I’ve been trying to get to the root cause of how much can a pitcher limit hard contact. I’ve had some hits and misses, but today I’ll finish going over the possible inputs.

I’ve already investigated the groundball/flyball issue and generate weak contact when hitters make contact with pitches out of the strike zone in this series and previously looked into two-strike counts and found nothing. Here are the five possible causes.

• After contact, the ball coming off the top (popup) or bottom (groundball) of the bat.
• The batter chases a pitch out of the strike zone and makes a less than full-effort swing.
• The batter is taken off guard by the pitch’s speed (fast or slow) and can’t make a full-effort swing.
• The batter is deceived by the pitch’s horizontal movement and makes contact off the end or handle of the bat (h/t to Kenny Butrym).
• With two strikes, the batter shortens up his swing just hoping to put the ball into play.

So it’s time to finish the list to see if changing speeds and horizontal movement help limit hard contact.

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The dropped players make up a shortlist this week as the season winds down. Lots of the moves are from the fantasy managers playing the weekly short game and not caring about the long-term production. They are the right moves with just three weeks left in the season.

For this weekly feature, I use the NFBC Main Event because of the number of identical leagues. Additionally, the managers stay engaged longer on the whole since each spent $1700 per team. I tried to find that sweet spot between the obvious and bizarre drops and will focus on players dropped in six to nine leagues. Previously the number was six to nine, but I adjusted with the Main Event adding four leagues since I did the report. Read the rest of this entry »

7:32	Jeff Zimmerman:

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Like the last couple of weeks, this week is again low on usable hitters, but there are plenty of one-start options on the wire.

In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (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 »

American League

Angels

• Luis Rengifo has started three of the last four games at shortstop. He is hitting .250/.308/.500 since being recalled.

• Jo Adell is up to batting fifth after hitting .297/.366/.568 with 3 HR and 1 SB over the last two weeks.

Astros

• In the six games since Chas McCormick (.767 OPS) has been off the IL, he’s started in two games while Jake Meyers (.816 OPS) has only started in three games. Read the rest of this entry »

American League

Guardians (maybe)

• Bradley Zimmer has been working on his swing.

Van Burkleo noted that Zimmer’s hand placement has been instrumental during his recent surge, as well as getting “his lower half engaged and started on time.” It all works in concert, Zimmer said, to improve his contact point so he can make solid, timely contact.

“I have long arms,” Zimmer said, “so it’s a blessing and a curse. The theme, motto of the year for me is just ‘short to the ball.’ You work on that stuff in the cage and it translates eventually.”

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7:31	Jeff Zimmerman:

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Last week, I got several requests for more hitters but there are no more on the up. It got even worse this week when rosters expanded. Major league teams are using more platoons and resting guys so the average hitter’s production is down.

Additionally, lots of starters were added to the rotation, but most aren’t even average. Also, many rotations have expanded to six or even seven men. While they provide new options, make sure they provide more fantasy value than the players being dropped.

In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (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 »

Recently, I started working through predicting which pitchers limit hard contact and by how much. Today, I dive into if contact out of the strike zone can be predictable and if that contact is weaker than contact in the strike zone. First, I need to go over a couple of concepts

WAR Allocation to Position Players

The division of credit for WAR goes with 50% to hitting and 43% to pitching and 7% to fielding. People way smarter than I have determined that split.

Major Note: For simplicity, I’m going to adjust the pitching percentage up to 100% so the fielders are allocated 14% of the credit for what happens when a pitcher is on the mound.

On top of the fielding allocation, not every batter puts the ball in play with the league at an 8.7% BB% and 23.4% K% this season. So now, 68% of all at-bats end with a ball in play with 14% points of that 68% goes to the fielders and 54% (68%-14%) to the pitcher’s batted ball talent. So it works out that 79% (54%/68%) of a pitcher’s batted ball results should be attributed to him. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of players, especially starters, were dropped who shouldn’t have even been rostered. It seems like managers are looking anywhere for starters and keep lowering their standards while there are middle relievers available who will be more productive. I can see taking a chance on a two-start guy, but most of the suspect guys dropped were one-start streamers.

For this weekly feature, I use the NFBC Main Event because of the number of identical leagues. Additionally, the managers stay engaged longer on the whole since each spent $1700 per team. I tried to find that sweet spot between the obvious and bizarre drops and will focus on players dropped in six to nine leagues. Previously the number was six to nine, but I adjusted with the Main Event adding four leagues since I did the report. Read the rest of this entry »