Author Archive

Paul Sporer Baseball Chat – May 13th, 2020

Transcript is available, thanks for coming out!!

1:50

Paul Sporer: Hello everyone Welcome to my weekly chat!

1:50

Paul Sporer: Sorry for the delayed start, was a little busy and had to push back a bit

1:51

Rubber Shoes: If there is an 80 game season, how do you think league’s should handle positional eligibility for 2021?

1:51

Paul Sporer: I think it makes sense to halve it

1:51

Chris: Are you in on Boyd, Tanaka or gallen this year?

1:51

Paul Sporer: All 3 to a degree. Really like Boyd and Gallen, don’t mind Tanaka at his price

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 810 – A New Proposal and ADP Risers

05/12/20

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

  • Latest Season Proposal
  • 5-Round Amateur Draft

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Texas Red Bulls: Sinking Like a Stone

In the hours after the last update, the team started to turn things around. There was a 10-2 run over a 12-game stretch, but the surge was short lived. We finished 74-88, 5th in the division and actually got demoted back to Stone Level. We had a positive run differential in that update when we were 43-53, but it evaporated as we scored 749 and allowed 780.

2026 REVIEW

The offense wasn’t too bad with the bulk of the lineup toting a wRC+ north of 100, with Joe Sewell (126) leading the club in a part-time role (352 PA). Three of the four players who logged at least 600 PA were above average: Jackie Jensen (110 in 622 PA), Jerry Mumphrey (106 in 616) and Ray Durham (109 in 611). Derrek Lee just missed with a 93 wRC+, but he led the team with 686 PA.

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Texas Red Bulls: An Overdue Update

I knew I was a little behind on giving a Red Bulls update, but I didn’t realize the last one was April 17th! My sincere apologies for that. Anyway, let’s just get right into it, there’s a lot to cover.

2023-2024

In the last update, it was mid-August and we were 65-54, just 4.5 games back of the division leader and holding the second wildcard. We went 13-30 and from that point on in a total meltdown to finish 78-84!!! It was rough. This was the first year moving from Rookie to Stone level so it’s a tougher pool, but that’s still so brutal to have that kind of finish.

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Paul Sporer Weekly Baseball Chat – May 6th, 2020

Transcript is available below!

1:04

Paul Sporer: Good afternoon, everyone! It’s time to chat!!!

1:06

Joe: What current big leaguer would be best suited to playing in Korea?

1:08

Paul Sporer: Korea is a bit more power-focused than Japan while both leagues strike out a TON less than MLB, so probably the power/contact studs would go there and just OWN the league: Bellinger, Bregman, Rendon, and Arenado — they leap to mind as they all had insane pop and solid K rates last year

1:08

Nick: Are any websites running fantasy KBO?  Are you playing?

1:08

Paul Sporer: I’m not sure if any are running season long leagues, I played some DraftKings though

1:09

Paul Sporer: Most of y’all probably already know, but if you’re going to follow the KBO, Dan Kurtz’s site & twitter are a must: https://mykbostats.com/ | https://twitter.com/MyKBO

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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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