You know how the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…uh, well, you can’t fool me again cause you already fooled me” (ref).  Rowdy Tellez must have said something similar, maybe even the proper phrase, while sitting in the dugout waiting to get another shot at Kyle Hendricks‘ changeup. That’s because Tellez struck out swinging in his first two at-bats against Hendricks on opening day. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2022 version of Bullpen Report includes five different sections, as well as the closer chart, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

We will always include a link to the full Closer Depth Chart at the bottom of the Bullpen Report each day. It’s also accessible from the RosterResource drop-down menu and from any RosterResource page. Please let us know what you think.

1. Notable Workloads: Primary closers or valuable members of a closer committee who have been deemed unavailable or likely unavailable for the current day due to recent workload.
2. Injury News
3. Outlier Saves: Explanation for a non-closer earning a save during the previous day.
4. Committee Clarity: Notes on a closer committee that clarify a pitcher’s standing in the group.
5. Losing A Grip: Struggling closers who could be on the hot seat.

The “RosterResource” link will take you to the corresponding team’s RosterResource depth chart, which will give you a better picture of the full bullpen and results of the previous six days (pitch count, save, hold, win, loss, blown save).

Click HERE to view the full Closer Depth Chart.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2022 version of Bullpen Report includes five different sections, as well as the closer chart, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

We will always include a link to the full Closer Depth Chart at the bottom of the Bullpen Report each day. It’s also accessible from the RosterResource drop-down menu and from any RosterResource page. Please let us know what you think.

1. Notable Workloads: Primary closers or valuable members of a closer committee who have been deemed unavailable or likely unavailable for the current day due to recent workload.
2. Injury News
3. Outlier Saves: Explanation for a non-closer earning a save during the previous day.
4. Committee Clarity: Notes on a closer committee that clarify a pitcher’s standing in the group.
5. Losing A Grip: Struggling closers who could be on the hot seat.

The “RosterResource” link will take you to the corresponding team’s RosterResource depth chart, which will give you a better picture of the full bullpen and results of the previous six days (pitch count, save, hold, win, loss, blown save).

Click HERE to view the full Closer Depth Chart.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite Topps baseball card series is the Gypsy Queen collection. Typically released at the beginning of the season, this series has special inserts, such as the Crystal Gazing Die-Cuts, that serve as the Topps version of a bold prediction. I like to think of myself as a machine learning, gypsy fortune telling, bold predictor. I’ve created a model, one that I’m still partially developing, named Jolt after Joe “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio himself. Read the rest of this entry »

The first inning of any spring training game should come with tempered expectations, but I always find myself like the kid in the bleachers whose parents thought it would be a good idea to just get the ice cream out of the way before the first pitch is thrown. With a chocolate-smeared face and wide eyes, I find myself taking in every pitch as if I’ll never see another game again. So, maybe that’s why my reaction to Clarke Schmidt’s first inning against the Phillies motivated me to write about the Yankee righty, or maybe, he’s a pitcher that should be on your radar in keeper and dynasty leagues. Let me preface this article with the mutual understanding that I am not a prospects guy, I’m just a kid watching from the bleachers taking in the sunshine with chocolate on my face, excited to see baseball again.

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For the first time in my fantasy baseball career, I think I’m going to employ the pocket aces strategy. You can learn more about the strategy by reading Mike Carter’s synopsis on SP Streamer. The idea, however, is simple; take two starting pitchers with your first two picks. In my home league (10-team, 5×5, ESPN, Roto) I’ve been given the 10 spot to draft in a snake draft format. I’ve never employed this strategy because, like many others, the volatility of pitching scares me. The injury risk scares me. I usually want good hitters who steal bases early. But this year I’m going to try something new. Plus, I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to get Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. Remember what I said about injury risk? I’m throwing caution to the wind. If something changes and my league drafts differently than I expect, my strategy may change. But, one look at the visual below makes me want to get two pitchers with my first two picks.

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Chardonnay and seafood, pinot noir and earthy flavors, home run hitters, and high average hitters. These are all great pairings. Balance is the key. While my personal strategy seeks to grab players that are multifaceted, there are times when you look up and all of those players are gone and you need to adjust. So, here is a fully yelp-reviewed menu of excellent pairings to peruse before your upcoming draft. Read the rest of this entry »

What will we do without the zeros and ones of spring training? The underground, black market .csv file that comes from the person who knows the person who operates a Rapsodo in a mini-camp? How will we go on without knowing spin rates or the depth of clay infield impression drilled by various brands of signature spikes? I have an idea, let’s make it up.

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While many expert fantasy players have been drafting and posting their rosters and drafting and posting their rosters and… you get the point…, you may be waiting out the lockout before you schedule your draft. If that’s the case, you’re probably exhausted from all the fantasy content that has been pumped out into the meta-verse and at this point, probably have your mind made up on a few players. Let’s put that theory to the test and let’s see if you can guess who’s who based on only their counting stat projections. This is my second installment of the choose your player game and here are the rules:

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Last week, I investigated fastball pitch values as provided by Pitch Info on our Pitch Value leaderboards. Here’s an interesting thing about pVal from our glossary that you probably already knew:

“If you have a great fastball, you’re going to usually have a great wFB, but if you also have a great slider, there’s a good chance it will help your wFB too. Pitch values are about the change in run expectancy against various pitches or the production against those pitches. You can’t leap from performance against a pitch to the quality of the pitch.”

From a fantasy perspective, it seems like a good play to find pitchers with good fastballs. But, what about pitchers with good fastballs and good secondary pitches? Think of Max Scherzer’s fastball/slider combo. Or, how about Trevor Rogers‘ fastball/changeup? That was good, right? In this article, I’ll take a look at pitchers with a nice one-two punch and try to determine if we can use this as a tool for the upcoming season.

I’ll be referring to a “plus” pitch as one with a pVal of one standard deviation or greater above the average. Of all pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2021, only four had a plus fastball and two plus secondary pitches. There were seven pitchers in this group who had a plus fastball and one other plus secondary. Here they are in table form:

The table above is full of great pitchers who threw a lot of innings last season. Does anyone surprise you? My guess would be no. Does this help you prepare for your draft? Probably not. But I don’t really know of anything that will tell us how good a pitcher’s curveball is expected to be next season. I suppose Eno Sarris’ Stuff+/Pitching+ is predictive in-season and becomes predictive quickly, but beyond that, how can we tell if Walker Buehler’s cutter will still be good? For now, I’m going to put the whole ‘is predictive’, ‘isn’t predictive’ talk to the side, and just focus on what happened last year. Let’s now look at the pitchers who showed a “plus” wFB in 2021 but did not post a “plus” secondary. This will allow us to imagine what they could be if they add a good secondary:

Anthony DeSclafani and Robbie Ray both just barely missed the wSL “plus” designation which is at 10 with the above player pool. Ranger Suarez also comes close to getting a wCH “plus” designation which is 4.2. However, all of these hurlers accumulated great value with the fastball and we can put our money on a few of them with some caveats. First, they have to repeat that fastball value, and second, they have to improve one of their secondary offerings. If you feel confident that that can happen, you may want to bump these pitchers up a few slots. Not that you had Robbie Ray pinned as a sleeper, but maybe you passed right over DeSclafani in your mock draft, and now, he’s got your attention.

Projecting pVals is probably as difficult as projecting CBA negotiation outcomes, but what happened in the past can inform us of what will happen in the future, even if it is not “sticky”. Regardless, this examination just gives you one more thing to think about when there’s a run on the catcher position in your draft, leaving you with too many great SP values to choose from.