We are now a full month into the season, so it’s finally time to give you all an update on the LABR mixed league you have all been eagerly awaiting. For those who did not commit my team to memory, refresh it by checking out my draft results again. Once you have stopped laughing after perusing my roster, you will realize how brave I am to ever talk about this team again.
We already have a month of baseball in the books and pitcher ERAs are not surprisingly still all over the place. This is my favorite time of the season as it is hard for many owners to ignore a bloated ERA, and the opportunity to improve your staff by buying at a discount is there. If you have a tough time yourself ignoring ERA, you must be strong! Look at the underlying skills and be confident that eventually the ERA will match it. Now for some American League starting pitcher talk…
It’s the best day of the week as we once again take a dip into the free agent pool. My goal by the end of the season is to incorporate as many puns as I can into my introduction, so feel free to offer suggestions in the comments. Today is a look at two hitters who may actually earn some mixed league value, which doesn’t happen very often when looking at the 15% owned and below.
Batted ball distribution rates stabilizes more quickly than most of the other offensive and pitching statistics. We have found that ground ball percentage becomes reliable at about 200 plate appearances. Though no pitcher has quite reached that level yet, we are fairly close. It is therefore worth checking in on those pitchers whose ground ball rates have surged since last season and see if we can figure out if any are sustainable. All else equal, a high ground ball rate should result in fewer home runs, and ultimately a lower ERA.
Over the last week, I took an early look at those pitchers whose fastball velocity has increased most since last season, and those whose velocity has declined. In the comments, several wondered how velocity trended during the season. Intuitively, we would expect that velocity would gradually rise into the summer months as pitchers build their arm strength throughout April and battle through the cooler months. If this is the case, then we would become more optimistic and less panicky about the early season velocity dippers. Let’s see if this happens.
So we’re now three to four starts in as our sample size gradually increases. Of course, it’s still way too small to have that much meaning. However, we could still dive as deeply as possible and look at underlying skills like F-Strike% and SwStk% because those stabilize more quickly than the surface stats. I still advise completely ignoring ERA and focusing on the peripherals. Anyway, here are some notes on some of the mid tier and bottom tier guys.
Welcome to an all Padres, all the time edition of the deep league waiver wire. As you all know, Padres pitchers are the ones you want. And given how starters are dropping like flies recently, it is likely some of you are hunting for someone with a pulse, with the hope that this someone may not actually kill your ratios.
On Saturday, I took an early look at the 10 starting pitchers who have seen their average fastball velocity increase the most. Since velocity tends to gradually increase into the summer, I wanted to only capture the pitcher’s last start, and decided to use the “Last 7 Days” Split filter. In fact, there is a far greater number of starters whose velocity is down than whose velocity is up. Today, I will use that same method, but instead focus on the 10 starters whose velocity has declined the most. This is not the list you want to see your fantasy starter on!
Fastball velocity is one of the most important numbers to focus on in a pitcher’s statistical toolbox. It has a high correlation with strikeout rate and when we saw an increase in velocity, good things should follow. Early on, we have heard about many starting pitchers suffering from a loss in fastball velocity, but some are actually enjoying a spike. I decided to only compare a starter’s velocity using the “Last 7 Days” filter so as to hopefully capture just the pitcher’s last start (or maybe two in some cases), since velocity does tend to increase throughout the season. These are the 10 pitchers with the largest increases so far:
As usual, pitching performances in the early going have run the gamut from complete domination to shockingly bad. It’s poor starts like these that make me swear to never pay more than $10 for a pitcher. But alas, most starters have pitched just three games and still have another 180 innings of baseball left to throw. So with that said, here’s a look around the American League.
