Unhappy about the team’s sub-.500 record in 2015, Diamondbacks General Manager Dave Stewart has resorted to signin’, wheelin’ n’ dealin’ this offseason to seemingly make a run at a playoff spot. The majority of his moves were to bolster a starting pitching staff that ranked 11th in ERA in the National League with a 4.37 mark. Of course, I’m not here to discuss Zack Greinke or Shelby Miller. Rather, let’s talk about the guys who are not a lock to be a part of the team’s rotation and back end of the bullpen.

Rotation

Because I cannot type an entire article without mentioning Zack Greinke’s 2015 performance, I will simply note this — his LOB% ranked as the fifth highest mark ever among qualified starters. That’s running our leaderboard as far back as it goes, choosing 1871, and ending up with 9,358 pitcher seasons. Do not pay top five starter prices. That is all.

Since I’m on a luck will run out campaign (wait, aren’t I always?), I might as well mention Shelby Miller and his massive SIERA-beating ways. Wait until he hits a severe hitter’s park for the first time!

Now I feel better.

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As I continue to remind you, I have been plugging away at finishing my initial set of Pod Projections, which is incredibly time consuming. However, it allows me to learn a whole lot about, like, every player, even guys I have no desire to learn anything about, such as Cameron Rupp. Every so often, I come across a player that I not only know little about, but two different sets of data lead to opposite evaluations. Then I throw up my hands and internally debate how I should project said player. So it is possible, perhaps far more so than you would ever believe, that Stephen Piscotty is a star. Or maybe he’s not. That’s probably safer to claim. Let me explain.

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If the Nationals don’t add another starting pitcher by the time Spring Training rolls around, then it’s likely that Joe Ross claims the fifth spot in the team’s rotation. Ross debuted last season, making 13 starts and three relief appearances, after just 24.2 innings at Triple-A. In those 13 starts, he was excellent, striking out 22.5% of the batters he faced, while walking just 6.6% of them. He also induced grounders at a strong 49.5% clip, which paired with his strikeout and walk rates, resulted in a 3.61 SIERA. The showing has unsurprisingly already led to some preseason sleeper love. As I continue to work through my Pod Projections, I have come to the realization that I both love and hate Ross, similar to how I felt about Carlos Martinez last preseason.

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Yesterday, I shared my plight as the commissioner of my local league and complained about the difficulty of finding good owners who remain active all season long. I made the decision to charge a preemptive league inactivity fee, whereby owners would add a quarter of their entry fee into the pot as we head into auction weekend. If an owner remains active all season, his money is returned. If he goes inactive, he will not be seeing that money again. This seems like a straightforward idea, but the biggest question is how to define inactive. So I asked you all for help, and help you provided, with 66 comments so far as I type this follow up.

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As the founder and commissioner of my local fantasy baseball league, perhaps the most difficult part of my job is to police owner inactivity. That actually falls under the larger challenge of simply finding good owners. One of the traits that makes an owner a strong asset to the league is that he is active. By active, I mean that his lineup is always set with healthy players, he manages his DL slots, and he makes transactions that are logical, like dropping the guy just demoted to the minors who is clearly not going to accrue any value for the rest of the season. Every year, we have owners either drop out for personal reasons or kicked out because they violated my most important rule of remaining active. Why is it so difficult to find an owner that pays attention for the entirety of the season?!

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Yesterday, I shared the fantasy relevant 2015 leaders in average absolute angle (AAA), one of the three components of my xHR/FB rate equation. If you don’t feel like clicking back to yesterday’s article, I will repeat what this mysterious metric is all about.

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Last year, I unveiled the xHR/FB rate equation I developed that I use to help me with my Pod Projections. We’re all familiar with the average batted ball distance component of the formula. Also included is the hitter’s average absolute angle (AAA) of his fly balls, which has a relatively low year-over-year correlation.

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Yesterday, I finally launched my never ending series of lists as we look toward the 2016 season by reviewing those fantasy relevant hitters who gained at least 15 feet of batted ball distance from 2014 to 2015. As you may have guessed, today I’ll look at the other end, those hitters who lost the most distance. Since there were surprisingly fewer extreme decliners, the list is going to include those who lost at least 10 feet of distance, rather than 15 feet like the gainers list included.

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Finally, it’s time for me to start looking toward the 2016 season with list after list after list. You love lists, right? Of course you do! We’ll start preview season with a look at one of my favorite metrics – hitter average fly ball and home run distance, or simply hitter batted ball distance. A long three years ago, Chad Young and I embarked on a quest to predict HR/FB rate and found that a hitter’s batted ball distance available at Baseball Heat Maps is highly correlated with HR/FB rate. No duh. The further a batter hits the ball on average, the more home runs, shocking!

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One of the more exciting effects of offseason player movement is the opening up of closer roles. When established closers sign somewhere else or get sent packing as part of a trade, us fantasy nerds have all the fun of speculating who steps up to fill the vacated role and how likely it is that the pitcher holds the job all year. After the Yankees stole traded for incumbent Reds closer Aroldis Chapman, there was a gaping hole at the back end of the Reds bullpen. Since the Reds are clearly in rebuilding mode, it’s highly unlikely they go out and trade for or sign another reliever to fill the void. So at the moment, all signs point to J.J. Hoover opening the season as their closer. We’ll expand on the battle and other options when we begin our depth chart discussions in the coming weeks. But today’s post is all about Hoover.

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