It is a bi-polar week for possible FAAB bids. Not one arm stands out as a must bid. On the hitting side, a few wallet busters exist with some possible fierce bidding.  I’ll start with the hitters.

I’m a little under the weather so I provide as much information as possible and owners can make their own estimates. I might add some more analysis tomorrow morning.

As usual, I utilize CBS’s ownership rates to find potential movers since CBS allows daily pickups. The projected costs are for the 15-team, 30-player roster NFBC Main Event teams. Individual owners are going to need to adjust the values to their own league size and tendencies.
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Angels

• Kole Calhoun goes from leading off against righties to the seven spot against lefties.
• Zack Cozart, David Fletcher, and Taylor Ward are in a three-way battle for the third base job. For now, I’d bet on Fletcher (.303/.324/.333) since Ward has just three plate appearances and Cozart has just one hit (32 PA).

Astros

• They have used the same lineup all season with the only changes being someone cycling through the DH to get a break.

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4/12/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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• @sporer – Host
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Fireside Chat:

Breaking Down Nick Pivetta

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Chat transcript is now available.

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Most analysts listened when I made this pre-season request.

The only useful fantasy baseball analysis over the next two weeks should be:

1. Pitcher velo and repertoire
2. Lineups
3. Bullpen usage

Anything else is just useless fluff.

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) March 28, 2019

Almost too good. Every time I thought about writing about today’s topic, another writer stepped up. I’m done waiting and it is time to see which fastballs have changed, for the better or worse, since last year.

Instead of focusing just on velocity, I add in the fastball’s spin rate and the pitcher’s overall Zone%. With spin rate, I’ve seen pitchers try to keep up their velocity while dealing with an injury and the pitch’s spin changes. As for Zone%, if a pitcher is having issues finding the plate, they may have something mechanically wrong. By combining the three factors together, I’ve come up with an overall ‘Injury’ value where a -100 score means several negative forces are at work.

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4/11/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• DFS Review (1:20)
• Clayton Kershaw officially back Monday now (7:30)
• Mike Clevinger toast (9:30)
• Luis Severino also toast (17:00)

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This is a tough part of the season for fantasy analysts. There just isn’t a ton to go off with the small samples making it difficult to come up with useful content. However, just saying “it’s a small sample, don’t worry; it’s a small sample, it doesn’t mean anything; it’s a small sample, just wait” doesn’t do anyone any good. We no longer play in an era of fantasy sports where you can wait for data to stabilize before making moves.

One of the quickest stats to “stabilize” is strikeout rate at 60 plate appearances. Now just because it stabilizes around that point, doesn’t mean it’s the new level for that player, it just means that what we’ve seen in those 60 PA has some legitimacy. Only five guys have reached 60 plate appearances through April 9th, but many are just a game or three away so I felt like we could check in on some these early strikeout rate improvements.

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I know a lot of people made fun of this yesterday…

pic.twitter.com/roUlfHxKfI

— Bryan Kephart (@thundercrat) April 10, 2019

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4/9/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @pitcherlist – Co-Host/Producer

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Last week, I debuted “The 10” by looking at unexpected gems and we’re staying on the mound again today. While there are small sample all over the place, pitchers are at least accumulating data in areas that often stabilize sooner and can add some insight despite the fact that we’re still almost a week away from Tax Day. Meanwhile, hitters are still ping-ponging between perceived hot and cold starts as evidenced by Nick Markakis jumping 51 points in AVG with a 3-for-4 effort on Monday night.

For this exercise, I’m comparing current velos through a couple starts or handful of relief innings against the player’s full April total from last year. These gains aren’t set in stone, but they are worth monitoring, even at this early juncture. Here are 10 velocity gainers on my radar:

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