12.1 innings. Diekman has been setting up Kela thus far, so he’s second in line on the grid but if something were to happen to Kela I wouldn’t be surprised to see Leclerc leapfrog him for saves as he’s a righty with more swing and miss stuff.

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Yesterday’s contest had a six entry overlay. This means that your $2 entry had an expected value of $2.22. That’s free money – at least until the contest actually runs.

AGENDA

1. TDG Invitational
2. First Take, Reconceptualized
3. Weather Reports
4. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
5. SaberSim Says…
6. Filling Contests

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Yesterday, I used my xHR/FB rate equation to identify and discuss ten hitters who have enjoyed a surprise HR/FB rate surge that is actually justified. Today, let’s dive into the disappointing HR/FB guys who xHR/FB rate confirms the power outage. An appearance here doesn’t guarantee doom and gloom the rest of the way, but that these hitters haven’t been unlucky so far, but actually powerless.

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