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 »

7:32	Jeff Zimmerman:

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There are just not a lot of available good hitter options this week. One issue is that quite a few teams are going with platoons and most of these teams are facing a mix of righties and lefties making most fantasy irrelevant. As for starting pitcher options, it’s one of the best weeks since the first couple of months with several guys returning from the IL, rookie call-ups, and relievers transitioning to starting.

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

Astros

• For José Urquidy to join the rotation, he’ll need to be fully stretched out.

All signs point to Urquidy’s being activated shortly after active rosters expand from 26 to 28 in September. The question will then become how the Astros manage six starting pitchers in the regular season’s final month leading into the postseason.

“You’ve got to come back first. … We’ll start thinking about that the closer he gets,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said Sunday. “I certainly want him back as soon as possible. But I don’t want him back to only go four or five innings because that puts a lot more pressure on my bullpen. I’ve already got two guys who are kind of five-inning guys. We need a seven-inning guy, potentially a seven-inning guy.”

In his first AAA start, he threw 49 pitches (4.0 IP). Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes conclusions to tough questions just don’t sit right, especially when the answer is “We don’t really know.”. How pitchers control batted balls has never had a simple definitive answer. I’m going to give it another shot.

I have some ideas of what might be a cause, but I want to start with a blank slate. What’s got me diving back in is the following table from a recent article of mine.

While a few percentage points of difference may not seem like much, I expected a lot more regression to the mean with my limited sample size. With just the above information, I felt I needed to re-investigate the subject. I know that some of the regression amounts have previously existed, but I wanted to dive in with some fresh eyes and new batted ball data. Read the rest of this entry »

After going through the drops, most of them seemed obvious with players going to the IL or the minors. I think it’s because many teams are checking out for football season with both adds and drop not being made. Next week I’ll drop the threshold down to six to nine drops.

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 seven to ten 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 »