In mid-February, I compared the xHR/FB rate my equation spit out to the batter’s actual mark in 2018 to share a list of nine batters the formula would suggest possessed significant HR/FB rate upside in 2019. The record home run rate this year is going to probably make the picks look good, but let’s take a gander at the names and the results anyway to find out if that was indeed the case.
Let’s review the first Pod Projection I posted for the 2019 season, Yusei Kikuchi, who was to make his MLB debut from Japan. It’s difficult enough to project players with no Major League experience, such as rookies coming up from the minor leagues. It’s even more challenging to try the forecast game when that player with no MLB experience is actually coming from a foreign league. Translating their foreign league performance is more art than science. Luckily, the DELTA website helped by supplying some of the season metrics, which I did my best to translate to a Major League equivalent to use as a guide. Let’s see how he performed versus my projections and the rest of the systems.
As I have at the end of the first half since 2013, I grouped two sets of pitchers together and aggregated their results through the half based on the degree of SIERA outperformance and underperformance. I then asked you which group of pitchers would perform better from an ERA perspective over the second half, and which range each group’s ERA would fall into. This year’s poll and voting results are here.
I continue my review of my pre-season predictions, moving along to my bold pitcher league leaders. While the randomness of many of these metrics make it extremely difficult to get a call right, it also means that I have a much better chance of hitting on one than I did with the hitters. That’s because Dee Gordon has essentially a 0% chance of leading the league in homers, but with some good fortune, it’s in the realm of possibility that Steven Matz wins the NL ERA title. I did not boldly predict a wins league leader, because wins are dumb.
Let’s check in on my bold league leader predictions. While I rarely get any of these right, the hope is that some of the highlighted names outperformed and their appearance on this list gave you the nudge you needed to go the extra buck for them. We’ll start with the hitters.
Now that the regular season has ended, it’s time to review alllllll my pre-season calls. I’ll start with the granddaddy of posts, one that all RotoGraphs writers partake in — bold predictions. I won’t fully rehash my prediction explanations here, so refresh your memory from my original post. As usual, the hope is to get three of the 10 correct. Let’s see how I did.
For my final post of the 2019 regular season, I leave you with another set of stackable recommendations.
Let’s once again discuss the stackable hitter types to consider against today’s starting pitchers.
For those in daily transaction leagues, streaming hitters is a viable strategy, especially if you’re in a shallow league and have many reasonable options sitting in free agency. Today, I’ll be discussing the pitchers to stream against and why. However, I’m not going to identify specific hitters because I don’t know who’s available in your league. You could use the information I share to search the type of players and determine what, if any, transactions to make.
Every season, there are a couple of hitters who go bonkers over a small sample size over the second half of the season. Because the season ended, there was no opportunity for the hitter to experience any sort of regression, and so we’re left with their bonkers performance to think about all off-season long. What could a full season the following year bring?! While there have been several players who fit this mold this season, Kyle Lewis is the most recent example.
