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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
• 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.
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
Within the past 24 hours, two substantial trades have occurred. The Yankees sent Tyler Clippard, Ian Clarkin, Blake Rutherford and Tito Polo to the White Sox for Todd Frazier, David Robertson, and Tommy Kahnle. Additionally, the Diamondbacks sent Dawel Lugo, Jose King, and Sergio Alcantara to the Tigers J.D. Martinez. Here are the players who will likely see their fantasy value change because of the move from the most value gained to least gained.
Yoan Moncada: The game’s number one prospect gets called up to replace Frazier. The 22-year-old switch hitter has the chance to post both double digit home runs and stolen bases over the rest of the season. I could see him post 20 stolen bases as the White Sox may let him run wild with nothing to play for.
Now, Moncada does come with some batting average and on base concerns. Steamer has him projected at a .230 AVG and a .310 OBP. These values, especially the batting average, could be a drag on a team. His owners may want to consider moving him as his value may never be higher and he could bring back a more rounded player.
I was wrong a few weeks back when I wrote:
With the new juiced baseball, home runs rates are up, and they are the main driver for the scoring increase. If a pitcher can limit home runs, they will be affected less and the easiest way to do this is to generate ground balls.
By using OPS for and against, the production flyball pitchers have gotten worse over the past 2.5 seasons. By examining the problem using the difference between both FIP and xFIP to ERA, I found the opposite answer and can’t explain why.
I expected this article to go a different route than it did. When I wrote that owners should focus on groundball pitchers, I knew I wanted to eventually determine how much the difference between ERA and both FIP and xFIP shrunk for extreme flyball pitchers.