Forgive me if today’s opening topic is a bit of a reach, but it’s September and new ideas are virtually non-existent. That said, I want to take a look at some of the pitchers who have struggled with men on base slash out of the stretch. This is something I’ve come to look at quite often because it helps me identify guys I might otherwise fall for as pitchers to avoid. There have been multiple occasions where I’ve fallen in love with a starter’s above average strikeout and walk skills and failed to recognize that they struggle from the stretch and thus don’t produce an ERA that their K-BB might suggest they are capable of producing.

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There are obviously a ton of factors that go into fantasy success for pitchers, but I don’t think I’d get a ton of argument if I said that strikeout and walk skills are two of the bigger factors. So I want to take a look at some of the pitchers who have shown surprising strikeout and walk skills over the last 30 days. I created a sample comprised of the 148 starters who faced 70+ batters in the last 30 days. Of those 148, 26 had a K-BB that was one standard deviation or more above the mean. Of those 26, here are a few I was most surprised to see on the list.

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September call ups are almost here, so some new names will enter the daily fantasy pool. This is probably more true on other daily sites besides Draftstreet, but call ups tend to be undervalued. Because pricing models are based on previous statistics, it makes sense that guys without a track record would be somewhat conservatively priced. Here are just a few call ups that could be useful in the final month.

Nick Castellanos – OF – Detroit Tigers

Castellanos didn’t destroy Triple-A or anything, but he hit for a little power (.168 ISO) and displayed good plate discipline (16.4% K%, 9.3% BB%). He’s unlikely to see regular starts, but that’s the beauty of daily fantasy. We don’t need him to play everyday to have a use for him. He may take some starts from Matt Tuiasos0po against left-handed starters. He had a .852 OPS in 109 PA versus lefties in Triple-A, so if he’s cheap enough he could be an option when starting. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time when I’m picking a daily lineup, I make a custom leaderboard of the starting pitchers for the day to see which starters are most homer-prone. But this can be a tedious task to do day after day. So I’ve created the chart you see below which shows the most homer prone starting pitchers. I had a post a few months ago where I had charts showing hitters with reverse splits and the splits of switch hitters that I still reference often. Hopefully this post will be a similar bookmark worthy tool.

There are three columns. One for starters that are currently in a major league rotation with at least 1320 career batters faced (which is the point at which HR stabilizes) against batters of any handedness . The players listed have a HR rate against all batters that is two or more standard deviations above the mean. And then there is a chart for starters with 1320+ BF against lefties and against righties. The players listed in those charts have a HR rate against batters of that particular handedness that is one or more standard deviations above the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I touched on the idea of examining how hitters have performed against specific types of pitchers to try and find good daily matchups. Because a batter’s performance against a specific pitcher is too small of a sample to be predictive, why not look at a batter’s performance against that pitcher and others like him?

Let me qualify everything I’m about to say by saying that this method of choosing batters is merely something I am exploring. Despite the increased sample size I can get by looking at a batter’s performance against similar pitchers, it’s still usually not a huge sample size. And I’m also doing a pretty crude job of finding similar pitchers. I’m considering strikeout and walk skills, groundball and flyball tendencies, frequency of fastball usage and velocity as my variables in finding similar pitchers.

It’s hardly scientific and nothing close to exact. But I’m almost positive it’s a better approach than just using simple batter-versus-pitcher data. But I’m not sure it’s better than just looking at how a batter has performed against either left or right handed pitching as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend Saber Seminar in Boston. It was a wonderful event full of presentations by some amazing people like members of the Red Sox front office staff, Harry Pavilidis and Dan Brooks, Keith Law, and Fangraphs’ own Dave Cameron and Bill Petti among others. I began writing this within 30 minutes of getting back from the airport last night.

For the purposes of daily fantasy strategy, the most interesting presentation of the weekend was that of SABR president, Vince Gennaro. Vince was lamenting the usage of batter-versus-pitcher (BVP) data by both managers and TV broadcasts. Likewise, I hate it when I see daily contest players rely on that data. Vince noted the small sample size issue with BVP data, but presumably he has also read the portion of The Book that proved BVP data is not predictive.

Vince wants to find a better way to play match ups. I assume he’s coming at it from the angle of finding a better way for managers to play match ups and to make both lineup and in game decisions. But his work is equally applicable to daily fantasy strategy. Vince looks at the following five categories in an attempt to determine the best match ups: Read the rest of this entry »

Why is Alex Wood only the 15th most expensive pitcher today? With a price tag of only $11,219, he represents a nice value today for several reasons, the first of which is that he is good. And we’ll discuss that more in a moment. But there is also the fact that he will be facing the Nationals who have the 4th worst wRC+ against left-handed pitching like Wood. And the weather conditions in Atlanta will be favorable for pitchers. Game time temperature is projected to be fairly low at 70, and the wind will be blowing in from right at 7 mph.

But Wood being good is the most important factor. Kevin Correia has a good match up and favorable weather conditions today, but that isn’t enough to make you ignore his below average ERA and strikeout rate. The quality of the pitcher is obviously still a factor. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of factors to consider when picking hitters have discussed in this space this year. Weather factors like temperature and wind are more important than I realized at the beginning of the year. Park factors are a big deal. The extent to which the opposing starter is susceptible to the long ball matters. And on and on and on.

But before I look at any of those other factors each day, I start by looking at whether the batter has the platoon advantage. As both Blake Murphy and I have discussed, some guys have reverse splits when it comes to the handedness of the opposing pitcher. But, for the most part, having the platoon advantage should be requirement numero uno when selecting hitters. I know I’m not breaking any news by harping on the platoon advantage, but because it’s the first thing I look at, I wanted to give everyone a reminder of its importance. Below is a chart showing how batters have performed with and without the platoon advantage so far this season. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I took a look at Paul Goldschmidt’s strange home/road splits. Despite a basic park factor of 105 in Arizona in addition to a 105 factor for home runs for right-handers, Goldschmidt has been noticeably better on the road. And as I was trolling around looking at numbers this week, I came across Joey Votto who has also been quite a bit better on the road despite a very favorable home ballpark.

So I decided to see what other players were seeing some backwards home/road splits. I took all players with 600+ PA both at home and on the road since the beginning of 2011. And I only included players that called the same ballpark home for that entire span. Below is a list of the players whose home wOBA is lower than their road wOBA despite their home park having an above average basic park factor. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday Blake Murphy updated something I looked into awhile back, which was hitters with a reverse platoon split. This reminded me of another unusual split I came across earlier this season. Despite the fact that Arizona has a the 4th most hitter-friendly basic park factor and is the 8th most homer-friendly home run park for right-handed hitters, right-hander Paul Goldschmidt has been better on the road in his career. During his call up season and first full season (2011-2012), Goldy had a .338 wOBA at home and .382 wOBA on the road. Some of that was a strikeout rate that was 3% lower on the road, but that alone isn’t enough to account for a 44 point difference in wOBA.

He has been basically as good at home and on the road this season, but he has still been slightly better on the road. This just seems so strange because the average basic park factor for his road games (weighted for the number of games he has played in each park) is 99.27, and the HR as R factor for his road games is 99.17. That’s compared to a 105 basic park factor and 105 HR as R factor at home in Arizona. In other words, Goldy has had conditions 6% more favorable at home in his career, yet his wOBA is significantly higher on the road.

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