Archive for Featured

FAAB & Waiver Wire Report (Week 2)

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 »


Lineup Analysis (4/4/25)

Joe Puetz-Imagn Images

American League

Angels

Nolan Schanuel moved up to bat third. Read the rest of this entry »


Pitcher Playing Time Changes: April 4, 2025

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the first Pitcher Playing Time Changes rundown of the regular season! As with position players, the methodology is a little different in the regular season.

For starting pitchers, instead of displaying raw games started projections like I did during Spring Training, I’m switching to percentage of a team’s remaining starts. When looking at this on a weekly basis, pitchers who are closer to coming back from injury will have their percentage go up, since they’re projected to miss less of the remaining season. Pitchers who were injured since the last update will, of course, have their percentage go down.

Relievers are going to be more streamlined, in that I’m not going to actually show projected innings pitched, because the way we project them internally always show as full-season innings, even if there’s only 50% of the season left. For example, a relief pitcher who started with 70 projected innings pitched and had his projections unchanged will still show as 70 innings pitched after 81 games. So, instead, I’ll just be showing percent change for notable relievers and we won’t be focusing on the actual innings they’re projected for when we’re only talking about a week of difference. That allows me to zero in on pitchers who’ve gotten injured or demoted.

Away we go:

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Roto Riteup: April 4, 2025

Sometimes you really need a nap after a long day at the office:

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Starting Pitcher Chart – April 4th, 2025

© Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Daily SP Chart archive

The chart includes their performance for 2024 until we get some actual data for this year (I changed over in late-April last year), their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from last year (not a perfect solution as teams change in the offseason, but better than using just a few days of data from this year), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s basically a riskier stream for those spots.

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.

Starter Notes April 4, 2025
RK PITCHER GAME 10 12 15+ IP ERA WHIP K-BB wOBA RK NOTE
1 Yoshinobu Yamamoto LAD at PHI x x x 90 3.00 1.11 23% 9th
2 Max Fried NYY at PIT x x x 174 3.25 1.16 15% 17th
3 Spencer Schwellenbach ATL v MIA x x x 123 3.35 1.04 21% 21st
4 Jack Flaherty DET v CHW x x x 162 3.17 1.07 24% 30th
5 Gavin Williams CLE at LAA x x x 76 4.86 1.37 14% 27th
6 Shota Imanaga CHC v SDP x x x 173 2.91 1.02 21% 19th
7 Seth Lugo KCR v BAL x x x 206 3.00 1.09 16% 5th
8 Justin Verlander SFG v SEA x x x 90 5.48 1.38 12% 8th
9 Kevin Gausman TOR at NYM x x x 181 3.83 1.22 14% 11th
10 Brandon Pfaadt ARI at WSN x x x 181 4.71 1.24 19% 20th WSN does run six lefties (well 3, and 3 switch-hitters) and that group comprise their 6 best hitters
11 Tylor Megill NYM v TOR x x x 78 4.04 1.31 18% 12th Great at HOU in his season debut (5 IP/1 ER/6 Ks/1 BB)
12 José Soriano LAA v CLE x x x 113 3.42 1.20 11% 26th Dominating CHW doesn’t add to my confidence, but I’m open to starting him anywhere
13 Max Meyer MIA at ATL x x 57 5.68 1.42 11% 17th ATL is still a scary offense despite their brutal start, but Meyer also has major upside so I’m OK to go at ATL while they’re down
14 Nick Martinez CIN at MIL x x 142 3.10 1.03 17% 7th A 3-run 6th inning (incl. 2-run HR v. Chapman) spoiled his season debut; 5 K/1 BB was nice, though
15 Zack Littell TBR at TEX x x 156 3.63 1.25 17% 24th Smoking COL at home doesn’t greatly change his outlook, but TEX is sputtering so I don’t hate a stream here
16 Tyler Mahle TEX v TBR x 12 4.97 1.42 11% 29th Maybe the spring concerns had merit? Brutal 4 BB limited him to fewer than 2 IP in season debut
17 Jesús Luzardo PHI v LAD x 66 5.00 1.25 13% 2nd I know he was brilliant at WSN, but let’s be very careful v. LAD
18 Mitch Keller PIT v NYY x 178 4.25 1.30 15% 1st I don’t have any issue sitting him, even at home
19 Walker Buehler BOS v STL 75 5.38 1.55 10% 15th Not cutting off 1 start, but the debut was rooough and I’d like to see something before diving in
20 Jonathan Cannon CHW at DET 124 4.49 1.33 10% 22nd
21 Osvaldo Bido ATH at COL 63 3.41 1.09 14% 16th
22 Ryan Feltner COL v ATH 162 4.49 1.34 12% 23rd
23 Jake Irvin WSN v ARI 187 4.41 1.20 14% 3rd
24 Erick Fedde STL at BOS 177 3.30 1.16 14% 6th
25 Randy Vásquez SDP at CHC 98 4.87 1.51 8% 14th
26 Dean Kremer BAL at KCR 129 4.10 1.24 13% 13th
27 Tyler Alexander MIL v CIN 107 5.10 1.24 15% 22nd
28 Luis F. Castillo SEA at SFG #N/A #N/A #N/A #N/A 25th
Recommendations for Roto 5×5 Leagues

Mining Jeff’s Thoughts

Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

 

Note: I needed to write an article and dig through early season information. Here are some notes by team … sort of.

