There’s not a whole lot to analyze at the beginning of the season aside from playing time, but there is one metric that stabilizes rather quickly and gives us extremely useful information — pitch velocity. I always monitor velocities during spring training and then early in the season to potentially get a leg up and find breakouts before they occur. So let’s review six velocity surgers after one start. To make data comparisons easier for me, I used Baseball Savant’s search tool and lumped all three fastball types (four-seam, two-seam, sinker) together and compared the average velocities of all three pitches for each pitcher to last season. Note that these velocities differ from the two velocity tables we have on FanGraphs. The absolute velocity is far less important than the increase in velocity, so the fact that the velocities don’t match isn’t an issue.

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Baseball is back! It’s an exciting time when a trio of the toppest of top prospects will be in the starting lineup on opening day — Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Spencer Torkelson. That’s three of our top five overall prospects! There has been enough digital ink spilled on them, though, so let’s discuss three less heralded prospects who have earned a starting job.

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It’s bold predictions time! Earlier this week, I shared my bold hitter league leaders and bold pitcher league leaders. While those picks and writeups should provide value, they are more for fun given the loooooong odds of getting even one of them right. On the other hand, I expect to hit on several of my bold predictions, aiming for at least two to three correct calls. Let’s dive right in.

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Yesterday, I unveiled my bold hitter league leaders. Today, let’s jump over to the pitching side, where I’ll do the same for the throwers. Once again, I’ll use my Pod Projections to guide me toward players I’m more bullish on than the other projection systems. Unlike for hitters, I’ll only be sharing bold leaders in four categories. There will be no bold wins league leader named, because wins are silly and unpredictable.

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions, I up the ante with my bold league leaders. If you thought nailing a bold prediction was tough, the bold league leaders are even more difficult! Just getting one right is worthy of celebration. Because these are bold, I automatically disqualify players I don’t personally believe would be considered bold or is already projected to finish top five in the category. So I challenge myself and it typically causes me to bat .000, though I actually have hit on a couple over the years. This is more for fun and dreaming of what could be, rather than any serious attempt at being right. Naturally, I use my Pod Projections to identify players with that 80th-90th percentile upside to vault to the top of the category mountains.

Today, I’ll start with the bold hitting league leaders in each of the five categories, split up by league. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the pitchers.

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On Tuesday, I built a $14 offense using only $1 players from the NFBC average auction values in March. My player pool to choose from for that exercise was 78 players. But what about those that weren’t purchased at all? Surely they could have been had for a buck, too! That group is now my pool to choose from for this thrilling offense. There were a total of 110 players that I have a Pod Projection that weren’t rostered in a single NFBC auction in March. As a reminder, there were 25 auctions run since Mar 1, so this 14-player offense will be solely composed of hitters who failed to be bought in any of them.

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Yesterday, I built a $14 NFBC offense using their average auction values, limiting myself to an entire squad of $1 hitters. Today, let’s now build a $9 pitching staff. I only had 58 pitchers to choose from, but I can guarantee that you will be so jealous of the squad I assembled, you will wish you had done the same in your 15-team league.

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You know what’s fun? Drafting a fake team, selected using values from completed drafts. Several years ago, I debuted a series of posts using NFBC average auction values (AAV). Let’s start that up again as we’re just over a week away from opening day. I’ll start by building a $14 offense. That’s right, 14 hitters, all just a buck each. Isn’t that exciting?! I can only imagine the thrills that will be had choosing between players most fantasy owners have no desire to roster. But think of how amazing your $246 pitching staff would be!

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In this condensed spring training, it’s become tougher to use what we’ve seen so far to make projection adjustments. So really, the only thing I care at least a little bit about right now, besides playing time outlook, is a pitcher’s velocity. Specifically, I care more about increased velocity than I do decreased velocity. While a decline in velocity could signal that something is wrong, it’s more likely the pitcher is just gradually working his way up to his normal velocity and will be fine by opening day. On the other hand, you can’t fake increased velocity and there’s no reason for a pitcher to decide one outing to just go all out for the fun of it. I’m a sucker for velocity jumps, as it very oftentimes coincides with a major breakout. So let’s discuss three velocity surgers so far. Remember, the sample size of pitches thrown is really small, so it’s certainly possible that these averages will come down by the time opening day comes around.

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Yesterday, I discussed six 2021 fantasy breakouts and concluded with a verdict as to whether I believed each was for real or would be a 2022 bust. Today, let’s discuss the 2021 busts. Will they rebound or continue down the path of bustiness?

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