If we do in fact get some sort of 50-ish game season, finding any small edge could be the difference between winning and losing your league. One potential edge is platoons. Let’s take a look at the starting pitching handedness breakdown on the assumed rotations for each division. This assumes they stick to this mega-division plan by combining the East, Central, and West division from both leagues.

We’re also going to grade the pitchers using the FIP from their BAT projection. My arbitrary scale is as such: sub-4.00 is good, 4.01-4.70 is solid, and 4.71+ is bad.

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With so much sabermetric work already completed, I’m creating a ton of work for myself to see if a hitter’s athleticism influences how they age? Additionally, do these “athletes” age better? I tried to jump the gun a few nights ago with an ill-fated Twitter thread where I thought about reverse-engineering the stats. Instead, I’m going to put a value on a hitter’s athleticism using some readily available metrics.

I began my search by using some advice from Bill James who commented on my Tweet.

Let's assert as Point A that "athleticism" consists of four things: Speed, strength, agility and quickness. "Strength" is the most troublesome, because you can have strength in many different body parts, and people who are strong in one area may be relatively weak in others.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) June 7, 2020

He just rattled the traits off and since he’s likely forgotten more about baseball than I’ve ever learned, I’ll just focus on them. I’m guessing he’s already investigated the subject.
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06/18/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• Latest Proposal

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Projecting pitcher injuries and their effect seems like the Holy Grail for fantasy analysis. From years of research on the subject, I find it’s just a frustration filled enterprise with no firm resolution. Until a start to the 2020 season has been agreed upon (or I eventually find an acceptable answer), I plan to continuously grind for a workable understanding of pitcher injuries.

First, this article will be a work in progress as I try to find answers to various questions. I can’t fill the RotoGraphs article list with a new article every time I make a change or add more information (Ed. note: Sure you can, Jeff, we’ll post all of ’em!). Every few days or so, I’ll summarize the findings from the previous article’s work and keep moving forward. The series will come to an abrupt end if the framework exists for a start to the season since other analysis will then take priority.
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Today, we finally move on to the National League, beginning with the East division and the Braves. As a reminder, the series was intended to only list and discuss prospects who have a chance of earning significant playing time this year only. Obviously, this assumes a 2020 season. That means that there are going to be top prospects missing because they have only completed A-ball and have no chance of appearing in the Majors this season.

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06/16/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host
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• @longenhagen – Guest: Eric Longenhagen

DRAFT REVIEW

• How likely is Spencer Torkelson to debut at 3B?
• You had Heston Kjerstad as a potential Balt. pick, how much of a “reach” was it?
  • Did they maximize the deal w/their other picks? (Westburg, Haskin)
• What’s Nick Gonzales’s offensive outlook in PIT?
• His whole profile made him a potential 1.1, but what kind of fantasy profile did TOR get w/Austin Martin?
• Best fantasy future of the 3 Ps taken early: Max Meyer, Asa Lacy, Emerson Hancock

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First off I hate that the season could be so short and it’s total B.S. that the players and owners are still negotiating a season. They should have started once the season was shutdown.

Also, I can understand if an owner or league just wants to sit out this season. This is especially true since other sports who have their sh…stuff together will be playing meaningful games soon.

With those two caveats out of the way, I am interested to see how a short season plays out since none of us have a playbook for it. The owners’ 48-game schedule is even more intriguing if Manfred decides to immediately implement it. The major impact for fantasy owners will be the games per week pending on where he sets the season start date. Here is how those 48-games could get divided up.

If it’s six games a week, that doesn’t change many player valuations. Anything less than that, it gets interesting. With around 5 or fewer games per week, everything will have a playoff feel. Aces will be thrown at every opportunity and suspect starters will have shorter leashes, if they’re starting at all.

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06/11/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host
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I haven’t been this excited to announce something since I first created THE BAT.  Today I get to announce a brand new projection system I’m calling THE BAT Experimental (or THE BAT X)! These are now available on the FanGraphs player pages and as sortable projections.

THE BAT X is going to serve as a sort of drawing board for new ideas and innovations that I’m not quite ready to replace the tried-and-true, classic version of THE BAT with yet.  Basically, it will be a set of projections that should be the best possible version of THE BAT, but which I’m not 100% certain of yet. The first of these THE BAT X innovations: Statcast data!

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