Author Archive

The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 808 – KBO Opening Day & MLB News

05/05/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 807 – Former MLB Pitchers in the KBO

05/04/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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FORMER MLB PITCHERS IN THE KBO

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Potential National League DHs

With all the potential setups we’re seeing for 2020 baseball, it seems like most would benefit from having a designated hitter included for the National League. If that does come to fruition, a group of hitters will see value upticks just by virtue of getting extra playing time, but they will also benefit from not having to play defense. Let’s go west to east with our NL DH candidates for each team:

ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS

Kevin Cron, Jake Lamb | Cron and Lamb are a righty-lefty combo that could straight up platoon as Arizona’s DH in this scenario. Cron didn’t do much in a tiny sample last year, but he did pop 6 HR and boast a .310 ISO in the 78 PA of work. Lamb is now three years removed from his 30 HR/105 RBI season, but I still think the 29-year old has big power when healthy (he just hasn’t been close to healthy since ’17). Seth Beer is the prototypical DH, but he’s not on the 40-man so I went with Cron & Lamb instead.

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Paul Sporer Baseball Chat – April 29th, 2020

Paul’s weekly chat starts now!

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 806 – Podopolooza (Sporer, Thorburn, Pollack, Simione, & Swan)

04/28/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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PODOPOLOOZA APPEARANCE

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 805 – Out of Nowhere Breakouts – NL Edition

04/21/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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MAIN TOPIC

  • Atlanta
  • Miami
  • New York
  • Washington
  • Philadelphia

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 804 – Seasons that Should’ve Won an MVP or CY

04/21/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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MVP & CY-WORTHY SEASONS DRAFT

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Texas Red Bulls: Fighting for the 2023 Playoffs

In our last update, I reviewed the 2022 playoffs and discussed our World Series win! As we started the 2023 season, I identified starting pitching as the premium need and put up a poll of three starters for us to choose from: 2019 Jack Flaherty, 1987 Bret Saberhagen, and 2007 Ian Snell. I wasn’t terribly surprised by the fact that Flaherty steamrolled with 45% of the vote, but I made an executive decision to keep both him and the last place finisher of the poll, Snell. He only got 20% of the vote, but he was just so cheap at 650 Perfect Points that I felt he was worth holding.

WHERE WE STAND

As of this writing, it’s August 15th, 2023 and our Red Bulls are 65-54, sitting 4.5 games back of the Boston Kkroncs (not a typo) and holding the second Wild Card. It’s been an up and down season. We started 13-16 in April (with 2 games in March) and then ran up an 18-9 record in May, but we’re just 32-29 since with a .560 win percentage in June, .458 in July, and .643 thus far in August (9-5).

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 803 – Out of Nowhere Breakouts – AL Edition

04/16/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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MAIN TOPIC

  • American League Breakouts Out of Nowhere (drafted somewhere around 300 or later)
    • Baltimore (9:00)
    • Boston (15:25)
    • New York (20:00)
    • Tampa Bay (25:35)
    • Toronto (30:30)
    • Cleveland (38:20)
    • Chicago (41:37)
    • Detroit (43:43)
    • Kansas City (47:25)
    • Minnesota (52:52)
    • Houston (57:02)
    • Los Angeles (58:50)
    • Oakland (1:02:16)
    • Seattle (1:05:50)
    • Texas (1:10:54)

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Paul Sporer Baseball Chat – April 15th, 2020

The transcript is below, thanks for coming out!

1:30

Paul Sporer: Welcome to the chat. Thanks so much for coming out!

1:33

Nick: When drafting in a keeper where players are kept at various round values, do you just cross the keepers off your list and move the leftovers up? Or do you weight the positions based on who’s left and rank accordingly?

1:33

Paul Sporer: I usually just move the leftovers up and make assessments based on what I have and who’s available

1:37

Nick: Just rewatched game 1 of the ’88 WS, and if you simulated that season 100 times how many times to the Dodgers even make the playoffs, let alone win against Oakland??

1:40

Paul Sporer: That’s a really good question. So much of their excellence came out of the bullpen (5 guys with a sub-2.75 ERA) and RPs are the most volatile. You can actually simulate the 1988 season in OOTP and see how it goes!

1:40

Not Van Lee: How bad do you guys plan to lose to Launch Angle tomorrow?

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