Yesterday, I reviewed the seven rookie hitters who had recorded the highest plate appearance total so far this season. Let’s continue on down the PA column for a final six.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about a quarter of the way through the season (sheesh, that went fast!), so now is as good a time as any to review the performances of the rookie hitters. Today we’ll start with about half the crop I ultimately want to discuss, and we’ll do the rest of the freshmen tomorrow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like discussed with hitters yesterday and last week, a pitcher’s batted ball type profile is important and helps drive their BABIP and HR/9 rate. More grounders and line drives allowed usually result in a higher BABIP, while more fly balls allowed usually result in a higher HR/9 rate. So with that in mind, it follows that changes to a pitcher’s profile could change the shape of their performance. Let’s review the five starting pitchers that have raised their GB% the most, along with those who have suffered the biggest declines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I identified and discussed the 10 hitters who have raised their fly ball percentage marks by the greatest amount compared to last year. This is important because home runs are a category in the vast majority (all?) of fantasy leagues, and all else being equal, more fly balls results in more home runs. Today, we’ll review the other side of the coin — the hitters who have suffered the most significant declines compared to last year. As a reminder, the odds are the majority of these hitters revert to previous season batted ball type distributions over the rest of the season. However, it’s still a good idea to monitor these rates moving forward as it’s always possible there’s a legit change in approach and these changes stick. If nothing else, the declines here could help explain a disappointing home run total so far.

Read the rest of this entry »

Typically when we see a hitter break out in the power department, hitting more dingers than projected, we naturally just assume they are hitting the ball harder, which would likely result in longer fly ball distances, ultimately driving a home run spike. You would therefore see this in an increased HR/FB rate. However, that’s not always how these surges occur. Sometimes, it’s simply a batted ball distribution change. That is, the batter is now hitting a significantly higher rate of fly balls than during the previous season, and might not necessarily be hitting those flies any more optimally.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you play in a shallow mixed league that only cares about saves and ignores holds, you rarely, if ever, have even considered picking up a non-closing reliever. However, in deep mixed, and especially mono leagues, or those that count holds in some form (as a separate category or combined with saves), non-closing relievers can accrue fantasy value. So it’s worth perusing your free agent pool and the FanGraphs leaderboards to find the next hidden gem. Ya never know, one of these names could end up finding themselves in the closer role if the incumbent hits a rough patch or the IL.

Read the rest of this entry »

My favorite activity early in the season is to try to capitalize on underperforming and overperforming starting pitchers. I’ll dangle my pitchers with low ERAs whose skills don’t support it and target those who hold high ERAs despite strong skills. In the past, I’ve exclusively used SIERA to identify such pitcher groups. Today, I’ll use Statcast’s xERA, as it utilizes actual batted ball data, so not every ground ball and fly ball are equal, as they are in the SIERA equation. So let’s compare actual ERA to xERA to identify and discuss both the underperformers and overperformers. Don’t forget that any ERA estimator uses actual strikeout and walk rates, so if those metrics seem unsustainable (either on the high or low side), then the expected ERA equation isn’t going to be as helpful.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about three and a half weeks into the season, which means it’s finally the time to start evaluating your own time’s hot starters and seeking out trade targets amongst the slow starters. While I would imagine the majority of hot and cold starters will ultimately revert back to their preseason projection performances over the rest of the season, the best players to trade are likely your overperformers, while the best targets are typically your leaguemates’ slow starters.

I could identify each of those groups by running year-to-date fantasy dollar values and comparing them to projected fantasy dollar values using our auction calculator, but it’s easier to just use wOBA and xwOBA. So, the underperforming group, your potential trade target list, are those hitters whose actual wOBA marks are most underperforming their xwOBA marks, while the overperforming group are the opposite, representing those you might want to consider dangling in trades if you own any to see if any of your opponents are willing to pay an inflated price.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I reviewed the extreme hitter performers that both sit atop and at the bottom of various statistical leaderboards. We don’t necessarily expect the majority of these results to continue, but it’s fun to review them. Strong early results could give some hitters a longer leash, increasing their job security, while weak results could result in a playing time cut. So even if we think regression or improvement would come, managers may already taking action on the early performances, rightfully or wrongfully. Therefore, we should be aware of the outliers.

Today, we’ll switch over to starting pitchers.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re already about 10% into the season, so it’s time to take a look at some of the weird, the wonderful, and most extreme of performances. For as long as these types of results remain atop and at the bottom of the leaderboards, we know we’re still in small sample size territory! So let’s review some of the hitting outliers through a couple of weeks of the 2024 season.

Read the rest of this entry »