| 7:31 |
: Welcome
|
| 7:32 |
: Remember to set your Angels and Red Sox player lineups with the early start tomorrow.
|
| 7:32 |
: Here are the Tout Wars winning bids.
|
| 7:32 |
:
|
| 7:33 |
: How does “Josh Lowe if he figures out the strikeouts” look on our rosters over the next few months?
|
| 7:33 |
: Not that good if he continues to sit against all lefties. Streamer depending on matchups
|
In the article, I cover the players using CBS’s (about 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 »
Angels
• Gio Urshela (.756 OPS, 0 HR, 1 SB) has started in all but one game and has played six games at shortstop.
• Brandon Drury (.556 OPS) may only be starting against lefties. Read the rest of this entry »
4/14/23
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!
Follow us on Twitter
PATREON
INJURIES/TRANSACTION NEWS (3:25)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Once there was FanGraphs – and it was good. But then came Stuff+ and things were even better. Granted, it also came with Pitching+ and Location+ but we’re going to use Stuff+ as our initial Guidestone today, considering the quickness of its stickiness in the face of our early season samples. Read the rest of this entry »
This offseason, I struggled with how much fantasy-based content is too much content. I’ve created plenty of material including a 300-page book on my process and several articles per week here a FanGraphs. In addition to writing about fantasy baseball and playing in a few free leagues, I started dipping my toe into high stakes. The entries started out small but I’ve rolled my winnings back in and it was a sizable amount this spring.
With five figures on the line, I felt the pull of providing the best content available and being competitive in these leagues. This offseason, I had several takes. Some I made public while others, I sort of kept to myself. Here are three examples.
1. One of my guys this year was José Suarez (shares). I didn’t go into the offseason being high on him but liked some of his mid-season changes.
A complete transformation. [Suarez’s second half 18% K%-BB% is in line with Wood and his comps (Urias and Alcantara). He is a breakout in hidden plain sight. I would take Wood ahead of him (longer track record), but Suarez would be an easy second choice.
… I ended my campaign for him right then and tried to roster him in every league. While others noticed the article, I didn’t go out of my way to make him one of my guys. Read the rest of this entry »
In past seasons I’ve done this Daily SP Chart down the stretch and invariably there are comments asking why I don’t do it all season. I’ve never really had a great answer for that so now I’m doing it!
Once the season gets going, the chart will include their performance over the last five starts (for the first few weeks, it’ll be their 2023 stats), their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness, my start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. The opponent wOBA will remain blank for a while until we get some data and because there is so much lineup turnover year-to-year, I’m not going to include last year’s mark. I’ll start including wOBA data on April 17th.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more value focusing on roto.
When you are in first place in you league in April:
I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT! pic.twitter.com/XLN5o9HA6E
— MLB (@MLB) April 13, 2023
Here are four players who were projected by Steamer to steal at least 15 bags and are outperforming their wOBA projection:
| Name | SB_proj | SB | AVG_proj | AVG | wOBA_proj | wOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Myles Straw | 18 | 6 | 0.253 | 0.343 | 0.295 | 0.412 |
| Akil Baddoo | 15 | 0 | 0.234 | 0.286 | 0.305 | 0.31 |
| Jorge Mateo | 16 | 6 | 0.226 | 0.286 | 0.279 | 0.383 |
| Bubba Thompson | 17 | 0 | 0.239 | 0.267 | 0.285 | 0.357 |
Now, before you get all “snarky-comment” on me, Badoo and Thompson each only have 15 PAs and will be omitted from this analysis due to such a small sample. Only Myles Straw (46 PA) is a qualified batter, but Mateo (33 PA) is close. Yes, it’s early but just try to go into this with an open mind. For if you drafted, Myles Straw for example, you are probably pretty proud of yourself, sitting upon your thrown enjoying the grapes that are being hand fed to you while also being fanned to cool off from such a hot start. But, what can we expect from these surprises moving forward? If these are real gains, then we should expect even more stolen bases.
