So many trades did happen, and yet it seems so little was accomplished. We’ll have more in-depth analysis as the days go forward, but I thought I’d do a quick touch on all the trades that have been confirmed so far. There were fantasy implications.
Once upon a time, strikeouts minus walks was the best way to look ahead for a pitcher. It focused on the things that a pitcher could control and left the rest to league averages, and therefore it was a strong ‘one number’ to look at.
We are in the midst of turmoil, though. In the middle of the biggest year to year increase in home run rate, we’re suddenly looking at pitchers with home run problems and wondering which ones will continue to be ridiculously ‘unlucky’ and which ones will shortly conquer their gopher problem. Don’t worry, the pitchers themselves are doing the same thing.
The good news is that we have new tools to help us figure out which home run rates are more likely to regress. The home run is the result of the correct launch angle and the correct velocity. We know that 25-30 is the ideal home run launch angle, but for these purposes, I expanded it to 20-35 to get a broader range. We also know that 95+ mph in those zones leads to home runs, so I included a ranking of exit velocity in that band.
How do you judge a pitcher’s true talent? Think of Bud Norris, who recently added a cutter and finally ditched that change that was never any good. Think of Sonny Gray, who’s seemingly lost command of his vaunted curveball. Think of Michael Fulmer‘s new changeup. Matt Shoemaker‘s recent (re)dedication to the splitter. Rich Hill‘s constant injuries. Junior Guerra’s nasty stuff, discovered after a move from behind the plate to behind the rubber.
These changes are so radical and so abrupt that it seems too simple to settle on one number to judge them. So these ranks are futile!
At least these ranks are based on a few numbers in an intuitive way. The base list was sorted for strikeouts plus pop-ups minus walks, for sure. That’s an easy way to ignore balls in play and focus on the the three outcomes that we think pitchers can really handle best. Then I added a list that featured exit velocity in the ideal launch angles, because there’s some evidence that pitchers can suppress their exit velo.
And then, when I encountered a name that has seen a change in production recently, I looked at their game logs. I did! Not only to see what their recent work was like, but then to also check if any of those changes in production were related to large changes in pitching mix.
The All-Star break is a time to furiously send trade offers before those bottom half teams check out, or at least try to entice them back to their computers for one last look at their teams so that they might help you improve yours. But we’re all in different types of leagues, so instead of a few mixed-league buy low players, I thought I would try to dream up some buy-low players for every situation. I won’t cover all of you, that’s impossible with the proliferation of fantasy baseball styles these days, but maybe I’ll cover more of you.
We’re in the midst of a new frontier in pitching analysis. With Statcast giving us the exit velocity on batted balls, we can now test our theories about balls in play for pitchers. It’s long been thought that pitchers have little control over the ball in play, but recent research has begun to show that maybe pitchers have a little more to say about the ball once it leaves the bat than we thought before.
It’s a little scary, because we don’t have years and years of data to make sure that what we’re looking at is sticky, year-to-year. But we do have some idea of the meaningfulness of exit velocity for pitchers. It looks like something that can change rapidly, but is still meaningful in small samples. That’s probably because it speaks well to true talent, but true talent can change quickly for pitchers, because they can make an adjustment that changes their effectiveness completely. That makes the stat cool but also hard to use.
Also, it’s possible that the things that pitchers do to suppress exit velo are perhaps more subject to slight changes in your mechanics than the things they do to strike players out. For example, Rob Arthur outlined the factors as being “getting ahead in the count, low pitch velocity, low vertical pitch location, and precise horizontal pitch location.” Sounds like exit velo is a proxy for command, and we’ve seen what a little tweak to mechanics can do to command when we looked recently at Aaron Nola.
Still, we can look at the leaders for the year in exit velocity. Those pitchers may have better numbers than their strikeouts and walks suggest, and might be more believable than we thought. And we can also look at the guys that have improved the most over the last month and a half. Maybe they’ve made an adjustment!
Four straight disaster outings in which Aaron Nola hasn’t seen the fifth inning, and he’s suddenly available on waiver wires. With seven walks and 14 strikeouts in those 13 innings, we already have one clue — his stuff looks unchanged, but something is being lost in translation.
The worst batted ball in baseball is the pulled grounder. It heads right into the shift, right into the waiting glove. The best batted ball is the pulled fly ball. It soars majestically into the night.
The line between the two is razor thin. Hitters want to get that good wood on the ball and yank it for power, but if they roll over the top at all, it’s the worst idea. That’s why up the middle is the safe idea. You build a safe, solid swing.
But what about the guys living on the razor’s edge? The guys pulling a ton of balls, but pulling them in the air? Maybe they’re doing something that makes their power more believable. They’ve got the best batted ball figured out.
Just straight hitting the ball hard has its value, but there is an ideal angle. Hit the ball a million miles per hour into the ground, and you’re Giancarlo Stanton, grounding out to second base on the hardest hit ball so far in the Statcast era. You gotta hit it square.
People smarter than I am have determined that the ideal launch angle is between ten and thirty degrees. That combines the line drive angle (10-25 degrees) and home run angle (25-30), but in fantasy baseball, we’ll take a line drive or a home run, either’s fine.
So if we want to know who’s hitting the ball harder this year, it’s probably best to ask who’s hitting the ball harder in the right angles for success? That will tell us a little about some hot starts that are more believable because of what’s going on under the hood.
Two months in, and you’ve got a millstone, the high draft pick that’s too good to drop, probably, and too bad to shop. Nobody wants them, and they’re starting to look bad in comparison to the options on the wire.
So let’s look at a trio of outfielders first — with their preseasons projections next to their projected end of season line — and then a couple of waiver options that might be better. We’ll see if there is actually a reason to cut bait on a guy we all thought would be studs going into the season.
I figured it was time.
I used strikeouts minus walks for the first sort because that’s been shown to be the best in-season predictor. I then eyeballed fastball velocity and pitching mix. There are a few places where I went with upside because I saw these as mixed league rankings. If you’re in a deeper league, look past the prospects and instead consider the veterans that are pitching now.
Feel free to argue a guy up or down. I may make the move!