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!

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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!

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• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host

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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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5/23/19

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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**JOIN THE NFBC MEMORIAL DAY 2ND CHANCE LEAGUES**

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As we wind down the second month of the season, stat lines are beginning to take shape and we certainly feel like we know more about how the season will unfold. There are definitely some things happening early on that you can put some weight into, but we still have four months left in the season, too, meaning a lot will still change.

Through May last year, Zack Wheeler had a 5.40 ERA, Luis Castillo was at 5.49, Jameson Taillon was at 4.53, and Masahiro Tanaka was at 4.62. German Marquez was at 4.21, but that would balloon to 5.53 five starts later and of course we know that from there, he absolutely went off. Afterthoughts like Mike Minor, Danny Duffy, Mike Fiers, Derek Holland, Lance Lynn and even Alex Cobb all had ERAs north of 5.00 and were left for dead through May before finding extended periods of fantasy relevance throughout the summer. Minor was downright all-formats viable from June on.

Let’s look at some of the biggest strugglers through two months and discuss what the future might have in store for them.

(in descending order by ERA)

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5/21/19

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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**JOIN THE NFBC MEMORIAL DAY 2ND CHANCE LEAGUES**

• Houston (2:05)
• Kansas City (22:20)
• LA Angels (26:53)
• LA Dodgers (40:22)
• Miami (59:33)

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