The pool of desirable starting pitchers has dried up as the breakouts (e.g. Steven Matz and Carlos Rodon) have been permanently rostered. Try to grabbed anyone left to fill your rotation to cycle through for the rest of the season. Bullpens have stabilized and for now, few options are available and desirable.

In the following article, I’m going to at least cover the players in demand 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 »

Today’s article is an experiment that I’d like feedback on. I’m not finding enough information that doesn’t immediately become stale for Mining the News. So, I’m going to take those nuggets and try to combine them with the weekly lineup analysis. I’m not sure if this format will work so just let me know in the comments. Thanks. -Jeff

American League

Angels

• Consistent. Everyone just moved up a slot with Anthony Rendon out.

• With Max Stassi on the IL, Kurt Suzuki (.233/.314/.367) is the regular catcher.

• Jose Rojas (.385 OPS) and Luis Rengifo (.258 OPS) are now splitting time at third base.
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Last week, I tried to find a decent source for the upcoming weather that had more than one or two days. After not finding one, I decided to create my own. Bookmark and use as needed.

American League

Angels

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The 2020 and ’21 seasons have created a unique fantasy baseball environment that has never existed. One of the biggest challenges is evaluating players. It’s been almost 18 months since there have been games across all levels. Players have changed for the good and bad. There is just no way to know how much with everyone hidden at the alternate sites. For hitters, xwOBA and a Barrel% formula can be a solution to spot and verify some breakouts.

With hitters, I find they change at a slower rate. While pitchers can change a pitch’s shape or its usage overnight, hitters can’t immediately change their batting eye or gain 50-home run power. It’s going to be subtle changes that won’t be noticeable for a few weeks. Still, I want to try to be one step ahead of these unknown adjustments by using the best indicators and hope to marry these best estimates from long-range projections.

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Just a few drops I would not have done, but overall, it was a calm, reasonable week. I expect there to be a crazy one coming up when some rookies get the call.

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.
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7:33	Jeff Zimmerman:

7:33	Jeff Zimmerman:

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It seems like it will be a calm bidding week. The toughest group to rank were the starters. Almost all of them have mixed results from a small sample. It’s tough to get a read in the positive or negative direction, but I think a couple of gems are still available. If any manager has extra time this week, they need to spend it on evaluating these pitchers.

In the following article, I’m going to at least cover the players in demand using CBS’s (40% or less initial ownership) 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 preference grouped by starters, relievers, and hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

American League

Angels

• Shohei Ohtani’s “weakened lower half” led to some of his struggles last season.

That exact type of pitch flummoxed Ohtani so much last season, when a weakened lower half caused him to bail out of the box constantly and shuffle his feet to the point that manager Joe Maddon joked that a seatbelt should be strapped on him. Opposing pitchers fed Ohtani a steady diet of velocity inside to set up changeups and breaking balls away, knowing that he was struggling to cover the plate.

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American League

Angels

• With Anthony Rendon hurt, there have been some insignificant changes.

• Jared Walsh has started three straight games in the outfield.

Astros

• The lineup was consistent until almost everyone ended up on the COVID IL.

• Kyle Tucker (.204/.241/.510) has slowly moved down the lineup from fourth to seventh.
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In an MLB.com article from earlier this month, Adam Berry investigates the secrets of the Rays’ pitching staff. First, read the article because it contains so many great pieces of information. I wish MLB.com did more pieces like this one.

And the guts of the article comes down to this quote:

The Rays don’t employ a one-size-fits-all philosophy, Snyder said, besides imploring pitchers to throw strikes and get to a two-strike count as quickly as possible. Beyond that, their approach is player-centered: They recognize what each pitcher does best, which they can typically tell by identifying what each does most consistently, and revolve everything around that.

Two-strike counts are important? In previous work, I’ve noticed pitchers who are behind in the count generate weaker contact along with those who have a diversified pitch mix. It’s time to dive into the effects of two strikes counts and determine if they can help pitchers limit hard contact.
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