With several sources discussing exit velocity gainers, it’s time to look at what matters. A few years ago in The Athletic, Rob Arthur found the following:

That precision makes it useful. It turns out that the hardest-hit batted ball a player strikes is enough on its own to predict whether a player will outperform their PECOTA projection.

For every mile per hour above 108, a hitter is projected to gain about 6 points of OPS relative to their predicted number.

Using the batters MaxEV from the past three seasons, here are the guys who have set a new high over 108 mph. Read the rest of this entry »


Roto Riteup: April 2 2025

I love having baseball back:

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Starting Pitcher Chart – April 2nd, 2025

Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

Daily SP Chart archive

Welcome back to the Daily SP Chart! The chart includes their performance for 2024 until we get some actual data for this year (I changed over in late-April last year), their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from last year (not a perfect solution as teams change in the offseason, but better than using just a few days of data from this year), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s basically a riskier stream for those spots.

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.

It’s a very straightforward Wednesday with 6 of my Top 10 and 20 of the 30 landing in my Top 60 pitchers. Let me know if you have any questions or comments below! I stay on top of the comments so in a case like Monday where Thomas Harrington was called up, I’ll definitely get in there and give my thoughts if someone asks about them.

Starter Notes April 2, 2025
RK PITCHER GAME 10 12 15+ IP ERA WHIP K-BB 2024 wOBA RK
1 Tarik Skubal DET at SEA x x x 192 2.39 0.92 26% 24th
2 Paul Skenes PIT at TBR x x x 133 1.96 0.95 27% 29th
3 Zack Wheeler PHI v COL x x x 200 2.57 0.96 22% 16th
4 Garrett Crochet BOS at BAL x x x 146 3.58 1.07 30% 7th
5 Cole Ragans KCR at MIL x x x 186 3.14 1.14 20% 13th
6 Blake Snell LAD v ATL x x x 104 3.12 1.05 24% 4th
7 Framber Valdez HOU v SFG x x x 176 2.91 1.11 16% 9th
8 Dylan Cease SDP v CLE x x x 189 3.47 1.07 21% 26th
9 Pablo López MIN at CHW x x x 185 4.08 1.19 20% 30th
10 Luis Castillo SEA v DET x x x 175 3.64 1.17 18% 22nd
11 Zac Gallen ARI at NYY x x x 148 3.65 1.26 16% 1st
12 Hunter Greene CIN v TEX x x x 150 2.75 1.02 18% 24th
13 Sonny Gray STL v LAA x x x 166 3.84 1.09 24% 27th
14 Freddy Peralta MIL v KCR x x x 173 3.68 1.21 18% 13th
15 Ryan Pepiot TBR v PIT x x x 130 3.60 1.15 17% 28th
16 MacKenzie Gore WSN at TOR x x x 166 3.90 1.42 16% 28th
17 Zach Eflin BAL v BOS x x x 165 3.59 1.15 16% 6th
18 Clay Holmes NYM at MIA x x x 63 3.14 1.30 17% 21st
19 Yusei Kikuchi LAA at STL x x x 175 4.05 1.20 22% 23rd
20 Carlos Rodón NYY v ARI x x x 175 3.96 1.22 19% 1st
21 Jeffrey Springs ATH v CHC x x 33 3.27 1.36 18% 16th
22 Jameson Taillon CHC at ATH x x 165 3.27 1.13 14% 23rd
23 Sean Burke CHW v MIN x x 19 1.42 1.00 20% 10th
24 Landen Roupp SFG at HOU x x 50 3.58 1.37 10% 8th
25 Jack Leiter TEX at CIN x 35 8.83 1.71 8% 19th
26 Ben Lively CLE at SDP 151 3.81 1.25 11% 4th
27 Easton Lucas TOR v WSN 11 10.80 2.23 2% 26th
28 Kyle Freeland COL at PHI 113 5.24 1.41 12% 3rd
29 Bryce Elder ATL at LAD 49 6.52 1.63 13% 2nd
30 Connor Gillispie MIA v NYM 8 2.25 1.13 9% 11th
Recommendations for Roto 5×5 Leagues

Big Kid Adds (Week 1)

Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even larger entry fees ($2.5K to $15K). They are named “High Stakes Leagues,” and there are eleven of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain any advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues.

Note: Normally players with no MLB experience can be added in NFBC leagues. The first week is the exception so several prospects were added.

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Roto Riteup: April 1, 2025

Find someone who loves you the way Alex Anthopoulos loves Jesse Chavez
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