Yesterday, I shared which starting pitchers have suffered from the most rotten luck so far this season by comparing their ERAs to their SIERA marks. Naturally, today it’s time to look at the opposite side of the coin — those whose ERAs are not supporting by their underlying peripherals and have significantly higher SIERA marks. Let’s take a gander.
We have come a long way when it comes to evaluating a pitcher’s performance. No longer do we look at W/L record, hits allowed and other metrics that are greatly influenced by factors outside the pitcher’s control. We have learned to focus on the pitcher’s underlying skills. However, it remains very difficult to look past ERA for the majority of fantasy owners. This is somewhat understandable when looking at full year results, but when we’re still just a month and a half into the season with pitchers generally in the 50-60 innings range, ERA should be almost completely ignored. ERA estimators such as SIERA are much more predictive of rest of season performance. So with that in mind, here are your SIERA underperformers and acquisition target list. I have only included pitchers whose SIERA marks are below 4.00. If a pitcher is sporting a 7.00 ERA with a 4.70 SIERA, then sure he may be a bit unlucky, but he still stinks!
Over the last week, a trio of interesting pitchers joined their respective American League teams’ starting rotations. While two of the three were likely already owned in AL-Only leagues and almost have to blindly be slotted onto a fantasy team’s active roster, the bigger question is whether these guys are worth considering in shallower formats. Let’s dive in.
It’s another truly deep dive in this week’s waiver wire adventure. Since I’ve been asked several times, the deep league edition of the weekly waiver wire is typically meant for Mono league owners. Or perhaps if you play in a 20-team mixed league, you could use these recommendations as well.
Yesterday, I discussed eight hitters whose batted ball distances suggested an imminent power surge. Today I’ll take a look at the opposite side of the coin — those whose distances suggest their current HR/FB rates are unsustainable. As a reminder, this analysis assumes the distances are maintained. Obviously we’re still dealing with a relatively small sample size and these hitters are capable of boosting their batted ball distances to match their HR/FB rates.
There is just so much fun you can have analyzing the batted ball distance leaderboard. The possibilities are seemingly endless and we haven’t even scratched the surface of exactly how we could use this data. But since we know distance is highly correlated with HR/FB rate, we could look at the leaders and laggards to predict who might be in for a surge or decline in their respective HR/FB rates. The key, of course, is that the player maintains a similar batted ball distance. We’re still dealing with a relatively small sample size here, so these potential surgers will only surge if they keep hitting balls as far as they have on average.
Collin McHugh is an example of precisely why fantasy owners shy away from spending a whole lot on pitching at their auctions/drafts. There is simply so much more value that comes along during the season from pitchers plucked from free agency that it makes sense to spend the majority of your budget on offense. McHugh has only started three games, but if he did qualify for the leaderboard, he’d rank fourth among all starters in strikeout percentage. Naturally, 99% of fantasy owners are likely asking themselves the same question — Collin McWho?
Are you desperate for a second baseman or middle infielder in your deep league? Then you’ve come to the right place! I’ve got a pair of possible free agents ripe for the picking just for you.
Yesterday, I discussed the April batted ball distance surgers. So naturally, today I’ll check in on the decliners. Because regression to the mean is such a powerful force, a distance decline sticks more often than a surge does. In other words, I would be more concerned about a decliner than excited about a surger.
Now that we’re more than a month into the season, we finally have enough data to start taking batted ball distance numbers seriously. When developing my latest xHR/FB rate equation, I limited the player population to include only those who recorded at least 20 home runs and fly balls. At this point, the majority of the leaderboard sits between 20 and 25, so let’s dig in and start by looking at which hitters have experienced the largest increase since last season.
