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This past season was one of my worst ever. And about halfway through it, the outcome looked worse than the final results. I was able to focus on a few leagues and salvaged my bankroll. Here are some of the lessons I learned. Read the rest of this entry »
The 2023 digital editions (full and appendix) of The Process are now available to be purchased (the paperback is off to the printers and will be available in two to four weeks). These editions are packed with new information. Read the rest of this entry »
As part of my preseason prep, I watched a Kris Bubic start from last season. During it, Rex Hudler, who is never short on opinions, brought up an interesting point. The more pitches each batter sees, the quicker the batter becomes with the pitcher repertoire, and the more likely the batter gets a hit. At first, I thought someone else was speaking, but no, the concept warranted further investigation. It’s the same theory behind the times-through-the-order penalty but the new effect could be felt depending on how many pitches a pitcher throws per hitter and depth of arsenal for the pitcher. That idea started me down a wormhole that led to many questions and one subpar answer, but there seems to be at least one nugget of wisdom in Rex Hudler’s head.
First off, with less than a month before the season starts, it’s not an ideal time to start a study that could take weeks to iron out. I barely have enough time to report news, velocity readings, and draft my own teams. The following “answers” are not set in stone and there are so many more questions to investigate. I could either shelve the ideas for months or just make a snippet available and let others run with the ideas while I grind through the fantasy season. I’m giving others the chance to refine the ideas before I come back to them.
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Over at Reddit, zoomzilla asked:
Is there a place I can import a player ranking list of my choosing that I can take drafted players off as they are drafted?
And I provided an answer (I’m TucsonRoyal) that can be used once someone has a set of rankings. First, it’s simple. Second, it’s on Google sheets so fantasy co-managers can share it.
I’m hesitant about even posting this because there is a subset of fantasy managers who want their hand held along each step. I’m not here for that. Sorry, I’m here to teach fishing, not to hand them out. The following will produce a simple tracker that takes just a minute or two to set up.
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To say the least, the 2020 fantasy baseball season will go down as a one-of-kind. A late start led to a 60 game sprint. Seven-inning double-headers. Weeks of rescheduled games because of COVID-19 positive tests. The National League DH. Twenty-eight-man rosters in September. Each of these on its own would fill the headlines. With the changes coming all at once, they felt overwhelming. I’m hoping to calm everyone if any and hopefully not all of the changes happen again. Here is some advice on how to handle the changes.
The help divided up into league setting and individual manager focus. While I inserted plenty of my own advice, I wanted to make sure as many people as possible contributed so Tweeted out and asked during my chat for input.
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To begin my 2020 preseason, the elephant needs to be addressed, “What to do about projecting with MLB’s juiced baseball (i.e. Happy Fun Ball).
Is Freddy Galvis going to continue to jack 20+ home runs or will he maxing out at dozen or so? Every projection can’t be a Choose Your Own Adventure story. If the ball is still juiced, he’ll do X, if not juiced, he’ll do Y. In my analysis, I’ll pick a lane.
The Process is done. After months of writing and disagreements, the fantasy baseball guide I wrote with Tanner Bell is for sale. Simply, we researched and created the guide we would want. It’s not going to contain player capsules or positional rankings. Dozens of sources provide them. Instead, it’s going to give the reader the ability to create their own and the 2017 NFBC Main Event Champion and my podcast mate, Rob Silver wasn’t happy about the end results as he states in his intro.
Jeff Zimmerman and Tanner Bell are both awful people.
Thanks Rob. Before Rob gets to explain himself, here is the general flow of he book.
The All-Star game has come and gone, but the festivities are ongoing here at RotoGraphs. It’s time to rank the first half’s “All-Sell-High Team.” These are players who had big first halves, but who aren’t necessarily the best bets to repeat that performance in the second half. Without further ado, let’s get right to the list: Read the rest of this entry »
This marks the fifth consecutive spring for tracking new pitches at Fangraphs. In 2014, the series was launched with a piece featuring both a retired and current pitcher and their insight into adding new pitches during the offseason and/or in camp. The 2015 tracking was done at RotoJunkieFix where I serve as the CIO which is just a fancy title for the guy that keeps a 20+ year old fantasy community up and running in his spare time. By popular demand, the 2016 New Pitch Tracker gained front page real estate here and I updated it throughout the spring with help from Jeff Zimmerman and others scraping the stories from the web and the crew at BrooksBaseball helping validate the pitches. There was quite a bit of activity on the 2017 New Pitch Tracker, but it has been rather quiet in 2018.
Quite a bit has been written about batted ball data the past few seasons since the information has become publicly available. Fantasy owners have taken notice and are trying to find that next hitter who is raising his launch angle to be part of the “Flyball Revolution”. One major issue which is not being publicly discussed is the major effects backspin has on the ball. By knowing a hit’s spin rate, some of the anomalies seen between launch angle and exit velocity can be explained. The spin rate is a major batted ball component but is generally an unknown factor.
The importance of batted ball spin comes down to this simple table and explanation by Dr. Alan Nathan in a piece he wrote at the Hardball Times.
Finally, I want to take advantage of the fact that we have an aerodynamic model that accounts for most of the features of the data to investigate how flyball distance depends on the amount of backspin, here for a fixed exit speed of 103 mph and launch angle of 27 degrees. The results are given in the table below. They show that distance increases rapidly as the backspin increases from zero but eventually saturates, with very little gain in distance for spin rates exceeding about 1,500 rpm. The reason for the saturation is partly because air drag increases with increasing spin, essentially canceling the increase in lift.
Same launch angle. Same exit velocity. And the ball travels an additional 64 feet of distance because of backspin. Simply, how is a factor which can add an additional 60+ feet in travel distance not be part of our analysis?