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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It’ll be a while before we have enough plate appearances in the books to start digging into most of our hitting metrics, but there’s a Statcast metric that could be evaluated without any sample size caveats! It’s maxEV, or the highest exit velocity a hitter recorded on any batted ball. Here, sample size only matters on one side of the coin — the decliners. That’s why today we’re going to dive into the gainers. Surprise, surprise, even after just a handful of games and batted balls, 13 hitters have already hit a ball with a greater exit velocity than last year! Let’s identify the top nine of these names.

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With just three games in the books of the 2024 regular season as I type this (or five for the Dodgers and Padres), there’s not a whole lot of statistical analysis to be done that avoids running into sample size issues. What does stabilize relatively quickly is pitcher velocity. Of course, that doesn’t mean that one game is enough to celebrate a gainer or panic over a decliner. Velocities fluctuate from game to game and also tends to increase as the season progresses. However, the data is far more valuable than the majority of other metrics we have to stare at on the very, very young season.

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First Base Overview

This year’s group of first base eligibles is not your grandmother’s player crop. The depth here just ain’t great and feels thinner than during my younger years, before some of my hairs decided “salt and pepper” was the new brown.

What’s interesting here is how many first basemen also steal bases, as four of them are forecasted for double digits, and another three feature upper single digit projections that could easily end up higher. So fantasy managers now have more options — do you target an all-around contributor who essentially gives you contributions you might expect from an outfielder or the traditional masher to lock down 10% or more of your team’s home run total? The choice is yours, but hopefully these tiered rankings will help you make such an important decision.

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Every year, spring training performances inflate, and sometimes deflate, auction prices and ADP. The vast majority of the time, it’s the wrong reaction. But sometimes, it’s the right move. We do learn new information during spring training, such as exit velocities, pitch velocities, new stances, new pitches added to a repertoire, etc etc. That’s what I care about, not that a hitter is batting .450 (unless it results in more projected playing time) or a pitcher holds a 1.37 ERA (unless it wins him a rotation spot or the closer role). So let’s talk about my starting pitcher targets, plus a bonus hitter sleeper.

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This past Saturday morning, I hopped on the NYC subway for the quick trip to Hotel Edison to participate in the annual Tout Wars live auction. It’s one of the most exciting days of the year, and it’s always bittersweet when it’s over, knowing that I’ll have to wait an entire year to auction with these lads again.

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