I was wrong. About seven years ago, I wrote on how hitters may overperform their projections since they played through an injury. The injury hampered their production in the season in question, lowered the future projection, and created a buying opportunity. For years, I believed this steadily until last season when I re-ran the numbers and found “jack squat”.

Earlier this week, I examined some of this past season’s hitters who fought through the pain and felt a deeper analysis was needed. I dove in and the results were backwards. I found no bounceback should be expected from hitters who played through injuries, but there is more. For those hitters who play through the discomfort, their future production will take a major hit.

The key to uncovering the following results was getting a usable dataset which is easier said than done. Many of the injuries I’m using for the analysis aren’t well documented, if at all. Real men play baseball and they play hurt because that is what real men do and most importantly, they don’t complain about. Besides the machismo, a player has every right to keep his medical data to himself so vagueness thrives. Simply, there is no good available data. Even with the hurdles, I dug into each of the hitters who were reported to have played through an injury the past three seasons (2017, 2018, 2019).

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Hello Draft Season!

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It’s time.

After offering up a first run all the way back in mid-August, I let the rest of the season play out but since then I’ve been working on SP rankings day-in and day-out. I contributed the starting pitcher section to the 2020 Fantasy Black Book so I had a working ranking for that but even since then (it was due back in early-December), I’ve made a ton of changes.

As you know, I feel there are globs of talent throughout the SP rankings wherein a 20, even 30 spot difference isn’t as vast as it seems because we’re splitting hairs between very similar arms and yet even knowing that I still agonize over the slottings and move guys up or down 2-3 spots like crazy before posting a new set of ranks. I decided on 125 for this one after paring down a list of 156 and yes, some of those remaining 31 are just as good as the last 7-8 on the list, but I had to cut it somewhere.

You’ll see tiers set up by the blue bars and that indicates the beginning of a new tier, but even those were hard to decide upon except the one starting at 99 which marks a group of prospects who I parked at that level because none are likely to make a rotation out of spring but all could be impactful at some point in 2020.

Enough chatter, let’s get to the rankings and start discussing them in the comments below. Again, if you think #44 should #38, I’m less interested in that as I probably agree that he could be. Let’s focus on the bigger splits, like if you feel #77 should be #40 or #28 should be #66, etc… Of course you can also just make comments or ask questions about a pitcher without relating it to their ranking. I’m open to discussing my thought process on any of the 125 pitchers.

These will be updated again in February and then once more in early March.

Check out Justin’s Top 126 SPs.

Note: these are catered for a roto league of 12-15 teams

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01/07/19

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
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• WAS super busy:
  • Will Harris (10:53)
  • Daniel Hudson (12:15)
  • Starlin Castro (19:00)
  • Asdrúbal Cabrera (21:40)
  • Eric Thames (23:07)

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The scorching hot stove put the ACL series on the backburner a bit, but we’re diving back in this week and starting with the Angels, who have been very busy in the month-plus since our last piece in this series.

OTHER TEAMS:

• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Seattle Mariners
• Houston Astros
• Baltimore Orioles
• Cincinnati Reds

3 QUESTIONS

Can Tommy La Stella pick up where ’19 left off?

Few players personified the bouncy ball of 2019 better than La Stella. He entered his age-30 season with a career .711 OPS and 10 HR in 947 PA only to nearly double his career total in April alone when he smacked 7 HR. He stayed hot through May and June with a .324/.358/.485 line and another 9 HR before disaster struck. On July 2nd, he fouled a ball off his leg that was originally diagnosed as a contusion, but eventually turned out to be a broken leg and effectively ended his season (he returned for two games in September).

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I’ve had a semi-fixation on hitters playing through injuries and how the diminished production could hamper the next season’s projection. At first, I found some correlation. Then, I didn’t. One possible answer to there being no bounceback is that the injury becomes chronic and the hitter never improves. Or the dataset could be too small.

I want to dive further into the subject, but the information around injuries is sketchy at best. Most of the time, there are no usable details. The lack of an answer means that I should stop coming back to the subject but I’m stubborn.

Very.

I’m going to go through this past season’s hitters. The dive has a couple of goals. One is to create a better dataset for future reference. The second is to understand why some hitters may have struggled when creating a profile. And just maybe, I’ll find out if I can put to rest the notion that hitters who played through injuries are under projected.
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1/2/20

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.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

The White Sox

• Dallas Keuchel to CWS (1:30)
• Edwin Encarnación to CWS (8:10)
• Luis Robert signed to extension by CWS (14:25)

Hitters

• Corey Dickerson to MIA (23:44)
• Shogo Akiyama to CIN (31:33)
• Kole Calhoun to ARI (45:50)
• César Hernández to CLE (52:44)

Pitchers

• Homer Bailey & Rich Hill to MIN (58:12)
• Dellin Betances to NYM (1:11:30)
• Domingo Germán suspended 81 games (1:12:33)
• Julio Teheran to LAA (1:17:07)

—

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.

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Approximately  minutes of joyous analysis.

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It’s time to empty my notes and start clean for the new year. A “Mining the News” almost came out before the holiday break, so some notes are dated but still applicable.

• Nomar Mazara owners shouldn’t be counting on fulltime at-bats from him next season since he’ll likely be on the strong side of a platoon.

In 574 plate appearances against southpaws, Mazara features a below pedestrian line of .231/.272/.361 to go with 15 homers, 19 double and 68 RBIs. Manager Rick Renteria expressed hope in getting Mazara going against left-handers, but as it stands now, Mazara could get the bulk of playing time vs. righties with someone such as switching-hitting Leury García facing lefties.

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It is that time of year again! With the new year upon us, I am releasing my first set of ranks during this week and next for those doing early drafts or prep over the holidays. All ADP and position eligibility are based on NFBC Draft Champions leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Tigers sign Jonathan Schoop and C.J. Cron to 1-year, $6.1 million dollar deals

In the span of about a half hour, the Detroit Tigers had a whole new right side of their infield by signing both Jonathan Schoop and C.J. Cron to identical $6.1 million dollar deals. Schoop rebounded from a rough 2018, jumping from 79 to 100 wRC+. His ISO reached a career high of .217, but his strikeout rate was back up to 25%, matching his previous career high.

Despite solid production, Schoop started losing playing time to rookie upstart Luis Arraez in the final two months of the season. Schoop won’t have the same issue in Detroit. He should be free and clear for full-time run at second base and get back to 600+ PA for the first time since 2017. The projections feel dead on, putting him at .262/.306/.476 with 27 HR, 81 RBI, and 70 R in 571 PA.

Schoop’s 398 ADP might rise a bit now that he’s landed, but it won’t surge given the team he’s on. If you need some late pop at your MI slot, Schoop is your guy.

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