Thanks for coming out! Back at it next week.
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| 1:44 |
: Let’s roll!!
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| 1:47 |
: thoughts on jesse hahn? was that gun running hot?
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| 1:48 |
: Readings seem to check out. I’d like to see more Ks, but talent is there
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| 1:48 |
: Thoughts on Hearn 1b royals?
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| 1:48 |
: Who’s that?
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5/4/16
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
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— Read the rest of this entry »
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It’s understandable if you came into the season with Chris Tillman buried on your starting pitcher list. After back-to-back intriguing seasons in 2013-14, he ran all the back toward and even beyond his ominous FIP numbers with a 4.99 ERA in 173 innings. In those two solid seasons, he posted a 3.52 ERA, but was all the way up at a 4.22 FIP. An already-tenuous skillset sank further, yielding a 1.9 K:BB ratio and took Tillman off the radar in just about every league type.
On Tuesday night he dropped seven strong on the Yankees, shrinking his ERA to 2.81 and tying a career-high with nine strikeouts (7th ever, 2nd this year). This time around, there’s actually support for his numbers. He has a 2.64 FIP thanks in large part to a 26% strikeout rate and just 24 hits allowed in 32 innings. His 9% walk rate is a little high, but workable with those strikeout and hit rates for sure. His 11% swinging strike rate is far and away a career-high and supports the surge in punchouts.
What’s Tillman doing to draw such strong results? Let’s take a look at the three main areas that I (and most, I think) often look to first when a pitcher is showing a big change in performance, for better or worse.
VELOCITY
I’m fairly certain that velocity is the first check for everybody when seeing what’s up with a pitcher. Brooks has Tillman up over a full tick at 93.8 MPH – a career-best and his first time north of 93 on average since 2012. The cutter is the only other pitch where more velocity would help and while he is up, it’s negligible at just 0.6 MPH. The 87.4 MPH mark is second-best in his career behind the 87.5 he logged in 2013. His velocity increase is a tangible, positive change, but it alone certainly doesn’t explain this jump in performance.
5/2/16
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
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Strategy Section:
Closer Updates
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Can you believe we’re almost done with April? It seems like the season just started. I swear baseball weeks move 10x faster than winter weeks. Anyway, it’s time to check in on the National League starting pitchers. I didn’t do an official first run of tiers last month, instead letting my final rankings update serve as my baseline, but from here on out I will be updating monthly per usual.
The release of Drake’s fourth studio album today gave me an easy theme for the May tiers, though I obviously need more than four tiers so I’m including some mixtapes and collaborative albums to get us to eight. They’re just in order of how I like them so “Views” comes in last just because I’ve only listened to it three times so I don’t really have a feel for it yet. I think first impressions with albums are kind of worthless.
I can’t tell you how many times I hated something on first listen only to love it two weeks later after another 10 spins. With due respect, I don’t care what you think about Drake in this particular forum (btw, that probably reads as more aggressive than I’m intending… I’m just saying, it’s tangential to the piece so let’s not get too hung up on it). I know some people don’t like him. I don’t like some music that others love. That’s just how it works. Comedy and music are two subjective arts that I finally stopped telling people how they should feel about once I realized that not everyone had to like what I like.
Let’s get to the pitchers!
If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late
Same time next week at 2:00 PM Central!
| 2:03 |
: We’ll start soon! And it’s all Drake all day, so I don’t wanna hear it, haters. So geeked for Views from the Six
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| 2:03 |
: Hooray!!! 3 pm eastern = 2 pm central!
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| 2:03 |
: that is how time zones work!
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| 2:03 |
: Did we miss the window to sell on Lorenzo Cain?
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| 2:03 |
: I mean, if you’re super-worried, it’s probably not a good time to sell. But I’m not worried.
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| 2:03 |
: Was Tyler White merely just a mirage?
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4/27/16
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
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WE NEED YOUR HELP!
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I practice extreme patience in fantasy baseball because to me there’s nothing worse than overreacting on a guy, cutting him, and then watching him get back on track for one of your competitors. However, I also realize that sometimes the patience is exercised to a fault, especially in shallower leagues (10-13 team mixers where the waiver wire is going to be more plentiful). I’m trying to strike a better balance this year and be willing to take chances on available guys, even if it means cutting someone who might get back on track, but just isn’t performing right now.
Of course, to pick someone up, someone has to go. And that decision is often the more agonizing of the two so today I’ve got three arms drafted in the top 60 starters of NFBC leagues that I’m ready to move on from in favor of the latest hot prospect being called up or fast starters with some bankable skills changes behind their run. We’ve already seen Blake Snell, Henry Owens, Aaron Blair, and Jose Berrios get the call. And sure, they could flop and have you back on the wire picking one of these guys back up, but for now I’m comfortable cutting them to invest elsewhere in the hopes of a big payday.
4/25/16
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
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Strategy Section: Three Fast Starts in the AL
Mailbag
—
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4/24/16
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
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Four big SP call-ups
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