In 2003 as a wee 21-year-old, I founded a standard 12-team mixed redraft league with a live auction. Ever since, I had toyed with the idea of starting a sister keeper format, but always decided against it. I have rarely played in keeper leagues, joining one many years ago and lasting just one year due to quirky rules I wasn’t a fan of, but am now playing a second year in my current keeper league, an AL-Only format. The last two weeks have just reinforced my opinion that a strong keeper league is extremely difficult to establish and run. The problem has always been handling “dump” trades, the term used for the trading of prospects or quality keepers for better high-priced or unkeepable players, with a bottom tier team serving in the dumper role, while a team fighting for a money spot acting as dumpee.

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Home runs are up across the land and since 2002, the league average HR/FB rate has hit a new high, rising above 14% for the first time and above the previous high set just two years ago. Related, the league AB/HR has fallen to a new low, also beating out 2017. Batters are now homering once every 25.9 at-bats. It hasn’t all been the same top guys just hitting more. There have also been a slew of new home run kings so far this season. Let’s identify them and discuss.

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Last week was seemingly historic for the number of prospects we opened our FAAB wallets for, but that doesn’t mean there’s no one left to fill your deep league roster holes. Another day means more injuries, and these two could benefit.

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Last Thursday, I identified nine starting pitchers whose Statcast xwOBA marks were significantly better than their actual wOBA marks, suggesting improved results over the rest of the season. Today, let’s discuss the guys who have been the most fortunate according to xwOBA.

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While I use the Statcast hitting leaderboards and metrics often, I rarely do for pitchers. I think it’s because there has been much less research performed and shared on the explanatory and predictive powers of the metrics. So I’ve just stuck with underlying skills, SIERA, and my xK% and xBB% metrics. I’m not here to run a study, but figured it was still worth diving into the xwOBA to try uncovering some pitchers likely to improve over the rest of the season.

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Welcome to this week’s dive into the wild free agent pool. Let’s find out which two treasures we have uncovered.

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Yesterday, I shared and discussed the hitters who were leading in barrels per fly ball + line drive rate. Let’s now take a peek at the bottom dwellers. Of course, there are going to be your typical suspects, but there are some names that are surprising.

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With about a quarter of the season now in the books, let’s dive into some Statcast data. We know that power could ebb and flow each month and we have witnessed time and time again a hitter whose power is down early, but ends up going absolutely bonkers at some point and making up for the slow start. One of the best, most easily calculable metrics is barrels per fly ball + line drive rate. The problem with the barrels per batted ball event on the Statcast leaderboard is that it counts all batted ball types. It therefore ends up punishing ground ball hitters and doubly benefiting fly ball hitters. While that’s fine if you want to project isolated slugging, it’s a flawed metric if we only care about HR/FB rate. Barrels per plate appearance is even worse, as batters are now punished for walks and strikeouts, as those particular times to the plate failed to result in a barrel…well, duh! So Barrels/FB+LD it is.

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On Tuesday, I identified and discussed the hitters who have enjoyed the largest spikes in fly ball rate, firmly entrenching them as new or more senior members of the fly ball revolution. Today, let’s find out which hitters have departed the revolution as their fly ball rates have plummeted.

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It’s becoming a fly ball happy world, as fly ball rate now sits at its highest mark since 2010. The revolution is showing no signs of slowing down. So let’s find out after the first month which hitters have increased their fly ball rates the most. I’ll list everyone who has boosted their marks by at least ten percentage points (40% to 50%).

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