There are obviously a ton of factors that go into fantasy success for pitchers, but I don’t think I’d get a ton of argument if I said that strikeout and walk skills are two of the bigger factors. So I want to take a look at some of the pitchers who have shown surprising strikeout and walk skills over the last 30 days. I created a sample comprised of the 148 starters who faced 70+ batters in the last 30 days. Of those 148, 26 had a K-BB that was one standard deviation or more above the mean. Of those 26, here are a few I was most surprised to see on the list.

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With September call-ups now in full effect, I was curious as to how the pitching environment might change for daily leagues. While we know that more players and pitchers will get chances to play, we don’t see much of a league-wide drop in offense in September.

That’s probably because as many bad or borderline pitchers get extra playing time as batters.

But what about top-end starters? Do the aces do better in September as they feast on raw talent? Or are there more elite performances in general? To find out, I pulled game logs for August and September of 2012 and compared the spread of Draftstreet daily points. If there are more elite starting pitching performances, we’d expect to see September’s results more left-skewed than August.

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We’re headed to crunch time here in the baseball season. That means crunch time in your roto leagues, but not necessarily crunch time on DraftStreet. Stream those pitchers, fill those categories, watch those September callups and whether you can squeak some extra juice out of them (or make sure they aren’t taking playing time away from your starter).

A beautiful day seems on tap for baseball — the only game forecasted to have more than a 20% chance of rain in the Twins in Houston. Thankfully (for Houston fans) they have the magic of a retractable roof (well, that and air conditioning), so we should be good to go on the rain front today. Dry baseball!

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I think sometimes, we have a tendency to move our brains towards simple heuristics and narratives, even when we’re trying to be analytical and precise. For example, one of the maxims I’ve used in the past is this one: after September callups, overall hitting skill decreases and pitching skill increases throughout the league, as a result of the expanded rosters. After all, managers have the opportunity to have more pitching changes, due to the increase in available arms at the major league level. They can afford to give their best guys rest … or to run them ragged in pursuit of a playoff spot.

But is this simple heuristic actually worth anything? It’s worth making a brief investigation.

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Tomorrow marks the start of September, which means expanded rosters and frustrating lineup cards from managers. For the month, it’s likely you’ll want to stack your picks with the same start time so that you can easily go in at the last minute and adjust as guys are benched or started. It also means occasionally my picks, which go live at 10 a.m., will have a guy on the bench. Be forgiving.

It also means there are a few more interesting names to dial up. Zach Sanders has started to write up the interesting names who could be getting call ups. I’ll highlight a few notable names below so you can be prepared to move on them next week.

Danny Duffy – Sanders highlighted his strikeout potential and he didn’t disappoint in his debut on Thursday night, striking out seven over 6.7 shutout frames.
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September call ups are almost here, so some new names will enter the daily fantasy pool. This is probably more true on other daily sites besides Draftstreet, but call ups tend to be undervalued. Because pricing models are based on previous statistics, it makes sense that guys without a track record would be somewhat conservatively priced. Here are just a few call ups that could be useful in the final month.

Nick Castellanos – OF – Detroit Tigers

Castellanos didn’t destroy Triple-A or anything, but he hit for a little power (.168 ISO) and displayed good plate discipline (16.4% K%, 9.3% BB%). He’s unlikely to see regular starts, but that’s the beauty of daily fantasy. We don’t need him to play everyday to have a use for him. He may take some starts from Matt Tuiasos0po against left-handed starters. He had a .852 OPS in 109 PA versus lefties in Triple-A, so if he’s cheap enough he could be an option when starting. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, I made the mistake of mentioning the wind at Minute Maid Park on a day when the Astros would be closing the roof at the stadium (and that had been the case for several home games in a row). Honest mistake in my mind, and it actually wouldn’t have changed my recommendation on that day, but let’s have a look at what kind of impact the roof’s presence or lack thereof has on offense in Houston.

As always with these exercises, I pulled B-Ref data from 2010 to the present and placed them in buckets based on wind and temperature.
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I fielded a few questions on the Twitter last week about stolen bases. For many, as you get into late August, you’re preparing to make that last push in roto leagues. Astute owners perform a little mental math and figure out “what categories are safe” and “what categories can I make up ground in?” This is/was important at the trade deadline. Owners were not huge fans of me trading Edward Mujica and Joe Nathan for Anthony Rizzo as I search for homers — but (as a Bullpen Report author) I have a 25 save lead with two other closers still rostered. But even with the deadline past, understanding when and where you can or cannot make up ground in roto categories is critically important in mixing and managing your daily lineups heading into the last month of the year.

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There’s a difference between a sample and a trend. While we don’t want to tread too deeply into the world of small samples, looking at a team’s recent performance can be another one of those small nudges in one direction (or another) when lining up your daily squad.

FanGraphs has a split filter that you can use to examine how a team has fared in the past seven, 14, or 30 days, and I like to occasionally use this as a judgement on a team’s overall offensive production, especially when choosing an opposing starting pitcher. Then, when examining these splits, I tend to look at things like slugging numbers, or simply wOBA / wRC+ to see if a team has been on a good offensive run or a bad one, especially compared to the team’s overall season numbers.

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Most of the time when I’m picking a daily lineup, I make a custom leaderboard of the starting pitchers for the day to see which starters are most homer-prone. But this can be a tedious task to do day after day. So I’ve created the chart you see below which shows the most homer prone starting pitchers. I had a post a few months ago where I had charts showing hitters with reverse splits and the splits of switch hitters that I still reference often. Hopefully this post will be a similar bookmark worthy tool.

There are three columns. One for starters that are currently in a major league rotation with at least 1320 career batters faced (which is the point at which HR stabilizes) against batters of any handedness . The players listed have a HR rate against all batters that is two or more standard deviations above the mean. And then there is a chart for starters with 1320+ BF against lefties and against righties. The players listed in those charts have a HR rate against batters of that particular handedness that is one or more standard deviations above the mean. Read the rest of this entry »