Note: I usually try to pick the most recent game the player pitched. Sometimes the MLB video has issues and other games are picked. Also, if a say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

Marco Gonzales

Why I watched: The top ranked Cardinals prospect according to Baseball America deserved a look.

Game(s) Watched:9/14/14 vs Rockies

Game Thoughts

• The 22-year-old lefty had small amounts of movement on every pitch. Just enough to generate some weak contact.

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Last year for my FG+ article I created a methodology to find unheralded prospects similar to Ben Zobrist and Matt Carpenter by looking at recent minor league walk, strikeout and extra base hit numbers. I named my metric ZOBRIST and it performed better than I expected. I identified 10 players to watch for during the 2014 season and few had good MLB seasons like Kole Calhoun, Marcus Semien and Scott Van Slyke. I have decided to look again for similar players in 2015 with a few changes to the evaluations.

One issue I noticed when I went back and looked at the data was how one of the three traits (power, walks and strikeouts) could hurt the hitters chances for success. A hitter could have no strikeouts, a ton of walks and zero power so they could rate high with my metric. The problem is that the complete lack of power would get exposed in the majors. I needed to set a minimum level for each of the three stats. I use Chris St. John’s minor league walk and strikeout values and a replace level power numbers to set a minimum baseline each hitter must reach.

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• Troy Tulowitzki has been dealing with a labrum tear since 2008 in which he finally had surgery for at the end of 2014.

But for years, Tulowitzki and the Rockies knew that his hip labrum was damaged. The area has been a problem since he suffered a torn left quadriceps tendon early in 2008. He had surgery to remove scar tissue from the left groin area in 2012, but he hoped to continue to play through the underlying labrum damage.

Did the surgery finally put an end to the problems?

Not even Tulowitzki knows.

“It’s been a battle for me, no doubt,” Tulowitzki said. “I do everything I possibly can to prepare for the season and make myself healthy. Hopefully, all these things are past me. I can move on and go out there and play 140, 160, however many games it is, I love to do that. I have every intention to. We’ll see how it goes.”

I guess we can finally see if he can stay healthy for an entire season.

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Earlier in the week, I went over how I set up a for a draft (Part 1 and Part 2). Last night I participated in the draft set up by Howard Bender and his Mock Draft Army.  The pre-draft work I normally go through may seem a little tedious, but after the dust settled, I look to start the season in good shape.

The draft was fairly standard 5×5 league with 23 rounds and 15 teams. The draft participants consisted of nine industry experts and six non-experts. I will give some thoughts on my draft results (full results), my final roster and the projected finish.

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Well, it is finally time to move on and show how I finish setting up for a draft (Part 1). I was hoping the following article was going to be in two parts and have a little more detail and polish. Instead I am have been dealing with a fan error on my computer and a pile of oil under my car. Neither is really resolved. So with a borrowed computer, I will step through the rest of my procedure. Let me know if you have any questions.

Note: For reference, here is my spreadsheet I used to get the initial SGP values and has the rest of the sheets referenced in this article.

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Over the last couple of weeks a few of my fellow writers here are FanGraphs have been going over some draft strategies. This week, I am going to step through my exact process for a draft. On Thursday night, I will be joining a few fantasy writers for a 15 team mock draft. Over the next few days, I will go through the exact process I normally use to set up for a draft. If one of the other drafters steals borrows my info, fine. This is actually more a way to show you my process for drafts.

First off, I will be following the procedure I set out last season in this three part series. There is quite a few good links in those articles for the procedures I use.

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Drew Hutchison

Why I watched: Whirling Darvish asked and I couldn’t come up with a reason not to.

Game(s) Watched: 9/26/14 vs Baltimore

Game Thoughts:

• He struck out the side in the first, but allowed one run on two hits and a walk. He struck out seven of the first nine batters.

• The 24-year-old righty worked in the vertical direction with all his pitches. His motion seems a little jerky and mechanical. He is slow to the plate with David Lough getting a stolen base in the first off him. In 2014, base stealers were 24 of 27 (88%) when he was pitching.

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• Two items to start with. First, quite a few update are in the spreadsheet at the article’s end. Information is becoming more available, but it restates a lot of old information.  I will continue to give the updated sources. Second, thanks for your support and suggestions as I got this series up and running. It got some recognition at the latest Fantasy Sports Writers Awards.

Hey! FanGraphs won an award! Or, really, the excellent @jeffwzimmerman won an @fswa award for his MASH series on health issues. Congrats!!

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) January 17, 2015

Thanks.

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I am huge proponent of the pitch type work which has led to the Arsenal Score here are FanGraphs. One possible issue with pitch type data is a reasonable amount of data needs to be collected before any conclusions could be draw. I am going to take it a step further today and look for MLB ready fastballs knowing just the pitcher’s velocity and break. Just knowing how the pitch’s speed and trajectory, some conclusions can be drawn on how the pitcher will perform in the future.

This past summer, I found how to estimate a pitcher’s fastball ground ball (GB%) and swinging strike rate (SwStr%) knowing just the velocity and break. The ground ball rate was the same for all pitches while the swinging strike rate varied a bit. Well, I went into meld/average mode to come up with a method to find a simple way to determine how productive a fastball may be knowing its current break and speed.

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Lisalverto Bonilla

Why I watched: An 3.05 ERA with the Rangers in ‘14

Game(s) Watched: 9/24/14 vs Astros

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