• Lance Brozdowski covered some lowly rostered arms, Ryan Gusto, Sean Newcomb, Emerson Hancock, and Tomoyuki Sugano. Here is a bit on Gusto.

Aesthetically, he has an odd “look” on the mound, stepping crossfire with average extension into his release, paired with an average release height. He moved toward the 3B side of the rubber late last season and has stuck with positioning this season. This makes me wonder whether the Astros were trying to optimize something horizontally in terms of his approach, or if his stride direction is connected somehow to his fastball vert increase. I had no idea who Gusto was before today’s outing, and I’m now intrigued. It’s a deep mix, 2 strikeable pitches per handedness, put-away pitches versus righties. The Astros remain good at developing pitchers.

This is just a reminder to follow Lance’s Substack, where he writes about pitcher changes on nearly a daily basis. Read the rest of this entry »

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even larger entry fees ($2.5K to $15K). They are named “High Stakes Leagues,” and there are eleven of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain any advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

7:32	Jeff Zimmerman:

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American League

Angels

• Tim Anderson (.422 OPS) and Kevin Newman (.273 OPS) split time at shortstop. Read the rest of this entry »

In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (about 40% or less initial roster rate) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference, grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

• Three teams (Rays, Tigers, and Cardinals) mentioned they will insert starters into their rotation to give guys extra rest. Instead of spending hours trying to find each team’s plan, it can be seen on this Baseball Reference page (promoted the G[ames] column). Here the top and bottom teams in games started.

Even this early into the season, it’s obvious which teams want to rest their pitchers more and those who don’t. Read the rest of this entry »

When analyzing players, I want more than a one-line projection, I want a range of possible outcomes. The problem with comps is that they are time-intensive. Once the worksheet is setup, a person can select and download the desired output in a few seconds. Here is the outputted table from the example procedure explained below.

Read the rest of this entry »

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even larger entry fees ($2.5K to $15K). They are named “High Stakes Leagues,” and there are eleven of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain any advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

7:32	Jeff Zimmerman:

Read the rest of this entry »

In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (about 40% or less initial roster rate) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. Read the rest of this entry »