Archive for Featured

Note: Any noted rostership rates come from the NFBC RotoWire Online Championship, the same rates we use on the FanGraphs Player Rater. For reference, these leagues are 12-team Roto leagues with 30-man rosters (2 C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, MI, CI, 5 OF, UT, 9 P) and weekly add/drops. This rate can be compared to other rostership rates found in this article.

American League

Angels

• Travis d’Arnaud and Yusei Kikuchi started their rehab assignments.

C Travis d’Arnaud
Injury: Right foot plantar fasciitis
IL date: May 7 (transferred to 60-day IL on June 3)
Expected return: Possibly July 31
Status: Played in his sixth rehab game with Triple-A Salt Lake on July 26, catching nine innings. Had his rehab assignment transferred to Single-A Rancho Cucamonga on July 28 and will catch back-to-back games before being activated. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for coming out!

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One area that I like to examine for pitchers is their arm angle, which consists of their vertical and horizontal release points. Arm angle is a quick way to see whether a pitcher might have different vertical and horizontal release points that could impact movement. Arm angle tends to correlate best with vertical movement whether it’s without gravity (0.225) or with gravity (-0.258). I tend to look at pitch movement without gravity as induced vertical break, especially on four-seam fastballs. There’s an inverse relationship between arm angle and vertical movement with gravity. That indicates that pitchers with high arm angles can throw pitches with greater downward movement.

I’m working on a way to find correlations between arm angle and horizontal movement since different sites list horizontal movement differently. For instance, Baseball Savant shows inch values with the words arm and glove after the number value. Meanwhile, other sites have negative or positive values, indicating glove- or arm-side movement. My guess would be that arm angle correlates similarly or slightly worse without bucketing by handedness and pitch types. That said, it’s still not that strong of a correlation to vertical movement. 

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We expect several familiar names returning to Major League rotations in the next month. Let’s dive into how they are progressing, when they might be activated, and what to expect from them for the rest of this season.

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• Daily SP Chart archive
• 2-Start podcast episode ranking
• SP Rankings (last update: 7/24 | next: September)

Welcome to the Daily SP Chart, click here if you’re new to get an idea of what I’m doing with these rankings.

• Pardon me on a few straight morning posts instead of late night. I hit the movies for first time in quite some time last night so I was home late & crashed. We’ll get back on track w/the posts up at night even if the commentary comes in the morning.

3-x

• It’s been a rough month for Webb, starting with a Coors Dud followed by one bad inning in each of his L3 despite going at least 6 in all of them. This all comes after a truly brilliant June (.71 ERA) and I’m just not moved to take him out of any lineups, even with a tough matchup against MIL.
• I definitely didn’t see Hancock becoming an unquestioned must start arm this year and yet, he’s resided there for most of the year. He could soon be traded, but it likely won’t be by today’s game so if this is his last start as a Mariner, hopefully he can go out with a bang!
• Drohan ate his first Dud of the year, allowing 5 ER to COL at home which is tough, but he’s been found money for fantasy managers so we can afford him a bad one even in a great matchup.
• Seymour’s ERA (4.64) has kept him from being an unquestioned waiver wire gem. However, since he’s been stretched out into a starter (or full-outing-follower, as he’ll get an Opener again today for the second straight start after four traditional ones), he has 4.27 ERA/1.02 WHIP/24% K-BB. I’ll gladly take an elevated ERA for the elite WHIP and fantastic supporting skills.

2-x

• 3 interesting lefties populating the 2-x tier today, all of whom could drop 7 scoreless or be out in the 3rd inning with 5-6 runs on their ledger. Sure, that probably describes most pitchers on a given day, but these three have been particularly volatile which keeps them from being rotation locks.

1-x

• Martin still has strong season long numbers, powered by an MLB-best 0.5 HR9, but two mega Duds in June (6 ER at MIN, 9 at NYY) have dimmed confidence in him. He has a less awful 4.02 ERA in his L6 since that June Swoon, but paired with a 1.51 WHIP and meager 3% K-BB, we have to be a lot more selective about his starts. I’m not fully out on a start v. the hobbled Yankees, he just far from the set-it-and-forget guy he had become for a time.
• Yesavage simply hasn’t broken out as many thought he could this year and I have no problem skipping starts v. WAS with just about any non-ace so I’m fine skipping him here.
• AJSS and Wesneski are both debuting off major injuries so while I really like both long-term, my expectations for today and even the remainder of this season are tempered. We’ve seen guys pop off upon return showing few ill effects from their injuries (remember Kyle Bradish last year?) so I’m not ignoring them on the FA landscape, just being very realistic about the extremely wide range of potential outcomes for guys like this.
• A rare Rockies reco as Hughes catches the putrid SDP lineup on the road. He’s been solid in four starts, three in Coors, so I’m happy to take some road shots and might even consider a Coors start in right matchup.

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In the heat of summer, it is always interesting to track pitchers who have gained velocity and who are losing velocity, and what the impact is on their results. While velocity alone does not guarantee success, meaningful changes often coincide with adjustments in command, pitch quality, or overall effectiveness. Identifying those trends mid-season can be a very useful indicator to see if a pitcher could strengthen as the season goes on or decline. This piece will look at those hopefully strengthening in the summer.

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Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less.

The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.

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Last week, I studied how well Baseball America’s prospect rankings translated into eventual fantasy performance.

The results were fairly conclusive; after adjusting to floor negative-value seasons, hitters performed better than pitchers, and there was clearer stratification in hitter value across different ranking buckets than their counterparts.

That analysis included a significant amount of data going back to BA’s original lists in 1990, which has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, the more the merrier. Sample sizes are bigger and we can more confidently assert statistical significance with the right tests. But on the other hand, 1990 was a long time ago (a phrase typed with millennial tears hitting the keyboard). Macro trends in prospect evaluation and baseball writ large have changed immensely.

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• Daily SP Chart archive
• 2-Start podcast episode ranking
• SP Rankings (last update: 7/24 | next: September)

Welcome to the Daily SP Chart, click here if you’re new to get an idea of what I’m doing with these rankings.

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We’re through 16 periods of the inaugural Tout Wars Champions league. It uses a H2H format in which teams earn a win for the week if they win more categories than their opponent. Sadly, my season hasn’t exactly gone as hoped. I originally used an extreme and risky draft strategy that saw me dump three categories, and it’s been challenging to succeed with it given that my top two picks have been complete busts (Garrett Crochet and Cal Raleigh), which has resulted in my current 11th place standing. Yuck!

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