American League

Angels

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

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

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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.

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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 »

I love having baseball back:

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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.

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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.

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

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Let me know if you have any questions or comments below!

Read the rest of this entry »