Review season continues and today I’ll recap the starting pitchers whose spring training strikeout rates were significantly above their Steamer projected K% marks. As a reminder, with the help of Matt Swartz, I found that spring strikeout rates do provide meaning with regards to regular season performance, something that Dan Rosenheck validated as true more recently.
So yesterday, I reviewed the results of my other HR/FB rate analysis based on ESPN Home Run Tracker data and recapped the players identified as having significant upside in 2015. My list didn’t perform too well, so let’s hope today’s goes better. I’ll be checking in on the guys who hit the most Just Enough home runs in 2014, which I deemed as having serious HR/FB rate downside in 2015.
Today I’ll review another article focused on identifying hitters with home run upside. On Monday, I recapped the names based on my xHR/FB rate equation, while today I will discuss the list I cobbled together using ESPN Home Run Tracker. What’s always interesting is when both methods disagree and I’m not always sure which to believe. I tend to side with the xHR/FB rate equation though just because the formula uses significantly more data points.
Yesterday, I reviewed my preseason target list of hitters whose xHR/FB rates suggested significant HR/FB rate upside in 2015. Today I’ll recap the opposite end, those hitters who my xHR/FB rate equation suggested had significant HR/FB rate downside. These were the guys who most outperformed their xHR/FB rates in 2014 and were at risk of a decline.
I told you last week that I made a lot of predictions, doled out a ton of preseason advice and published lists, lists and more lists filled with players to target or avoid based on that article’s theme. So you better believe that I’m going to review as many of those as I can to discover just how valuable that advice was! Today I review my target list heading into the season comprised of players I determined underachieved with respect to their HR/FB rates. That is, their actual HR/FB rates were significantly below their xHR/FB rates, based on the equation I developed.
Yesterday, I reviewed my 2015 Bold Hitter League Leaders. And they were laughably bad. I haven’t actually looked at my pitcher picks as I type this and I cannot for the life of me remember them. So, let’s hope they turned out better. Here are my original explanations.
Aside from my annual bold predictions, I risk complete embarrassment by also trying to predict the surprise league leaders on both the hitting and pitching side. Obviously, these are even more difficult than the bold predictions and getting even one right is quite the accomplishment. Let’s see how this season’s crop of longshots did.
In 2013, I won the inaugural year of the Tout Wars Mixed Draft league. I was rewarded with a promotion to one of the three live auction leagues and was ecstatic to have been slotted into the storied American League only version, made famous by the fantastic book Fantasyland. Unfortunately, year one in AL Tout Wars went terribly, as I finished 10th. As further punishment, my team garnered fewer than 60 fantasy points, which resulted in me beginning the 2015 season with a reduced FAAB.
The 2016 regular season is officially in the books and that means that for the next couple of months, it’s review time! I published a boatload of predictions and player lists in the preseason and I plan to recap every single one of them. First, I’ll start with perhaps the most enjoyable one, the bold predictions. Refresh your memory with the full explanations behind my predictions. Typically, I consider getting just three of the 10 correct to be a job well done. Let’s see how I did.
Sadly, this is my last post of the week, which means it’s my last set of starting pitcher recommendations. Perhaps if you’re nice, you could convince another RotoGrapher to take the mantle for the last two games of the season.
