Episode 145

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is now live! Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss the Chase Headley trade; trade rumors (and the fantasy implications of them) involving A.J. Burnett, John Danks, and the relievers on the market; what Michael Cuddyer’s possible return might mean; the latest trips to the DL, among them Matt Cain’s; the Toronto Blue Jays’ call-up of Aaron Sanchez; interesting news about Garrett Richards and Jason Kipnis; and bits on some requested topics, comprised of observations on Justin Verlander (you may want to hear this), Adam Wainwright, Dallas Keuchel, and Chris Coghlan.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them on our next episode.

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I bought Mike Trout for $10 in 2012. He brought me two top-three finishes in the ottoneu experts league. But I was not up to the challenge, and now he’s $49 and my team is 8th. I see no other option but to sell Mike Trout.

It’s utterly depressing.

It’s also utterly exhilarating.

The packages I’m seeing! They are delightful. I thought I’d break down the two best packages before I hit the accept button. Even if you aren’t in ottoneu, you may find my process interesting. Or abhorrent.

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Three months ago to the day, I wrote about a couple of catchers whose rates of ownership in fantasy baseball leagues, I felt, should have been increasing based on some early-season positives, albeit from a limited data sample. Josmil Pinto turned out to be a pretty justifiable inclusion for a little while, but Yasmani Grandal appears to have been a misguided recommendation. You win some, you lose some.

I haven’t given up on Grandal, but I’d begun to lose hope. His strikeout rate remained significantly greater than his career standard, whereas I expected (hope for) some regression. The San Diego Padres croucher’s fantasy production took a nosedive about a week into May and hadn’t come up for air. I came across some new stuff on him not long ago, something to follow. But I wasn’t sure what to make of the information at the time, and without a deeper look, more data or both, I wasn’t about to draw a conclusion or feel a jolt of optimism.

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Yesterday, I identified five hitters whose batted ball distance suggests a HR/FB rate surge could be in their futures. Today, I check in on those hitters who are at risk of experiencing a decline in HR/FB rate over the rest of the season. As a reminder, batted ball angle, standard deviation of all fly balls and fence distances all play a role, but are ignored during this exercise due to lack of data.

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Our journey this week into the waters of the deep league waiver wire brings us to two familiar faces, AL-only players who have shown flashes of their talent in the past and quite possibly stand to benefit owners in the short term.
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Well, I finally got through all the news after a week in New Mexico with my family. No injury prediction reports (PAIN or HURT) today, but will look at publishing them on Thursday (if not before).

• At the Hardball Times, Dan Farnsworth goes into detail on how wrist injuries affect hitters.  Here is his conclusion:

From these case studies, I suspect that hitters who tend to flatten out the bottom hand early and keep it flat through contact put greater strain on their wrist joints. This forces them to use more of their bones and ligaments to stabilize their swings, rather than their muscle mass. Muscles can be strengthened, while bones and other connective tissue cannot. Just like pitchers who are suffering from diminished velocity due to developing elbow instability, I expect hitters with this type of movement pattern to be more likely to suffer downturns in productivity.

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Arismendy Alcantara came in fifth on the Cubs’ preseason Top 10 prospects list here at FanGraphs, and was a consensus Top 100 prospect in baseball. His stock only rose further as this season went on, as he put up consistently great numbers in Triple-A. His .307/.353/.537 slash — with ten homers and 21 steals — made it seem like his arrival as a five-category fantasy middle infielder was more a question of ‘when’ than ‘if.’

Since he arrived in the majors just over a week ago, Alcantara has been every bit as good as advertised, hitting .286/.316/.543 with a homer and three steals in 38 plate appearances. His performance thus far should be more than enough to keep him in the major-league lineup; expect either Mike Olt (.142/.226/.361, 38.9% K-rate) or Junior Lake (.219/.246/.385, 34.1% K-rate) to be the odd man out on the 25-man roster when Emilio Bonifacio returns, and Darwin Barney (.230/.265/.328) sure isn’t doing anything to demand his starting job back.

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It’s not shaping up to be a great fantasy season for me actually. But this is despite most of my pitching staffs being generally excellent. At least the names on those staffs are excellent — not all of them are active. Lots of red DL tags. That’s the way of pitching.

But pitching changes in fits and starts, and it’s my favorite aspect of the game, so I’m going to make this a Monday column of sorts. The Change will look for changes in pitching mix, look at pitch types to see if newcomers have a promising pitch (maybe a change), and will generally try to help you decide what to do about a few pitchers every Monday, after their last start has provided us some change to analyze.

Today, though, one pitcher is bizarre enough to take our entire attention.

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The MLB Trade Deadline is coming up quickly, and fantasy deadlines will follow over the next few weeks. For dynasty owners, particularly those near the top of their standings, there is a big question of how you balance making a run in 2014 vs. staying in a good position for 2015.

I am in the midst of a marathon trade dialogue with fellow Rotographer Brad Johnson. Brad is sitting in fourth place, but has the 8th best offense and 4th best pitching staff and has determined that puts a top-three finish out of reach. And as he has shipped off one star after another (Miguel Cabrera, Craig Kimbrel, Adam Wainwright) he and I have repeatedly debated the merits of those stars and my young up-and-comers.

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As we continue into the second half of the season, it’s time to check back into the batted ball distance leaderboard. As usual, I am identifying potential HR/FB rate improvers by comparing a hitter’s mark to his distance. However, distance alone doesn’t tell the complete story, so this isn’t a perfect analysis. I found that batted ball angle and the standard deviation of fly balls were also quite important. But since this data isn’t publicly available yet, we have to do the best with what we have. So without further ado, here are your power surgers.

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