Author Archive: Paul Sporer

6/4/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS, INJURIES, RUMORS (2:00)

• Adley Rutschman goes 1.1 (2:00)
• Dallas Keuchel/Craig Kimbrel rumors (10:15)
• Pedro Strop activated (15:52)
• Andrew McCutchen injured, could require IL (19:07)
  • Adam Haseley called up
• Miguel Cabrera has chronic knee issue (22:25)
• Nelson Cruz back (25:35)
• Jeff McNeil back (28:20)

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Another month is in the books and pitching landscape remains a mess. We lost 10 pitchers off last month’s rankings from underperformance, injuries, and demotions (to the pen or minors) and frankly, I could’ve maybe cut it to 105, but a lot of us play in deep leagues so we have to know the dregs. There are some major moves within even the top 50, let alone the rest of the rankings so I’ll have either an article or solo pod diving into reasoning behind the largest changes and how I feel about them going forward.

I look at my in-season rankings in 4-6 week blocks so the potential innings limits facing some of the younger arms rated highly aren’t really that important right now. Given that so much is going to change in the next month let alone the next four, I don’t see the point in pretending that these updates are viable for the rest of the season.

Pay attention to the tier! If I didn’t rank someone as high as you thought I should, but they are still a must or usually start, then it’s probably not worth freaking out too much. Those tiers mean they are in the rotation pretty much all the time. I’m open to debating slotting, too, but worrying about a 4-spot difference between two guys in the same tier is probably a waste of time.

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5/31/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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• @sporer – Host
• @pitcherlist – Co-Host

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NEW TOP 100 PITCHERS:

• Griffin Canning – 93
• Spencer Turnbull – 100

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This week’s transcript:

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Baseball Savant recently released these new Pitch Movement leaderboards and they’re very cool. I don’t always get in the weeds on movement numbers to find out who leads what, but this has definitely made that easier. They explain at the top how they come up with the metrics and then show how much better than average the pitcher is with a given pitch’s break or drop.

Caleb Smith’s Fastball Horizontal Movement

Smith’s breakout season has been aided by big improvements in his fastball, including a jump in horizontal break. Only Richard Rodriguez (86% better than average) and Chris Sale (80%) are further above average than Smith’s 71% mark. His 4.8 pitch value on the heater is 25th-best this year and up from -3.0 last year.

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5/29/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

Rotation Check-Ins Part 3:

• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• San Diego
• Seattle
• San Francisco
• St. Louis
• Tampa Bay
• Texas
• Toronto
• Washington

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One of my least favorite things in fantasy baseball is lame buy low recommendations. You know the ones. It’s when everything is damn near picture perfect under the hood, there’s no real reason to be worried about the player, but their batting average is lagging because of a tiny BABIP so cosmetically they look like they’re struggling.

Sure, Marcell Ozuna is hitting .230, but he has 14 HR, 4 SB, a 92.4 mph exit velo, and 16% Barrel rate meaning he’s completely fine. No one is selling him on the cheap. He’s not a buy low just because his .226 BABIP is dragging down his average. These buy lows are truly stinky. We are primarily betting on track record over anything else as most of their numbers through two months are brutal. Let’s take a look:

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5/27/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS, INJURIES, RUMORS 

• Luke Weaver to IL (2:10)
• Charlie Blackmon to IL (8:40)
• Pedro Strop on rehab (14:55)
• Mychal Givens out as closer (18:40)

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Transcript is below!

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The NFBC kicked off their Memorial Day 2nd Chance leagues last night with three drafts completed and we now have some average draft position (ADP) data to digest. I have my 2CL (is that a cool abbreviation for “2nd Chance League”?) this Friday evening and I’ll be streaming it live on Twitch if you have any interest in watching it. I want to dive in on the biggest fallers here today with some caveats. Or at least one major caveat: my cutoff is the first 15 rounds.

I want to see who is still be taken with some expectation of performance while sustaining a major fall in their cost. The actual biggest droppers without limits are the obvious injury guys. The single biggest fall from the spring Rotowire Online Championship leagues (12-team format to stay consistent with the 2CLs) is Travis Shaw who has the double whammy of injury and severe underperformance. He’s gone from the 95th player chosen on average to the 362nd last night, a colossal 267-pick drop. Miguel Andujar (347th), Jameson Taillon (312th), Luis Severino (280th), and Nathan Eovaldi (390th) are also unsurprisingly amongst the nine players with a 200+ pick dip.

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