The Kimbrel discussion starts with this graph:
Plenty of narratives can exist explaining the initial velocity drop. He missed a good part of spring training. The cold weather is keeping his velocity down. He’s still warming up.
The drop doesn’t bother me as much as the trend. If he’s still building strength for the season, shouldn’t his velocity start trending up at some point?
I’m going over hitters who are getting regular at-bats who I didn’t consider rosterable in the preseason. It’s now time to see if I missed anything.
Everyone missed on Villanueva to start the season. He got no prospect love anywhere and the only preseason profile I found called him a “utilityman”. I don’t like to miss this badly on a player and set up a filter to find these gems. I’m not sure I can.
To start with, he had a decent Triple-A season hitting .296/.369/.528 and continued the results in the majors.
I look at each lineup to find any recent changes. Big thanks to Baseball-reference.com for tracking the lineups.
Angels
Astros
This is going to get ugly fast. Here is my current Tout Wars pitching staff:
That’s right, it contains three of the biggest disappoints so far this season. The results have my team posting a 4.88 ERA. The next closest is at 4.35. The destruction has my WHIP also in last place. It’s time to examine the trio to see if there is any hope.
Before getting to these three, owners should now start examining their pitchers in detail to see what is and isn’t working. Spending a minute or two on each pitcher can possibly unearth items such as lost velocity or a new pitch mix.
I knew Archer was a risk with his two-pitch arsenal which may get lit up later in games. This season, he can’t even make it to those later innings.
On Friday, I examined hitters with new plate approaches focusing on launch angle and plate discipline. I notice Brad Miller, Javier Baez, and Leonys Martin had each dropped their groundball rate but I didn’t have an idea of what is the ideal value. After spending way too much going down way too many paths this past weekend, the simple answer is average 20 degrees (32% GB%) with weak and/or fast hitters needing to push the value down to 15 degrees (42% GB%).
There is no need for readers to hang around any longer if they have more pressing matters like setting their daily or weekly lineups. For those looking for a little more explanation, thanks for staying around. I went through several methods I’m not going to discuss. I like simple useable answers and that’s what I’ll provide today.
Note: I forgot about the including the Tout Wars FAAB bids until the 8:18 point.
| 7:30 |
: is Lucchesi an add in 13 team mixed redraft? |
To hell with reliable hitter sample sizes for the day and probably the rest of the season. I’ve waited long enough. It’s time to start figuring out which hitters are changing their approach and who should be targeted or dumped. By examining plate discipline and launch angle, the investigation can begin.
Last season, I kept diving into which stats point to sustainable breakouts. Two concepts stood out, plate discipline and launch angle. Concentration on changes in just these approaches removed 95% of the noise. If these two areas don’t point to a change, an owner can then see if power (exit velocity, HR/FB) or pull rate. Otherwise, just ignore the current stat line and expect some regression.
The 24-year-old righty has made two starts so far this season and I watched his start from the 5th because of a better camera angle. Since it was his first game, the Gameday’s pitch labeling was off with his slider and splitter getting mislabeled quite a bit.
• Fastball: 91-95 mph. Fairly straight pitch with a small bit of glove-side run and sink. His plus controls made this pitch play up. Also, he may have mixed in a handful of four-seamers.
Fastball velocity changes may be getting beat to death but they are one of the few stats in which stabilize early in the offseason. I’ve created a couple tools which I use during the season to help find which pitchers to evaluate further using velocity. I have one which grades fastballs and a new pitcher injury finder.
Fastball Grades
This tool simply gives an ERA and 20-80 grade to a fastball based on its projected results from its velocity and spin. The velocity component is simple to understand. It’s hard to hit fast flying small objects. It’s even harder to hit faster flying small objects. Understanding the spin component is a little tougher.
