With the fantasy season almost wrapped up, we might as well kick off the gossip about one of the offseason’s most salacious topics. Velo, baby. Who found some, who lost some, and everything in between.

This will all be heavily parsed before the next Opening Day, as changes in fastball velocity can often be reliable indicators for which pitchers are heading in which directions. And for those who like to draft early, velocity changes can serve as an early flag for possible targets or to identify the players that might first need a closer look.

With that in mind, here are the 32 starting pitchers who have increased their average fastball velocity by at least 0.5 mph since 2020 (minimum 200 fastballs in each season). Four-seamers and sinkers are grouped together and numbers are from pitches only thrown as a starting pitcher. Also included are 2019 velocities, as well as the percentile ranks from 2019-2021. Read the rest of this entry »

With the season winding down, I wanted to find something that would be useful for those still contending in their leagues. I decided to do something that isn’t particularly new, but we don’t have it here at the site: a starting pitcher chart for the day’s slate of games. I’ll include their performance over the last five starts, their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness, and then my start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues.

Obviously 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. For the weekend, Justin & I will use the Friday podcast to discuss the relevant weekend streamers. By popular demand, these will start coming out the day before the slate in question.

Starting Monday September 20th, I’m loosening my thresholds for streamer gambles. If you are protecting ratios, you should continue to be careful and manage as you see fit, but these recommendations are catering more to a “go-for-it” attitude over these final two weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I wrote about the replacement level hitters in the NFBC 12-team Online Championship (OC) and the 15-team Main Event (ME). In the comments, Joe Wilkey asked:

There are a couple of good questions here, so it’s time to start working through them. I’ll start with “Is batting average unpredictable?” Yes, with any given player’s actual range being unacceptable for a fantasy manager. Looking back at Steamer Projections (2010 Steamer to 2021), I found the standard deviation for the difference between the projected and actual batting average. Read the rest of this entry »

Final chat of the regular season!

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NEW FEATURE ALERT! We have added an upgraded version of RosterResource’s Closer Depth Chart to FanGraphs. Read more about it here.

We will always include a link to the full Closer Depth Chart at the bottom of the Bullpen Report each day. It’s also accessible from the RosterResource drop-down menu and from any RosterResource page. Please let us know what you think.

1. Notable Workloads: Primary closers or valuable members of a closer committee who have been deemed unavailable or likely unavailable for the current day due to recent workload.
2. Injury News
3. Outlier Saves: Explanation for a non-closer earning a save during the previous day.
4. Committee Clarity: Notes on a closer committee that clarify a pitcher’s standing in the group.
5. Losing A Grip: Struggling closers who could be on the hot seat.

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).
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I wish I had a workout partner like this:

In case you need a pick-me-up 😂 pic.twitter.com/BnqlRVtvtr

— MLB (@MLB) September 28, 2021

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With the season winding down, I wanted to find something that would be useful for those still contending in their leagues. I decided to do something that isn’t particularly new, but we don’t have it here at the site: a starting pitcher chart for the day’s slate of games. I’ll include their performance over the last five starts, their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness, and then my start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues.

Obviously 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. For the weekend, Justin & I will use the Friday podcast to discuss the relevant weekend streamers. By popular demand, these will start coming out the day before the slate in question.

Starting Monday September 20th, I’m loosening my thresholds for streamer gambles. If you are protecting ratios, you should continue to be careful and manage as you see fit, but these recommendations are catering more to a “go-for-it” attitude over these final two weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »

In most weekly leagues, the ability to add and drop players is gone for this season. Since there are no more moves, I’m going to analyze the most added and dropped players in NFBC’s Main Event and Online Championship with the main goal to create a composite replacement-level player.

For reference, the Online Championship (OC) leagues have 12 teams while the Main Event (ME) has 15. Both of the leagues require 23 starters each week with 7 bench spots (no IL spots). At all times, 360 players will be rostered in an Online league and 450 in a Main Event league. The reason I decided on the two NFBC formats were:

• The data is freely available.
• The information is from several leagues (43 Main Events, 199 Online Championships) with the same ruleset.
• The leagues remain competitive longer since there is decent money on the line.
• With two formats (12-team and 15-team), a comparison can be done on the different player pools.

I know at times we may seem a little NFBC centric here at Rotographs. Now, if some other platform had the ability to select a league type and make available all the adds and drops, I’d use them. The NFBC is the only platform that offers this service. Read the rest of this entry »

The fantasy industry has lost a fantastic person this week. Mike was a giant on the football side of the industry and was a friend to many. May he rest in peace.

We’re raising funds for the Tagliere family. If you’d like to consider helping, please visit the link below for more information.https://t.co/fgp2npcmYN

— FantasyPros (@FantasyPros) September 25, 2021

Read the rest of this entry »

With the season winding down, I wanted to find something that would be useful for those still contending in their leagues. I decided to do something that isn’t particularly new, but we don’t have it here at the site: a starting pitcher chart for the day’s slate of games. I’ll include their performance over the last five starts, their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness, and then my start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues.

Obviously 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. For the weekend, Justin & I will use the Friday podcast to discuss the relevant weekend streamers. By popular demand, these will start coming out the day before the slate in question.

Starting Monday September 20th, I’m loosening my thresholds for streamer gambles. If you are protecting ratios, you should continue to be careful and manage as you see fit, but these recommendations are catering more to a “go-for-it” attitude over these final two weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »