On recent episodes of The Sleeper & The Bust, Justin and I picked pitching and hitting league leaders for the upcoming season, highlighting a main pick and then someone to keep an eye on. I wanted to take it a step further and pick some guys who could lead the league in the 5×5 categories going pick-200 or later. We will start with pitchers.

WINS

Luke Weaver, ARI | Pick 201

Just under the wire with this pick which of course means that sometimes Weaver goes before 200, but I still wanted to highlight him as someone to target in this area of the draft. I’ve been on the Diamondbacks all offseason as a contender with a strong lineup, good rotation, and capable bullpen arms (with some upside candidates who could make it even better). Wins are going to be flukier than ever so with something like this I’m really looking for a pitcher I like on a quality team.

Also consider: Anthony DeSclafani (245), either Ryan Yarbrough (223) or Yonny Chirinos (276) if they got an opener with regularity

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07/09/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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2020 PITCHING LEAGUE LEADERS

• W AL/NL – J: Lynn/Bailey; Buehler/Fried P: ClevDog/Castillo; Castillo/Stripling
• K AL/NL – J: Darvish/Ray; Verlander/Eovaldi; P: Strasburg/Woodruff; ClevDog/Montas
• SV AL/NL – J: Giles/Colome; Bradley/Lorenzen P: Rogers/Hand; Neris/Hudson
• ERA AL/NL – J: Hendricks/Weaver; Morton/Ohtani P: SGray/Urias; Giolito/Maeda
• WHIP AL/NL – J: Bieber/Heaney; Flaherty/Stripling P: Kluber/Civale; Soroka/Disco

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07/07/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Everyone has COVID

HITTING LEAGUE LEADERS

• HR AL/NL – Justin picks Cruz/Soler; Arenado/Suarez | Paul picks Olson/K.Davis; Schwarber/Conforto
• SB AL/NL – J: Mallex/Merrifield; Villar/Dyson | P: Buxton/Mercado; Hampson/Edman
• AVG AL/NL – J: JD/Fletcher; Cain/Kendrick | P: Arraez/Astudillo; J.Turner/Winker
• R AL/NL – J: Bregman/Semien; Cutch/Nimmo | P: Kepler/Moncada; Albies/Akiyama
• RBI AL/NL – J: Devers/Chapman; Harper/Bell | P: Cruz/Gallo; Story/Moose-Cast

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Name value is a helluva drug in the fantasy game and often leads to overvalued players going several rounds higher than comparable players. Sometimes the name value is indicative of a star-level player who has shown heights in his past that are worth betting on at a loftier pick than his would-be equal counterpart, but a lot of times it’s just an opportunity to scoop comparable skills much cheaper.

Here’s one such case at each position using The BAT X projections:

CATCHER

Yasmani Grandal 116 ADP | Projection .235 AVG, 27 HR, 71 RBI, 71 R, 2 SB

Salvador Perez 158 ADP | Projection .255, 28, 81, 62, 0

A big part of this difference is that fact that Perez missed all of 2019 due to Tommy John surgery. Prior to that, Perez put up four straight seasons of 20+ HR with strong RBI counts (for the position) and decent R totals which is exactly what Grandal has done in his last four years. In standard leagues, Perez is arguably better thanks to spiking some useful batting averages over the years while Grandal is always a drag in that position (OBP leagues are a different story as Grandal has a career 14% BB rate). This three-round difference is almost certainly based on the fact that Perez is returning from injury and despite being a Grandal fan, I’ll take the discount.

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In my previous article, I gave an update on my Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) metric. wPDI arises from the core ingredients of plate discipline – looking only at zone rates, swing rates and contact rates.

An important distinction regarding wPDI, is that its sample size is quite a bit larger than other statistics. Many other stats are based on innings pitched, or even per plate appearance. The denominator of wPDI is pitches. While batter outcomes such as strikeouts and walks stabilize fairly quickly, wPDI can work even faster.

Let’s now take a look at the 2019 leaderboards for wPDI, to see if we can find some undervalued players.

Starting Pitchers

Above is the 2019 wPDI leaderboard for starting pitchers.

Blake Snell lead all starting pitchers in wPDI in 2019. The key to Snell’s success was his “out of the zone” plate discipline. In particular, Snell’s Outcome A (out of the zone, swung on and missed) was the 2^nd highest of all qualified pitchers in baseball. In 2019, Blake produced a K% rate of 33.3%, the highest of his career. He logged a whopping 147 strikeouts in just 107 innings pitched. Both FIP and xFIP (3.32 & 3.31 respectively) agree that his 4.29 ERA last year was somewhat unlucky.

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07/02/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Jose Quintana hand injury
• Scott Kingery, Héctor Neris, Tommy Hunter & Ranger Suarez on IL w/undisclosed ailments
• Brandon Drury also on IL with a completely unknown and impossible to figure out ailment
• Jordan Hicks to IL (TJ recovery)
• Jorge Mateo Trade

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06/30/20 

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.  

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• @sporer – Host 
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS 

• Opt-outs: Joe Ross, Ryan Zimmerman, Mike Leake, Ian Desmond 
• Matt Kemp to COL on minors deal 
• Drafting prospects  

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We’re just going to freeform this and make it essentially a notes column. I’ll start by saying that not every move is influenced by the 60-game season. In fact, few are. A lot of them are influenced by a change in health or just more studying that led me to make a move.

RISERS

Biggest moves up the rankings since my February 28th list.

Rich Hill +65 to 64 – He was slated to be out until June with an elbow injury so now his full IL stint happened in quarantine and he’ll now be ready from the jump. He’s been great on a per inning basis the last four seasons, but will he stay upright throughout this mini-season?

Michael Kopech +30 to 82 – Returning from TJ, Kopech was expected to miss some time at the outset of the season with a late-May/early-June target. Like Hill, that time has passed and now he’s made the 60-man roster, though his role is unknown. For fantasy purposes, it’d be perfect if Kopech was paired with an opener so if he’s limited to 3-4 innings, it comes in the middle innings and puts him in line for wins.

James Paxton +27 to 21 – 100% injury-related.

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Here they are!

I’ll have a whole column of notes on different guys on Monday. I just wanted to get the ranks out and we can start discussing them in the comments. This 60-game season is going to be so wild!

Previous list for comparison, though comparing a full season list to a 60-game one is tough.

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06/26/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Charlie Blackmon has COVID
• As do several Blue Jays (no names yet)
  • Breaking News: Several Twins w/COVID, too
• Alex Verdugo is set to be ready
• Cole Hamels, too
• Angels eyeing Shohei Ohtani, Griffin Canning, & Felix Pena being available

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