After a rough stretch, Lucas Giolito is coming off of two great starts and is set for a matchup on Friday night with a Tigers team that has mostly been an offensive doormat for much of 2022. And since the mission statement here at NotBurt Inc. includes many mentions of setting ourselves up for success, clearly, now is the perfect time to question his performance going forward. Because where’s the fun without an added degree of difficulty? Read the rest of this entry »

I do love change. No, not that jiggle jiggle that my fellow kids and I love to talk about these days but simply the act of one thing turning into another. Change doesn’t have to be good or bad; it can be both, either, or neither. And perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than when looking at the arsenals of major league pitchers. More of this pitch, less of that one, more velocity here, less movement over there. More horizontal for that, less vertical for this, one fish, two fish, v fish, nu fish.

But just because a pitch changes how it moves, doesn’t guarantee the results will fare better, a quality that is already rather subjective when needing to factor in a pitcher’s intent that isn’t fully known. However, changes are useful flags and can serve as starting points. And when seeing dramatic movement changes in key pitches, I can’t help but wonder, why. We’ll take a look at two such pitches today, thrown by two left-handers who’ve had similar overall fantasy value in 2022, though, not quite of the top-tier variety. More like SP4/5’s that have 2/3 aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »

Woe. Malice. Dread. These are the emotions that have come to mind in the past when considering the prospect of rostering Martín Pérez for fantasy purposes. But these tempers have been tamed by Pérez in 2022 as he’s now frolicked his way to a top-25 SP. And yet, we still do not fully trust him, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the home runs to once again rain down on his pristine ERA. But I, for one, would like to take a break to say I’m sorry. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to the internet’s premier home for breaking down any and all minutiae from a 2006 Matthew McConaughey vehicle that inexplicably co-starred a naked Terry Bradshaw. Jay Kay, let’s talk about baseball dongs instead. Or rather, the lack of them.

Last time out, we looked at three players that have started 2022 out with a fizzle but had some underlying metrics that point to better times ahead. In case you missed it, we’re splitting 2022 into two periods – the first month of the season (up until May 8), as well as the time since (stats through June 15th). Besides looking at the raw HR per PA rates, we’ll also use percentile rankings to better capture how players compare to their peers, as to see better into the relative changes without being dragged down too much by the new offensive environment (new ball, humidors, etc). Read the rest of this entry »

The runs have been raining down as of late, at least relative to the spongeball square offenses that we’ve had to suffer through during the first part of the season. Whether this is due to the increasing temperatures decreasing the overall effects that league-wide humidors have wrought, or to MLB more nefariously (definitely not) switching out the baseballs, doesn’t matter as much.

What does matter is that these dongs of summer are finally giving fantasy managers a respite in their offensive categories. With that in mind, let’s take some different looks at the so-called power hitters that have hurt their drafters the most through the first third of the season, starting with the ones most likely to turn things around. Read the rest of this entry »

With the so-called “sticky-stuff” memo getting released almost exactly one year ago, it seems about time to take another peek at which pitchers have been spinning the ball less since the crackdown was announced and how much (if any) their stuff and/or results have been affected since. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure you’ve already heard that it’s hard to be a speed junkie because stolen bases are so passe. But some teams are still running and while I’d rather have a fast player than a slow one, when it comes to the stolen base game, a team’s intent can often be just as important as an individual’s actual speed. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the lesser-owned players on the teams that have attempted the most thefts so far in 2022 and see if we can stack the probabilities in our favor. Read the rest of this entry »

Much smarter folk than I have already covered just how much hitters are suffering in this new and not-improved 2022 run environment, so let’s focus on some positivity and take a look at which players have thus far seen significant power bumps in the early goings on. Read the rest of this entry »

Since we’ve now covered the whiffiest pitches around and taken a look at the pitchers at the top of the CSW% leaderboard, it’s time to see who’s been living on the flip side and turning in the biggest drops in CSW%. Read the rest of this entry »

After covering some of the whiffiest pitches around last time out, let’s dig a little deeper on the starting pitchers with the highest CSW% in 2022, looking at which pitches in their arsenals are driving the overall upgradde in results.

Here is the CSW% leaderboard for starting pitchers (min 75 batters faced), listing the players currently above the 50th percentile. Also included are SwStr% and CallStr% for 2021 and 2022. Read the rest of this entry »