Author Archive: Alex Chamberlain

The 2015 season humbled me. In 2014, I reached the playoffs in all four of my leagues and won two of them. I cleaned up at each draft and I cleaned up on the waiver wire. I felt unstoppable. I felt like I had it all figured out.

Then 2015 happened. I botched my first (and most important) draft (“LOWV,” henceforth). Then I botched then next one. Then I botched the two snake drafts, as I always do. I botched the Birchwood Brothers‘ Birchwood Derby midseason draft as well. Botched. Botchy botch botched.

Right. So I learned some things. You’re never too old, nor too wise, to learn. Conveniently, I’m neither old nor wise, so I still have plenty of learning to do. And when Major League Baseball turns in a season as unpredictable as this one, well, everyone learns a thing or two.

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In March, I made some bold predictions. I thought they were fairly bold, so I was ready to award myself the participation ribbon no matter what. In July, the predictions, somewhat predictably, looked bad. And they still look bad now.

But I don’t feel so badly about them. Many of them were pretty dang close, and I’m proud. But a win-loss record doesn’t care about minutiae, and the win-loss record ain’t so good.

1. Giancarlo Stanton finishes outside the top 10… outfielders.

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Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer gave you 10 pitchers to start for yesterday (and yesterday only). Indeed, the well of relevant advice has run dry save a few drops here and there, yet it’s too early to look forward to offseason chatter.

You all liked Pod’s idea, though; you just needed the advice in advance. Still, continuing this pattern leaves us without any names for today. Perhaps you’re in a league where you can make moves prior to the day’s first game. If that’s the case, then I hope this helps! You have about 45 minutes until day games start.

Games are ordered by start time per ESPN. And, for your convenience, here’s some color-coded goodness: No-Brainer, Maybe, Sit (or a desperate deep-league play)

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Anthony DeSclafani has recorded the highest WAR for all pitchers in September. That’s kind of a big deal. You may recall DeSclafani cruised through the first month of the season, recording a 1.04 ERA across his first 26 innings, but the rest of the season wasn’t quite as kind to him.

A 4.15 xFIP at the time pointed to some good fortune. Indeed, luck caught up to DeSclafani, as he posted ERAs and xFIPs north of 4 for the next three months.

Suddenly, recently, something clicked. Or that’s how it seemed. I noticed some interesting changes to DeSclafani’s pitch arsenal. I found it interesting, and I thought Eno Sarris, being the resident pitch expert, would find it interesting, too.

Turns out Eno was concurrently transcribing his interview with DeSclafani when I contacted him. This isn’t the first time we simultaneously wrote about a particular pitcher throwing a particular pitch; click here and here for our May 20 analysis of Rubby de la Rosa’s improved slider.

You can read Eno’s interview transcript, along with his typically insightful commentary, here. In it, he discusses with DeSclafani how the pitcher’s curveball could replace his change-up as his third pitch. In a preseason preview of DeSclafani, Eno had presciently remarked upon the importance of a substantial third pitch:

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The storybook narratives of 2015 do not limit themselves to the Mets or the Twins or the Rangers or the Astros. Surprises abound each year, usually in the form of a former prospect who finally hit his stride or a journeyman Minor Leaguer who catches lightning in a bottle. Perhaps they’re more surprising, then, when they come from seemingly established players.

For example, Bryce Harper finally evolved into the Bryce Harper of prophecies’ past, basically hitting twice as many home runs as projected. Except the evolution happened, like, two or three or seven years sooner than expected. I don’t know when it was supposed to happen, but surely it wasn’t supposed to happen at 22 years old.

And Carlos Gonzalez, at 29, has hit a career-high 37 home runs, a healthy dozen-or-so more than any of his previous four seasons — all after having arguably the worst April of his career (rivaling 2011).

