Archive for Busts

For me personally, it feels like offensive surprises and busts are harder to evaluate during the year because we have fewer tools to analyze. Power is one skill that is difficult to decide how real a spike or drop is, but Jeff Zimmerman has been mentioning a tool at Baseball Heat Maps that gives you the distance of a hitter’s batted balls, which may really help in this type of analysis. In the past, I have used the ESPN Home Run Tracker site to help determine how flukey a change in HR/FB ratio is, but I think looking at the raw average distance is a less flawed method. I looked at the five hitters whose HR/FB ratio has increased the most this year and then added their 2011 and 2012 average home run plus fly ball distances to the table.

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Last week, I decided to compare the SIERA marks of starting pitchers over the last 30 days with what they posted in April. The idea here was to identify potential RoS breakout candidates whose ERAs still might be hiding major improvement over the last month. Today I will look at the opposite side of the coin, those starters whose skills have declined over the last month. These pitchers might still have good ERAs and may still command a nice return in trade.

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Brett Lawrie has been a bit of a disappointment. His performance hasn’t been awful, but he hasn’t lived up to expectations, either. Last season, Lawrie hit .293/.373/.580 in just 171 plate appearances, vaulting him up the fantasy ranks. For a player that many owners drafted between the fourth and sixth rounds, Lawrie’s .272/.315/.369 slash line isn’t offering much value. Unless Lawrie can improve on his current performance, it’s time to start wondering whether he’s still worth starting in shallow leagues.

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The Cincinnati Reds may have some buyer’s remorse with Mat Latos. After acquiring the 24-year-old this off-season, the Reds finally had an ace. This season, Latos has been one of the biggest busts in fantasy baseball. Latos — the owner of a 3.37 career ERA before — has seen that number jump to 4.91 this year. Unless he can return to form, Latos’ time as a fantasy ace may be over.

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Rickie Weeks has been struggling. The 29-year-old second baseman has never been a high-average hitter, but this season he’s reached a new low. Among qualified hitters, Weeks’ .154 batting average rates as the second worst in the league. Weeks has shown elite ability in the past, but owners are probably having some buyer’s remorse right now. And while trading him won’t bring back a fair return, owners are best sticking it out and hoping Weeks turns things around.

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Last Saturday, I looked at the bottom dwellers in hitter BABIP. In a surprise move, one of those hitters, Adam Lind, was actualy sent down to Triple-A. Today we will look at the BABIP leaders. These are your potential trade candidates, but I’ll look more in depth into the interesting names.

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Adam Wainwright – Adam has had a rough start to the 2012 season. So far he has 3 losses in 3 starts with a 9.88 ERA. After not pitching at all in 2011 because of Tommy John surgery, he seems to be struggling in 2012. By looking a little deeper into the numbers, it may be the perfect time to buy low on him.

While his ERA is approaching double digits, his ERA estimators paint a better picture. His FIP is at 6.52 and his xFIP (3.13) and SIERA (3.28) are almost at 3. The final two values are close to his career ERA of 3.08. Adam’s main problem so far in 2012 has been the HR. Currently, he has a 3.3 HR/9 value which is almost 5 times his career value of 0.70. He is allowing 1 home run for every 3 fly balls while historically he has allowed a HR for every 12.5 fly balls.

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Brennan Boesch started the season as a fantasy sleeper for many people. He was to bat second for the Tigers, which he has in 14 games, with Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder hitting after him. He looked to be great source of Runs and maybe a bump in batting average as he would see better pitches to hit. Some people even predicted him to be a top 30 fantasy player. His season so far has been a disappointment with him hitting .213 and scoring a total of five runs. Today, I am going to look to see if he can be the fantasy player some people envisioned.

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On Saturday, I took an early look at the 10 starting pitchers who have seen their average fastball velocity increase the most. Since velocity tends to gradually increase into the summer, I wanted to only capture the pitcher’s last start, and decided to use the “Last 7 Days” Split filter. In fact, there is a far greater number of starters whose velocity is down than whose velocity is up. Today, I will use that same method, but instead focus on the 10 starters whose velocity has declined the most. This is not the list you want to see your fantasy starter on!

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Here at Fangraphs, we have been writing quite a few articles on the fastball speeds (here and here and here and here). The main reason for the articles is that fastball speeds stabilize fairly quickly. They can be used to understand how a pitcher may perform in the future because fastball speed is directly related to both strikeout rates and runs allowed. With this knowledge, I am going to look at how a few pitchers, that saw their velocity drop in 2011, are doing in 2012.

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