Last year, I determined that pitcher batted ball distance allowed was correlated with HR/FB rate to a reasonable degree. This was fairly obvious, though the correlation was much lower than I expected, and less significant than that of hitters. It’s why I rarely discuss pitcher batted ball distance, along with the fact it doesn’t correlate from year to year all that well. But the correlation is there and it does convey meaning. We could run the same analysis for pitchers, comparing their distances with HR/FB rates to identify those due for improvement or regression. So today I’ll look at American League starting pitchers with highly inflated HR/FB rates, but distances that suggest major improvement is on the horizon.

While some of these players will obviously improve due to how high their HR/FB rates are, you might wonder if that improvement means a 10% mark going forward or a 14% mark the rest of the way. This analysis should help form those expectations.

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It’s deep league waiver time. Please contain your excitement.

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Last week, I identified five hitters whose batted ball distance suggested better HR/FB rate days may be ahead and another five hitters who may be in for a sudden HR/FB rate decline. That’s one way to use a hitter’s average home run and fly ball distance — as a predictive metric to speculate on improvers and regressers moving forward. The other use is to validate as a backwards looking tool. Player X’s HR/FB rate has declined, has his batted ball distance plummeted as well? The batter is seemingly at greater risk of maintaining that decreased HR/FB rate if it came with a similar trend in his distance. Of course, he may improve the distance, in which case the HR/FB rate would rebound. But we still want to see the two match up.

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Last week, I identified five hitters whose batted ball distance suggested better HR/FB rate days may be ahead and another five hitters who may be in for a sudden HR/FB rate decline. That’s one way to use a hitter’s average home run and fly ball distance — as a predictive metric to speculate on improvers and regressers moving forward. The other use is to validate as a backwards looking tool. Player X’s HR/FB rate has spiked, has his batted ball distance surged as well? The batter would seemingly have a better shot at sustaining that increased HR/FB rate if it came with a similar trend in his distance. Of course, he may not sustain the distance, in which case the HR/FB rate would fall. But we still want to see the two match up.

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It’s easy to advise fantasy owners to buy low and sell high, but unless you’re in a league filled with newbies, it’s much more difficult to actually put into practice. It’s far easier to execute a sell low or buy high trade, because we’re all trained to do the buy low, sell high thing. When you’ll selling low, your trade partner may very well think he’s buying low. But you know better. Or at least believe so.

Today, I’ll recommend three American League starting pitchers to sell low on. It’s not typically a strategy that I’m a fan of, especially early in the season when it’s still mostly small sample size zone. But there are certainly changes that can occur in various aspects of a pitcher’s underlying skill set that is driven by various forces that should alter our evaluations and projections moving forward. I think these three are examples of such happenings.

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Welcome to an all Astros edition of the deep league waiver wire! With a series of roster moves, opportunities abound.

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So we all know by now that batted ball distance correlates pretty well with HR/FB rate. It’s fairly obvious, as the further the batter hits the ball, the better chance it has of landing on the other side of the fence for a dinger. Adding in the two additional components that compose my xHR/FB rate equation increases the usefulness, but sadly that data is not available just yet. Yesterday, I discussed five hitters whose distances suggest dramatically higher HR/FB rates than have been posted. Today, I’ll look at the bottom of the distance boards and identify five hitters whose HR/FB rates are out of place, and should be lower, perhaps significantly so.

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So we all know by now that batted ball distance correlates pretty well with HR/FB rate. It’s fairly obvious, as the further the batter hits the ball, the better chance it has of landing on the other side of the fence for a dinger. Adding in the two additional components that compose my xHR/FB rate equation increases the usefulness, but sadly that data is not available just yet. So today, we’ll look at the top of the distance boards and I’ll identify five hitters whose HR/FB rates are out of place, and should be higher, perhaps significantly so.

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When I analyze a starting pitcher’s strikeout rate spike, I want to see that it’s driven by an increase in swings and misses induced. It could come from other avenues — a higher rate of strikes thrown or more called or foul strikes. But in my eyes, the most believable way to sustain that strikeout rate surge is by generating additional whiffs. So below are the seven American League starting pitchers that have increased their SwStk% marks the most compared to last season.

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Welcome back to another edition of the deep league waiver wire, where there’s another opportunity to take advantage of an injury and a preemptive move for an imminent returnee.

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