I’m thankful the Tigers traded Yoenis Cespedes into the National League so I can write about the dude now. Aside from Matthew Kory’s assessment of Cespedes’ chances to win a Most Valuable Player (MVP) award two weeks ago, we have pointed little attention to how Cespedes earned his way into MVP discussions in the first place. The injustice ends here.

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Where the defensive shift and batting average on balls in play (BABIP) intersect intrigues me, but I’ve had a hard time figuring out a way to quantify it without having some sort of access to shift data. Despite advances Major League Baseball has made in measuring and collection data, not all of this information is publicly available or easily accessible, even if you know someone who knows someone (this guy).

But I think I finally had some kind of breakthrough or epiphany or what-have-you. It would be a time-intensive approach — a problem for a lazy person (this guy) — but it would be worth it to, perhaps, chip away at the relatively enigmatic BABIP with only publicly available tools at our disposal.

More than four months ago, I posted an expected BABIP (xBABIP) equation that is not necessarily better than any other that exists but does use strictly publicly available data. Here, I expand.

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Disclaimer: Yesterday, the author wrote the words organized below. This morning, a doctor person surgically repaired the author’s faulty body. During the day, he will rest in bed, likely incapacitated, lest he be tempted to incoherently, and probably embarrassingly, address your comments. He apologizes for the inconvenience this delay in correspondence may cause.

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Unless you’re in a year-long roto league — or, wait, are there year-long points leagues? Is that a thing? — you’re probably neck deep in playoffs. Maybe some of you are vying for the championship. Maybe some of you are trying to avoid last place and a sexy calendar photoshoot as punishment for it, as I just successfully did last week.

The RotoGraphs staff has published several pieces recently focusing on waiver wire finds to help your playoff push. For roto leagues specifically, we’ve reached a point where a couple weeks’ worth of standard performance may not affect runs, runs batted in (RBI) or batting average, but a sudden burst of home runs of stolen bases can make all the difference.

After digging through the scrap heap, I found yet more players (strictly National League outfielders, mind you) that can help owners trying to catch lightning in a bottle. However, some the following names could also help in shallower leagues and are worth keeping in mind as dynasty or keeper considerations.

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A couple of weeks ago, I investigated Justin Verlander’s resurgence. I found reasons to validate his hot streak but turned up additional question marks along the way.

One of them was his zone contact rate (Z-Contact%). At 79.7 percent, it would have been the second-lowest of his career by several percentage points (despite not performing “at peak”). However, I realize now, unfortunately, that I must have encountered a glitch in the leaderboards — his Z-Contact% as of August 21 (because the post, despite running the same day as his Aug. 26 start, was published prior to it) was 85.7 percent.

Regardless, it got me thinking what affects a pitcher’s zone contact rate because it correlates very strongly with strikeout rate (R-squared = .594). User DoubleJ speculated about the metric via comment on one of last week’s posts:

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FanGraphs’ leaderboards are like iron ore mines. They abound with potentially valuable commodities, but sometimes it takes effort to unlock the potential and extract the value.

There’s only so much you can write about a certain subsection of players (National League outfielders) without beating a dead horse. Alas, I’ve tried to find peculiar reasons to write about particularly interesting hitters. And, ah, FanGraphs’ leaderboards, they’re helpful in this regard, especially when broken down by splits.

Baseball Info Solutions’ (BIS) opposite-field batted ball data are no exception, as exemplified by this table of opposite-field hard-hit rate (Hard%) leaders among NL outfielders:

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(Dave Andersen published a similar post for hitters in our Community section last week. Check it out here.)

I want to say something inspiring such as “it’s never too late to make a move,” but that’s patently untrue. In two of my leagues, it’s too late. Very, very too late. That kind of statement only applies to contenders.

Interpret it in a different context, however, and it carries some weight. If you play in a dynasty league, you can, and should, always make moves.

Major League Baseball has a bounty of young, electric pitching talent. A lot of that talent remains largely unowned, too, while other pitchers retain lofty ownership numbers because of their name recognition.

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