Note: I was wanting to do Anthony Banda and Reynaldo Lopez but the camera angles for them are horrible so far. I do hope to write about them soon. In the meantime, check out newcomer Nick Pollack’s piece on Lopez. 

• Brandon Woodruff

• The 24-year-old righty started at the back end of several preseason top-100 lists. So far he’s made two starts for the Brewers and I watched the one on August 9th.

• Definite thrower. Everything is coming in at full effort. He just challenges hitters and hopes they miss.

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Quickly identifying legitimate breakout hitters is tough. Is the hot streak just that, a streak or is something more? With pitchers, it is easier to find the breakout’s cause. New pitch. Added velocity. Improved control. These traits can be seen in a single start after facing 25+ batters. A hitter has only about five plate appearances a game to display a new skill. It’s a different world with them. Today, I am going to try to find a simple process with a few key stats to focus on.

With hitters, their data contains so much noise, especially once the ball is put into play. To get rid of some of this noise, I started to find with the following stats:

• Power: Hard%, HR/FB
• Plate Discipline: BB%, K%, O-Swing%, Contact%
• Batted Ball Distribution: Pull%, Flyball%

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Publicly available Statcast data is just over two years old. Eric Logenhagen posted his first set of prospect grades before this season started. I have decided to say screw it to small samples and see how well Eric’s power grades match up with exit velocity number. Even with the limited sample, the results ended up fairly consistent.

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This past weekend I spent two days in Boston at the Saber Seminar. As always, it is a great event and here is some the fantasy relevant information I extracted from it (full list of presenters and abstracts).

Note: My notes got a jumbled so there may be a chance the information I attribute to a speaker is incorrect. I apologize to the speakers in advance if I made this mistake.

Rich Hahn: Q and A

He broke some big news at the conference which he stated that Reynaldo Lopez will be starting for the White Sox this weekend against the Royals.

Will Carroll: Saving the Pitcher, 2017: A Data Driven Approach

He was promoting the use of the Motus Sleeve to help measure short and long term elbow stress. He discussed that each pitch has different levels of elbow stress depending velocity and pitch type. As for predicting injuries, I wonder if some general injury guidelines can be created, especially incorporating Motus sleeve data. I’m going to investigate this idea further. If anyone else is interested, let me know and I may be able to share some ideas and/or acquired needed data.

Mike Reinold: An Update on the Effect of Weighted Ball Training on Arm Stress, Range of Motion, and Injury Rates Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to start by picking on Jon today. In a recent article on Deep League Stolen Base Options, he wrote the following in the comments:

Nice thoughts, but are any of these guys actually available in any “normal” (e.g. AL or NL-only) deep leagues? I don’t think there’s any useful way to use ESPN ownership rate as a proxy for deep league availability. I’m sure there are many players with a sub-1% ownership rate that are taken in nearly every “only” league.

I get his point that in 12-team ‘Only Leagues, there are no players on the waiver wire at 1% ownership, yet alone 5%. In Jon’s case, his best option to get steals is probably from making trades. There is a transition depending on league size where team rebalancing transitions from waiver wire pickups to trades.

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The Rays acquire Lucas Duda from the Mets for Drew Smith

Duda’s production per plate appearance is likely to drop with the trade. He’s going to a less prolific offense (4.6 R/g vs 4.8 R/G). Also, his new home park as a tougher park factor especially for home runs. But there is some up side.

His end-of-season production will likely not drop because he’ll get full-time at-bats as the Rays designated hitter. In New York, Duda was going to split time with Jay Bruce at first. Additionally, Dominic Smith would be joining the Mets first base situation at some point. There was just not enough at bats to go around.

So far with the Rays, Duda has played first base with Logan Morrison ailing (heel) but will likely DH once Morrison returns. It seems like Duda will play every day as long as he can stay healthy which could not be said for him as a Met.

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It’s getting time for some teams to start making a single category move to improve in the standings. Today, I am going to examine speedsters owned in less than 5% of ESPN leagues for owners looking for a few extra steals.

Alcides Escobar (4.7%): Escobar has nothing going for him (.230/.254/.316) except the chance he could get back to stealing bases like he previously. Since he’s a complete statistical black hole otherwise, he should probably only be used in the last week or so of the season to not kill the other categories.

Adam Frazier (4.6%): Frazier is one of the more balanced choices to help with steals going forward. Steamer has him with only five more over the rest of the season.

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The Giants traded Eduardo Nunez to the Red Sox for minor leaguers Shaun Anderson and Gregory Santos.

It’s tough to see how this trade will eventually affect Nunez’s value. On the positive and known front, Nunez is going to a better hitter’s home park. Additionally, the Red Sox’s lineup (4.7 R/G) is better than the Giants (4.0 R/G). That is about where the certainty ends.

The biggest questions are when and where will Nunez play. He’s played third, short, and the outfield so far this season. Additionally, he’s played at second as recently as last year. The Red Sox don’t have any major holes across their lineup especially after promoting Rafael Devers to play third.

Besides Devers, the other weak spot in the lineup may be Mitch Moreland at first base. The team could bench Moreland and move Hanley Ramirez to first. Or possibly move Devers to first and let Nunez play third.

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Jacob Faria

• For Faria, I watched his July 6th game against the Red Sox. The game was the most recent with a decent camera angle.

• The nearly 24-year-old righty used a 3/4 release with decent command and control of his pitches.

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It’s time to check in on my preseason bold predictions.

Note: For all the rankings, I used ESPN.com’s Player Rater.

BOLD prediction #1: Trea Turner will perform 20 spots worse than his ADP suggests.

I’m going to luck into getting this one eventually. Turner was going way too early compared to my projections. I saw him more as a 2nd to 3rd round talent.

He was proved me wrong by stealing 35 bases until he fractured his wrist in late June and will likely miss all the 2017 season. He currently ranks 7th overall but his value will continue to drop as others continue to rack up the counting stats.

Batting 1.000

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