I believe there are some diamonds in the rough available this week. It’s tough to know who exactly. Will Michael Chavis grab Bostons second base job? Is Scott Kingery going to play full time? Will one of Robert Stephenson, Trevor Hildenberger, Ryan Pressly or Diego Castilla get Saves? Maybe one or two.

As usual, I use ownership rates from CBS since some of their leagues are quickdraw leagues where players can be picked up at any time. The FAAB estimates are based off 15-team mixed NFBC leagues with $1000 FAAB. First, Here are the pitchers who were owned in fewer than 50% of leagues and have seen the highest jumps in ownership.

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Angels

• They are getting decimated by injuries and ineffectiveness. Since Mike Trout has returned, he’s been the DH with Albert Pujols (.735 OPS) playing first base and Justin Bour (.628 OPS) on the bench.
• Tommy La Stella has secured the second base job by hitting a decent .226/.328/.472. The batting average may be a drag, he’s a perfect sub in OBP leagues.
• Brian Goodwin (.900) seems to have forced himself into the left field job while Justin Upton is on the DL and Peter Bourjos (.243 OPS) is struggling.
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After going over the pitchers who changed their velocity from 2018 to 2019, the pitchers who have seen changes this year get highlighted today. For the first week or so, pitchers who saw major adjustments were in the crosshairs of the fantasy community. But who from that list kept the changes? A pitcher’s talent shouldn’t get anchored to one early-season report. It’s time to dive in.

About the data

• I use the fastball’s average spin rate and velocity along with the pitcher’s overall Zone% to come up in the Injury metric. With spin rate, I’ve seen pitchers try to keep up their velocity while dealing with an injury and the pitch’s spin changes. As for Zone%, if a pitcher is having issues finding the plate, they may have something mechanically wrong.
• The Injury value ranges from a -100 (several negative forces are at work) to +100 (major improvements).
• A pitcher can have more than one fastball in the table
• When examining the 2019 data, I’m comparing velocities from the past week to fastballs thrown before this past week.
• All the numbers are available in this overall spreadsheet.

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It’s that time to dive into the 38 NFBC Main Events to see who is being dropped in 10 or more leagues and why.

Injury

• Dellin Betances (13): He’s out until late May with a shoulder injury.
• Ronald Guzman (13): He’ll be on the IL for two to three weeks with an injured hamstring. For teams in need of hitting, he might be worth a stash.
• Franchy Cordero (12): Cordero was due for some regression with his .300 AVG fuel up by a .556 BABIP and down by a 35% K%. It’s just tough to place a finger on his true talent with on the time on the IL.

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It is a bi-polar week for possible FAAB bids. Not one arm stands out as a must bid. On the hitting side, a few wallet busters exist with some possible fierce bidding.  I’ll start with the hitters.

I’m a little under the weather so I provide as much information as possible and owners can make their own estimates. I might add some more analysis tomorrow morning.

As usual, I utilize CBS’s ownership rates to find potential movers since CBS allows daily pickups. The projected costs are for the 15-team, 30-player roster NFBC Main Event teams. Individual owners are going to need to adjust the values to their own league size and tendencies.
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Angels

• Kole Calhoun goes from leading off against righties to the seven spot against lefties.
• Zack Cozart, David Fletcher, and Taylor Ward are in a three-way battle for the third base job. For now, I’d bet on Fletcher (.303/.324/.333) since Ward has just three plate appearances and Cozart has just one hit (32 PA).

Astros

• They have used the same lineup all season with the only changes being someone cycling through the DH to get a break.

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Most analysts listened when I made this pre-season request.

The only useful fantasy baseball analysis over the next two weeks should be:

1. Pitcher velo and repertoire
2. Lineups
3. Bullpen usage

Anything else is just useless fluff.

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) March 28, 2019

Almost too good. Every time I thought about writing about today’s topic, another writer stepped up. I’m done waiting and it is time to see which fastballs have changed, for the better or worse, since last year.

Instead of focusing just on velocity, I add in the fastball’s spin rate and the pitcher’s overall Zone%. With spin rate, I’ve seen pitchers try to keep up their velocity while dealing with an injury and the pitch’s spin changes. As for Zone%, if a pitcher is having issues finding the plate, they may have something mechanically wrong. By combining the three factors together, I’ve come up with an overall ‘Injury’ value where a -100 score means several negative forces are at work.

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Fantasy owners this past week found several players in demand, so owners needed to decided who headed to the waiver wire. Here are the players released and why in the NFBC Main Event.

Injury

• Troy Tulowitzki (30): No one saw this coming and by no one, I mean everyone.
• Brian McCann (21): His replacement, Tyler Flowers is a decent replacement especially in an on-base league.
• Jake Lamb (17): It’ll be interesting to see how much playing time Lamb gets if Christian Walker continues to smash.
• Tyler Anderson (14)

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We are another week into the season and it’s an interesting week of FAAB bidding. Some bids over 10% may occur if the player wasn’t rostered during the last week’s FAAB process. Otherwise, it’s some nice popup names as playing time begins to settle down.

As usual, the bids are estimates for the 15-team NFBC Main Event leagues which use $1000 in FAAB budget and a $1 minimum bis. CBS’s ownership rates are used since daily pickup leagues are allowed in some of their leagues so the ownership rate can increase before the weekly FAAB transactions run. I used a cutoff at 25% ownership in the previous week to add the player.

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