It has been nice waking up over the past few days and having one less item to complete, specifically setting my fantasy baseball lineups. I am going to enjoy the extra time, but not for long. The off season for fantasy baseball has begun and it means that preparation for next season needs to begin. The following are a few concepts I follow during the off season.
Winterize Keeper Teams – I talked about this concept last year and still believe in it.
Like many of my fellow RotoGraph writers, I attempted some bold predictions before the season began. Here is how I failed.
Brennan Boesch will be a Top 30 fantasy player.
I missed big here. Using ESPN’s player rater, it has him at #190 among just hitters. I liked the idea of the player before before Fielder and Cabrera having a good season. The problem was that no one on the Tigers wanted to step up. Eight Tigers batted in the #2 hole with Berry, Dirks, Boesch and Infante all hitting there in at least 20 games. As a group they hit .258/.313/.400. What a wasted opportunity for some fantasy player to be a Run producing machine. 0-1
I am doing the streaming pitchers dumpster diving edition. As Eno just pointed out, tomorrow looks like the day to mass stream. I will only be looking at pitchers owned in 10% or less of all leagues at Yahoo.
Notice – Don’t worry about streaming pitcher’s hurting a team’s WHIP values. It is the last few days of the season and players are really not care too much about winning, except those on a few teams. The players are hacking away and walk rates drop by about 10% over the last few days of the season.
After looking at Chris Carpenter’s 2012 debut yesterday, today I will look at two other pitchers that made their 2012 debuts this past week, Jake Odorizzi and Jorge de la Rosa
Chris Carpenter debuted on Friday night. He came away with decent results, 5 IP, 2 Runs allowed, 0 HR. Chris is usually a fantasy workhorse, but shoulder surgery has all but eliminated his 2012 season. He looks to have limited value as a streaming option this next week and has some question marks to be answered for 2013.
The big red flag that is waving over him is the drop in velocity for all his pitches. His sinker, which he threw 31 times, is down about 3 MPH from 2010 and 2011.
It is that time of the year when fantasy teams begin to reach their pitching limits. Limits are in place to to mimic the innings thrown by a MLB team’s pitching staff over a season. Owners should dive into the leagues rules to see if a team can get a late point rush by maxing out as many pitching innings as possible.
Today I am going to steal a column idea and talk about everyone’s least favorite subject, my fantasy team. I am going to look at the options I have in the playoffs for a team decimated by injuries. For the two people still reading, hang in for a ride of self pity.
In September, teams are able to bring up any player to the majors that is on the 40 man roster. When a player gets hurt, a team has no incentive to put the player on the DL to open up a spot. Because teams are ignoring the DL, it is hard knowing exactly which players are not going to play and for how long.
The most important aspect that fantasy owners face is that the non-playing, hurt players can’t be moved to a DL slot without the DL designation. Teams in keeper leagues will be forced to keep these players on their active roster therefore denying an extra usable bench player on a fantasy roster.
Chris Carpenter – Carpenter has begun throwing a few pitches to see if he can possibly make a start before the end of the season. He has a small chance of returning after being out for the entire season.
The Cardinal hurler had a great 2011 season and helped the Cardinals win the World Series. He began the season with shoulder pain and eventually had surgery for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (I am not sure exactly what it is, but it sounds bad) on July 19th. Initially, it was reported that he was not going to return this season, but signs are starting to point to a return.
Yesterday, Fielding Dependent Pitching was release here at FanGraphs which is used to compare FIP-WAR and R/9-WAR. While WAR and its components sometimes have little affect on fantasy baseball, I have found the LOB-WAR to be useful for finding pitchers who may consistently have their ERA out perform their FIP value.
To get an idea of what traits these pitchers have in common, I looked at the top 10 pitchers (*) in LOB-Wins for 2012. Each of these pitchers had an ERA less than their FIP with the average difference being -0.70. Initial reaction may be that the pitchers crank it up a notch and get more strikeouts, which is not the case. Here are the average strikeout and walk numbers for the group.
| Split | K/9 | BB/9 | K/BB | K% | BB% |
| Bases Empty | 7.4 | 2.0 | 3.9 | 19% | 5% |
| Men on Base | 5.9 | 2.9 | 2.2 | 17% | 8% |
| Men In Scoring | 6.4 | 3.8 | 1.9 | 18% | 10% |
