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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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It’s now time to go over the American League lineups. I feel some are just not set but it’s interesting seeing some of the early season adjustments.

Angels

• Zack Cozart leads off against lefties, Kole Calhoun against righties.
• The lineup may go into some flux with Andrelton Simmons possibly missing some time.
• Tommy La Stella, David Fletcher, and Cozart are in a three-way timeshare at second and third base.

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Today finishes my examination of starting pitcher pitch mix and velocity from the first two days of the month. Some of the starters overlap from my first article and I used their combined numbers.

My goal in examining these starters is to find ones who have changed over the offseason. As owners, we may need to immediately adjust our projections. Also, to save space, when I mention a pitch changes a certain percentage, I mean percentage points (ex. up 10% = up 10% points or from 12% to 22%).

April 1st

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A few days ago, I examined the pitch mix and velocity for all the Opening Day starts. Today, I tried to catch up but failed. I just couldn’t examine another 30 pitchers. Tomorrow, I’m going to try my hardest to give a glimpse at everyone remaining.

My goal in examining these starters is to find ones who have changed over the offseason. As owners, we may need to immediately adjust our projections. Since there is a ton to get through, here are the daily starters ordered by fastball velocity change. Also, to save space, when I mention a pitch changes a certain percentage, I mean percentage points (ex. up 10% = up 10% points).

March 29th

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Another week into the season and another week of drops. I’ve categorized all the drops in 10 or more NFBC Main Event Leagues and some other names I find interesting.

Hurt

• Steven Souza Jr. (27)
• Hunter Strickland (21)
• Andrew Heaney (14)
• Mark Trumbo (12): The 33-year-old is out at least two months and his owners are likely dealing with a roster crunch. On one team, I dropped Justin Upton.
• Corey Knebel (11)
• Elias Diaz (11)

Demoted

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