Myles Straw, CLE: BABIP is way up, but so is his BB%
Just look at the differences in his projected and actual batting average and wOBA. Over time, Straw will get closer and closer to that projected number. The real question is not, “Will this last?”, as much as it is, “Will he end up north or south of his projected numbers?” So far this year, he’s had a number of ground ball singles to the pull side. Here’s an example:
Straw is obviously very, very fast. But if Volpe is playing a little closer in and the third baseman doesn’t make an attempt on the ball, maybe it’s an out. It’s hard to say just how difficult of a play that was to make, but it doesn’t seem difficult to predict it doesn’t happen over and over again. It’s part of the reason Straw’s BABIP sits at .414 (current 2023 MLB average: .300). It’s completely unsustainable. Here’s a look at his spray chart and you can see a few ground ball singles to the pull side helping to inflate his BABIP:
Click to enlarge
Straw is destined to regress, but how far will he regress? In order to answer that, we have to see if there has been any significant change in his approach that might suggest he has made a change. Let’s look at his O-Swing% to see if maybe he’s better at identifying bad pitches:
No change there. How about his approach in different counts?
| Through Count | 2023 wOBA | Career wOBA | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 – 0 | 0.706 | 0.506 | 0.200 |
| 3 – 1 | 0.505 | 0.459 | 0.046 |
| 3 – 2 | 0.502 | 0.357 | 0.145 |
| 2 – 0 | 0.531 | 0.412 | 0.119 |
| 1 – 0 | 0.453 | 0.334 | 0.119 |
| 2 – 1 | 0.548 | 0.354 | 0.194 |
| 1 – 1 | 0.545 | 0.320 | 0.225 |
| 0 – 1 | 0.316 | 0.261 | 0.055 |
| 2 – 2 | 0.445 | 0.272 | 0.173 |
| 1 – 2 | 0.398 | 0.218 | 0.180 |
| 0 – 2 | 0.178 | 0.167 | 0.011 |
There’s some suggestion here that he has improved in 3-0 and 1-1 counts, but the sample is simply too small to make much of a conclusion from. But, if you look at his BB% towards the end of last season, he was trending in the right direction and appears to have picked up right where he left off. He’s done that before, just look at what he did in the second half of the 2021 season when he reached a peak 22.7% walk rate!
The early returns on Straw have been terrific and if you are rostering him, put him in your lineup until the well runs dry. He is an excellent base-stealer with a career 88% stolen base success rate. For context, Trea Turner has a career 85% stolen base success rate, though Turner has attempted significantly more 2B robberies. Only time will tell if his OBP (.449 2023, .326 Career) gains in the form of BABIP, wOBA, and BB% are more luck than skill.
—
Jorge Mateo, BAL: wOBA is up and plate-discipline trending in the right direction.
I went to my first Grapefruit League game this spring and was impressed with how good Mateo’s batted balls were looking. He just kept smashing the ball, but right at a defender. He’s always had issues with plate discipline but at the end of last season, he started to bring his rolling averages down on swings and swings outside of the zone:
If he can work on his approach, specifically when he’s behind in the count, he could see OBP gains that would directly impact his stolen base accumulation. He is at his best when he’s ahead in the count, like in 3-1 and 2-1 counts, but he could be even better when ahead in the count. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be at or above league average in 3-0 counts. There is no reason, at all, that Mateo should be given the green light in 3-0 counts. Even if he takes and gets to a 3-1 count, he will be at his very best. So far this season, Mateo has faced four separate 3-0 counts and has taken a called strike on the next pitch in each plate appearance. That’s good. Those four plate appearances ended with a walk, a pop out, a strike out, and a hit by a pitch.
While Mateo’s plate discipline metrics are trending in the right direction, he is outperforming his expected stats, which is the opposite of what I observed in Sarasota:
AVG:.286 xAVG:.231
–
SLG:.500 xSLG:.426
–
wOBA:.383 xwOBA.324
Even still, his .324 xwOBA is just below the current league average (.328) and that’s a step in the right direction as his career-best came in 2021 when he put up a .287 xwOBA. He’s barreled the ball twice already, but that doesn’t come close to league leaders Matt Chapman and Bryan Reynolds, who each have 12 on the year. Let’s take a look at Mateo’s barreled balls:
–
Barreling balls for home runs is good fun, Mateo just needs to do it more consistently. At the end of last season, he was putting the ball on the ground less often and hitting it harder more often, and while those trends seemed like they might continue in 2023, he’ll need to increase his launch angle more consistently to make an offensive impact:
One thing is clear, base-stealers are stealing bases at rates that suggest the projections could be way off the mark by the end of the season. Now is the time to find base-stealers who have made some kind of approach or skills change that get’s them on base more often. Each one of Straw, Mateo, Badoo and Thompson should be added if they are available. If the sample size gets larger and the gains smaller, you can always drop them.
*Stats in the opening table were created on Wednesday, April 12th.
The 2023 version of Bullpen Report includes five different sections, as well as the closer chart, which can be found at the bottom of the page.
The “RosterResource” link will take you to the corresponding team’s RosterResource depth chart, which will give you a better picture of the full bullpen and results of the previous six days (pitch count, save, hold, win, loss, blown save.)
Click HERE to view the full Closer Depth Chart.
