Archive for Featured

Thanks for coming out!!

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Back in late April, I discussed how I use ERA-SIERA and other pitcher metrics to identify lucky and unlucky starting pitchers. Since it was so early in the season, we were working with a very small sample. Some of the pitchers highlighted as incredibly lucky have continued to perform well (e.g., Justin Wrobleski), while others have massively regressed (e.g., Bryce Elder). From the list of unlucky starting pitchers, most have performed much better over the last 10 weeks. Let’s review those pitchers from April and assess a few new candidates using a half-season of pitching data.

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Not a great way to start your career:

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• Daily SP Chart archive
• 2-Start podcast episode
• SP Rankings (last update: 6/5 | next: mid-July)

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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With three full months in the books, it’s time for some of us to move from active participation into reminiscing, wishcasting, and dreaming. 

Opening back up the draft board. Peeking back, ever so reluctantly, at your preseason rankings. The notes you left yourself to take a flyer on a handful of spring training stud pitchers, from Kyle Harrison to Johan Oviedo. The highlighter on your desk reminds you of when you used it to circle Kyle Tucker as a late first-round bargain as a bat in the middle of the Dodgers order. 

We’re coming up on July, and for some of us, if not the majority of us, the World Cup is offering a pleasurable respite from what has been a miserable start to the fantasy baseball season. 

That is to say, we’re getting the likeliest outcome for what we signed up for. The 50th percentile outcome. We weren’t going to win! But the point is to try. Chasing that little smidgeon of hope like it’s the golden snitch. 

In this article, I’ll redraft the first round for the rest of the season. To get there, I’ll meander back through the projected first rounders from the preseason, wind down into the current top performers according to the Fangraphs Player Rater, and finish with how I’d redraft the first round today, for the rest of this season, with all of the benefits of hindsight, a little foresight, and a gentle drop of dreaming on unrealized upside. 

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Two of the best predictors of future pitcher success – K-BB% and SIERA – tend to correlate well with each other. So when you see a pitcher outperforming their SIERA while posting a low K-BB%, you have good reason to expect regression.

The visual below shows pitchers with 50 innings sorted by the largest difference in their ERA minus SIERA.

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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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Yesterday, I discussed seven recent hitter callups that have all been given starting job. Obviously, these names are going to be the priorities, particularly in deeper leagues where a recall fills a positional need. Today, let’s flip over to five more players who have recently been called up, but are currently serving in a bench role.

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Catcher on Catcher Crime:

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• Daily SP Chart archive
• 2-Start podcast episode
• SP Rankings (last update: 6/5 | next: mid-July)

Welcome to the Daily SP Chart, click here if you’re new to get an idea of what I’m doing with these rankings. (Yellow added after original post)

• Skubal at 4 might be lowest he lands on a board all year. These are razor-thin margins between the Top 4 and while he hasn’t been his untouchable self since returning from surgery, his 31% K and 28% K-BB are both better than his pre-injury marks. 6 HRs have been the problem in his 3 starts back. He gets the worst matchup of the 4 from a season standpoint, but Judge-less NYY is down to 17th vL over the L14 days.
• Miller is listed as Opener (and his stats are shown in the chart) but they don’t do traditional Openers and he should get a regular start’s worth of innings if he’s doing well. Castillo could get whatever’s left and if he doesn’t falter like last time, he could be in line for a Win or even a 3-inning Save (though Muñoz has had 3 days off now so they’ll likely go to him if it’s close), so there’s some merit to starting him, too.  It’s Woo. Chart had Miller/Castillo but it’s been updated to show Miller on Thursday and Castillo on Friday. SEA-LAA has a weird Wednesday off tomorrow for the World Cup so they’ll finish the series Thursday before TOR comes to visit. Woo is obviously a 3-x start. I’m on a meeting right now so I didn’t update his stats, I’ll try to get back to it today, but it’s not like y’all need his season stats to know to start him.
• Even after coming unglued late last time out v. CHC (6 ER), McLean still has a 3.21 ERA/1.18 WHIP in the last month of work. He’s grinding through his rookie year a bit, but there’s been way more good than bad.
• The slightly arbitrary 30-day cutoff giveth and taketh… it perfectly sliced off a May 25th Dud for McLean, but just missed 7 scoreless IP for Early that would bring his recent ERA down from 5.06 to 4.01! I don’t even need that start included to still fee strongly about sticking w/Early, though. He still has a 26% K and 17% K-BB despite the 5.06 ERA/1.46 WHIP. The Nats are great vL, but I just can’t see sitting him.
• The Pirates clipped Wrobleski in Pittsburgh but he immediately bounced back with 2 gems (TBR, at MIN) despite continuing his meager K-BB (12% in those 2 gms; 10% on the yr). Will he struggle in Sacramento? Maybe, but the reason I remain undaunted in starting him in the Win upside even if he’s not at his best. Although I say that and all 9 of his Ws have come in great outings and he didn’t come close to winning any of his 3 bad starts. Ah well, we’re running him in Sactown!
• Roupp spent the whole trying to work off the 8 ER he opened the month with and back-to-back 6 IP/2 ER outings certainly helped with that. Another brilliant matchup affords him a great chance to stay hot.
• Boyd had a decent outing fresh off the IL, keeping the Mets scoreless for 4.7 IP, but he was a bit lucky, too, with 4 BB and 4 H. He catches a surging SDP team, too, sitting 8th the L14 days vL.
• Probably should’ve been a bit more cautious with Alcantara heading into Coors, so I won’t double down on that misstep with a blind Eury reco. He’s the more dominant pitcher which gives him a better shot to survive Coors, but the Rockies have found their home groove. In fact, they’re #1 overall vR in the last month so it’s not just Coors (worth noting they did get a series in Vegas, but still, they’re clearly doing more than just taking advantage of nice parks).
• Cameron/Sproat are classic matchup streams, both catching bottom-7 teams v. their respective handedness. Cameron started the month strong before hitting some bumps recently, including v. the same Rays he’ll face today but I’ll take the shot at home. Sproat is coming off his best start of the season: 6 scoreless w/10 Ks against the same Reds he’ll face today. The only time he had two solid starts in a row he was likely on everyone’s bench as they came at COL and at ATH! I guess his TOR (6.7 IP/1 ER)/at DET (5.3 IP/3 ER) combo in mid-April was fine but with a 5.43 ERA, the good starts are scant in total volume, let alone pairing them up.

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