Presley & Medlen: Deep League Waiver Wire
June 13, 2012
Today’s deep league waiver wire highlights an outfielder I am somewhat shocked still has such a low ownership percentage and a pitcher who you should get an early jump on.
Author Archive
Future SP Disappointments: SIERA Outperformers
June 11, 2012
Every so often, I like to look at the difference between starting pitchers’ SIERA and ERA marks and rank them to determine who has been luckiest and unluckiest according to the former metric. This is an especially important exercise to do during trading season, both when looking to identify pitchers to trade for and which pitchers you own you should be looking to sell. Today I present the SIERA outperformers, those whose ERA is most below their SIERA marks. These are your potential sell high candidates.
LABR Mixed League June Update
June 9, 2012
You may recall that a month into the season, I was embarrassing myself in the LABR mixed league. Despite going offense heavy during the draft and being questioned about my pitching staff, my team simply wasn’t hitting. My pitching was performing better, but not nearly good enough to offset the atrocities at the plate. Well, a month later, things have improved. Not a whole lot, mind you, but better times indeed.
American League SP Tiers June Update
June 7, 2012
It is ranking tiers update week and today are the American League starting pitchers. By this time in the season, peripherals are stabilizing and I can now put a lot more stock into skills surges and declines. As a reminder, these rankings are only supposed to reflect how I expect pitchers to perform going forward. How a pitcher has already performed to date bears no weighting here. Refresh your memory with my May update.
Gwynn & Wallace: Deep League Waiver Wire
June 6, 2012
The great thing about playing in a league deeper than 12-team mixed for a change is I can now simply check out the week’s pickups in the 15-team LABR league for inspiration. Both the players highlighted today were won with FAAB this past Monday.
Pitcher F-Strike% Laggards
June 4, 2012
On Saturday, I looked at the pitcher leaders in F-Strike% in an attempt to identify those who may see better walk rates ahead. Today I will look at the opposite side of the coin. These are the pitchers who throwing the lowest percentage of first pitch strikes. A pitcher showing up on this list with a league average walk rate or better is likely going to experience an increase in the near future.
Pitcher F-Strike% Leaders
June 2, 2012
As intuition would suggest, F-Strike% has a high correlation with a pitcher’s walk rate (though I can’t seem to find the article that studied the relationship). One of the obvious reasons is because a first pitch strike is a strike, so you already know the pitcher is starting with an 0-1 count. Whenever I analyze a pitcher, I like to compare his F-Strike% with his BB/9 or BB% to see if those last two numbers are sustainable. Today I look at the leaders in F-Strike%. These are the guys who should also be atop the leader boards in walk rate. This is where we search for those who may see an improved walk rate in the future.
AL SP: The Youngins
May 31, 2012
The great thing about having a weak pitching staff, as opposed to a poor offense, is that there are always new pitchers being called up who could potentially generate some fantasy value. This is why I have always trumpeted going cheaper than everyone else on your pitching staff during your draft/auction. Let’s take a look at some of the younger guys who have
Juan Francisco & Norichika Aoki: Deep League Wire
May 30, 2012
Today’s waiver wire looks at two hitters who are beneficiaries of injuries. Every year, a large percentage of surprise performances happen as a result of increased playing time, rather than any change in skill. These players are typically undervalued because they have never played full-time and therefore don’t have the history of counting stats to attract fantasy owners or instill the confidence that they could maintain their skills over every day at-bats.
Pitcher SwStk% Laggards
May 26, 2012
On Monday, I looked at the pitching leaders in SwStk% to see if we can expect any strikeout rate surges in the near future. Today, I will check in on the opposite end of the ledger, those pitchers whose SwStk% are at the bottom of the totem pole. Obviously, these are not the guys you want on you fantasy team. Let’s see if any of them have higher strikeout rates than you would expect and are therefore in for some regression.