The season is at the one-third marker and owners need to evaluate their team moving forward. In roto leagues, the main focus should be future standings gains. I will go over the procedure using my 15-team Tout Wars mixed league as an example.

To start with here is my start of the week Tout Wars standings.

I’m happy to be involved a nice battle for fourth place after being in last place to start the month around the 60 point mark.

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Joe Biagini (Blue Jays)

Toronto took Biagini in the Rule 5 draft before the 2016 season and the selection is now paying dividends. He started this season as a reliever but transitioned to being a starter in early May. Since then, the 27-year-old has posted a respectable 3.86 ERA (3.21 FIP). I watched his last start at home against Texas and here are my thoughts.

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In last night’s chat, Paul Swydan and I got a ton of questions on Mike Trout’s trade value because of his recent injury. It’s a simple yet loaded question with so many different league types and possible roster construction rules. I will discuss some basic starting valuations for Trout which owners can use.

When looking at possible trade options, I like to start with Yahoo!’s Trade Market page. It lists the most recent trades involving any player. It just lists the last 25 trades so the page can be refreshed with updated information. Here are some post-injury one-for-one trades from the page:

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As a Royals fan, I had my doubts Jorge Bonifacio would be a major league contributor. Over the past couple of seasons, my opinion has changed as he showed some power in AA in 2015 (17 HR) and AAA in 2016 (19 HR). I fostered some reservations on the AAA power because he played in the offensive happy Pacific Coast League.

He’s started 2017 off great with 3 HR and a 10% HR/FB ratio in AAA before getting his major league call-up. Since the promotion, he’s hit six bombs with a 29% HR/FB rate. Owners may be expecting some heavy regression from Bonifacio but they shouldn’t. The “juiced” ball era has reversed a trend of position players hitting for less power once getting a major league promotion.

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Dinelson Lamet (Padres)

Note: The camera angle was a little off, so my takes on his horizontal breaks may be off also.
The 24-year-old righty throws out of a high 3/4 arm slot. He’s a maximum effort guy and at times falls off to the mound’s first base side.

• Fastball (4-seam): 95-98 mph and straight. For such a basic pitch, it is not even near the strike zone at times and he threw too many away. I’ve read several souces the pitch breaks late break but I could never see it.

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Note: I am using velocities from BrooksBaseball.net which has corrected their values from the 2016 to 2017 transition.

Dylan Bundy -2.5 mph (2016 FBv: 94.8mph, 2017 FBv: 92.3 mph)

Bundy’s decline is being obscured by the fact he relieved in 2016. Owners can see the 2017 drop and chalk it up to the normal velocity difference between starting and relieving. After removing the 2016 relieving values, his velocity is still down 2.5 mph.

For reference, here are his 2016 stats as a starter all of his 2017 ones.

Bundy’s approach and results are almost a textbook example of fastball velocity loss. The swinging strike rate on his fastball has dropped from 8.2% to 4.8% and therefore his strikeout rate dropped. Bundy realized his fastball isn’t the same, dropped its usage (61% to 50%) and relied on breaking pitches more.

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On Friday the Blue Jays called up Anthony Alford. The move surprised me since he struggled in 2016 with a 29% K% in High-A. He was doing better in Double-A this season (17K%, .393 wOBA) but I figured he would follow a progressive advancement with a Tripe-A stint.

Here’s a quick dive into what we know about his possible production. First here are his available prospect grades.

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I’ve made it almost a month since I made the following declaration on investigating prospect Hit grades:

I am going to stay away from more Hit tool predictions until I have collected every one of MLB.com’s prospect grades from 2013 and 2014, not just the top 100. I probably will not be able to compare many to their major league stats but I can with Triple-A.

I broke my position after collecting MLB.com’s 2013 grades. I ventured forward without the 2014 grades. With this larger and more diverse dataset, I compared the hitters’ grades to their batting average, home runs, and stolen bases in both AA and AAA.

Trying to better understand the Hit tool stems from finding it doesn’t contain any predictive power. When looking at players with different grades, major leaguers ended up posting similar batting averages. I concluded two issues were causing the production to level out.

First, hitters needed a talent and/or production baseline to get into the majors. Some hitters with below average grades were under-graded and produced up to the MLB baseline. Additionally, “better” hitters were over-graded but still had just enough talent to make the majors. This talent convergence tends to average out the grades.

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Earlier this week, I recommended Zack Godley in all leagues. A little while later, I got the following tweet

@jeffwzimmerman @rotographs Great Godley piece Jeff. I’m torn. Do i drop Shoemaker Berrios or my 3rd RP Betances to grab him in 14 team weekly points lg? 5 keepers.

— Marcus Aurelius (@WilcoWacko) May 17, 2017

It’s a tough call and one I face in my own home league where everyone is not 100% invested in their team. Just because a player should be owned, he may not be a fit on a team. Here’s how owners should operate when the situation arises.

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Quick Look: Zack Godley

I’ve had my eye on Godley since spring training when his velocity climbed up a couple ticks. It has stayed up and so has his production. The following is a take on the 27-year-old’s most recent start.

I’m stuck using Arizona’s bad camera angle since all his starts have been at home so far this season. Sorry, it’s far from the best view.

• Sinker(Fastball): 90 to 93 mph with release-side run with some late sink. It’s kind of a unique pitch with all the ground balls and limited sink. It won’t get many swings-and-misses (3% on the season) because of the limited break.

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