Author Archive: Jeff Zimmerman

I’m sure no one noticed but I took last week off and am now back in the saddle. I needed to catch up on starting pitchers to see who is or isn’t performing as expected. Here are some my thoughts while catching up on the news.

Joe Ross and Michael Pineda will need Tommy John surgery

I was a little surprised to see both of these injuries happen during the All-Star break. After reading the news, Ross’s injury shouldn’t have been a surprise for someone paying attention with him exiting his July 9th start early. His fastball velocity for the start was down 3 mph compared to earlier in the season.
Read the rest of this entry »

For my next few articles, I am going to examine batters and pitchers who have changed their approach from the second half of 2016 to the first half of this season. Today, I will start with the hitters.

For hitters, I found how far their stats changed, in standard deviations, from the league average in these five categories:

• Strikeouts (K%)
• Walks (BB%)
• Groundball Rate (GB%)
• Pull Percentage (Pull%)
• Isolated Power (ISO)

Then I binned the change as good or bad. I determined “pulling the ball” (can be shifted) and groundballs (fewer line drives and home runs) to be bad. If a person disagrees, they can change the values found in this spreadsheet and create their rankings.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a unique fantasy season in which I’ve never experienced. Pitchers should be dominating the landscape with strikeouts at an all-time high. They’re not because home runs are also at an all-time high. With this unique environment, the fantasy norms which owners have been familiar with no longer exist. No one has played fantasy baseball in this high strikeout and home run environment because it has never existed before.

Here are some new guidelines for navigating this season and thinking towards next season.

Home runs have pushed scoring is up, but not to any historical levels

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I’ve got Quick Looks on Newcomb, Gonzales, and Gossett. Let’s start with the young lefty in Atlanta, one of the top pitching prospects in the game.

Sean Newcomb

For Newcomb, I watched his June 21st start against the Giants.

• He’s on the extreme first side of the pitching rubber and throws from a low 3/4 arm slot. This combination will make it tough for left-handed hitters to square him up but right-handed hitters should have a good view of the ball. This idea has not been born out yet, with lefties putting up a .400 BABIP against him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very Quick Look: Doug Fister

I’m skeptical but intrigued by older pitchers making a comeback. An owner could end up with Rich Hill or Jeremy Guthrie. I was extremely skeptical of Fister especially after the Angels, who could use some pitching help, released him.

Read the rest of this entry »

No one expected Rick Porcello to repeat his 2016 Cy Young season besides maybe his mom. And she probably had some doubts. Before the season started, I thought he was getting punished too much especially after some second half changes. So far, I have been wrong with Porcello maintaining his 2016 production with a 3-9 record and a 5.05 ERA. Here’s what has gone wrong.

Less Help

Last season, quite a bit of Porcello’s fantasy value came from his 22 Wins. While 22 Wins was out of the question this season, owners expected more than three. Porcellos has giving up an extra run per game and the Red Sox offense has dropped off.

Last season, they average scoring 5.4 R/G and this season that number has dropped to 4.7 R/G. With the league scoring up, the Red Sox have gone the other direction. Read the rest of this entry »

In-season Saves hunting is a long standing fantasy baseball tradition. It can lead to the promised land (Felipe Rivero) or to hours of frustration (the Nationals). To help with finding volatile closer situations, I created a metric to help find relievers on the ‘Hot Seat’. While it is far from perfect, it does show some promise in finding struggling relievers.

First off, this Hot Seat metric is not close to being a replacement for our Bullpen Report. It doesn’t take into account different levels of team fickleness, injuries, velocity drops, setup options, and many other contextual contributions. It just looks back at pitcher performance. It might not even show any relievers who are really struggling but it may give a desperate owner a list of closers who may be on the outs after a couple more Blown Saves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very Quick Look: Tyson Ross

Tyson Ross made one start and his results seem acceptable with a 7.9 K/9 and a 3.18 ERA. Beyond those two stats, his line gets ugly. His fastball velocity is down to 90.1 mph which is ~2.5 mph less than last season and ~4.5 mph off his career peak. He walked three batters in only 5.1 innings of work. His swinging strike rate was just 5.3% which would be a career low.

With the mixed signals, I decided to take a quick look at his start.

• He started off the game with two pitches way outside and walked the first batter. This at bat set the tone for the rest of the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure of the exact Sleeper and the Bust podcast but Paul and Eno were discussing Jeff Samardzija and how his ERA would look better without a Colorado start. Right now Samardzija’s ERA is 4.31 but if the seven run, five inning start in Colorado is removed his ERA drops to 3.81. I’m not a fan of removing starts from a pitcher’s stats. The good and bad will happen. The deal is that Samardzija owners probably sat him that week like I did in Tout Wars. If owners aren’t going to use pitchers in their Colorado starts maybe owners should start ignoring the stats generated there.

The increase scoring environment in Colorado is about impossible to overcome. In an article at Rotowire ($) last year, I stated the following:

What we do know is that the road pitcher should expect between a 1.00 and 2.00 increase in ERA. I might put the ERA drop near 1.50, but I could understand if an owner wants to use a smaller or larger number. Additionally, I will put the K/9 drop near 0.9 and the WHIP increase at .25.

Those increases are just too much to absorb over an entire season. Sure an owner can get away with a start every now and then but eventually, the odds will even out. Once the hammer drops, an owner will spend a couple weeks trying to recover their overall rate stats.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a few starters who have seen their velocity drop during the 2017 season and my thoughts on each (full list).

Gio Gonzalez (-0.9 mph on 4-seam, -1.9 mph on 2-seam)

Of the pitchers I am examining today, Gonzalez is the toughest to get a read on. Besides a reasonable strikeout rate (8.3 K/9), his sub-3 ERA is the only trait he has going for him. His walk rate (4.3 BB/9) is his highest since 2009. He doesn’t have a good groundball rate and his home runs are up (with the rest of the league).

Read the rest of this entry »