Bryce Harper’s production has not be at high level since he has returned from the disabled list. Some people, including his manager, are saying his timing is off. In my opinion, I think his left thumb is not yet 100% for several reasons which is causing his timing issues.

In case someone has not been following the train wreck, here are Harper’s stats before and after the injury:

Before: .289/.352/.422, 23% K%
After: .129/.250/.161, 35% K%

The after is only 37 PA, but the results are abysmal.

To look a little deeper into Harper’s production, here is his batted ball placement before and after the injury (embiggen).

He has yet to hit one ball to the outfield’s right side after the injury. Historically, 81% of his home runs have been to center (30%) or right (51%) field. Since he is hitting nothing to the right side, I expect no substantial power from him.

This situation reminds me of left-handed David Ortiz from a few years back. He hit the ball weakly to left field after a wrist injury and then slowly began to pull the ball with authority to right field  as he got healthy. For a sign Harper is turning it around, look for him to start hitting to right field consistently.

The second key factor telling me the thumb still bothers him is he acts like it does. Players with injuries will physically show signs the body part bothers them. Here is Harper after a foul ball from Wednesday  night.

He concentrates on and re-grips with the injured thumb. I went back a looked at him plate appearances before the injury and he never did anything close to the re-grip. If a Harper owner wants to know if he is healthy, watch a couple of games and see if favors the thumb in any way.

Bryce Harper’s thumb is probably not 100% yet and it is behind his offensive struggles since returning from the DL. Two items can be tracked to see if he is turning his season around. First, look to see if he is beginning to pull the ball with some power. Second, watch some of his at bats and see if he favors the thumb in any way.

Episode 140

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is now live! Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss Homer Bailey, in light of his knee injury; Joe Nathan’s mechanical adjustments; rumors of Jimmy Nelson’s pending arrival; Arismendy Alcantara; A.J. Pierzynski’s designation for assignment; Nolan Reimold; Jacob Smolinski; the punting of a roto or head-to-head category; Chris Davis; Manny Machado; Curtis Granderson; David Peralta and Ender Inciarte; James Jones; Robert Refsnyder; Matt Kemp; and Jacob deGrom.

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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Next week I am taking a vacation. I am thinking I will publish just the DL table mid-week and that is probably it. Last time I went on vacation, it took forever to catch back up on it.

• Masahiro Tanaka ended up on the DL with an inflamed elbow. Looking over his past starts, nothing points to a possible injury. Velocity was fine. Consistent release point. He was throwing strikes. Hopefully the Yankees caught the injury in time.

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In the past few weeks, I wrote about my and, I presumed, others’ distaste for certain categories in rotisserie and head-to-head baseball leagues. Some of us don’t care for wins, saves or other cats, or we think we have ideas for better ones. Reader response has been fantastic, I think. Some good discussion, some good points, some good concepts put forth.

Running Frog made a good point. Wins seem to correlate well enough with things like a great number of strikeouts, a good ERA and a good WHIP. He, like others, doesn’t see a reason to change.

I dislike the win in general because:

• If not for its somewhat subjective assignment to an individual, it’d be a team statistic, not just for fantasy purposes.
• Saves and holds are exclusive to relievers, whereas wins aren’t exclusive to starters.

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Pretend you didn’t read the headline of this article and try to guess which pitchers have the most strikeouts so far in July. The usual suspects of Max Scherzer, David Price, Zack Greinke, Stephen Strasburg, and Chris Sale were all in the top 12 after their first two starts of the month. The medalist entering Wednesday was Garrett Richards with 20 strikeouts. He is no surprise at the top of the list after the first half he has put together, one that could land him in the All-Star Game if he can win the fan vote. The man just behind him with 19 strikeouts? He’s more of a surprise.

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I don’t like to recommend to stash players too often. The deeper the league, the more such a move is beneficial, however. Each of these pitchers will have taken different paths to his major league recall. The first is a more exciting option, in my opinion, the second likely a bit safer of a bet. Both are still pretty exciting.

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Episode 139

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is now live! Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix discuss the Chicago Cubs’ new rotation members, including Kyle Hendricks; Shane Greene; what Jake Peavy might look like in a St. Louis Cardinals uni; and a series of requested topics, comprised of Clay Buchholz, Dallas Keuchel’s updated outlook, Charlie Morton, Anibal Sanchez’s disappearing K’s, Jimmy Nelson, Michael Wacha, Shelby Miller, Andrew Heaney, Chase Headley, Xander Bogaerts, and J.J. Hardy’s empty batting average.

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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Jed Lowrie has had a solid start to July, hitting .296 over seven games and showing a few signs of rounding back into form. It’s been but a week, though, and there are still some troubling signs in Lowrie’s profile. Namely, Lowrie’s power seems to be missing, and that would mark the continuation of a multi-season trend of declining slugging ability.

To be clear, Lowrie has still been 20th in shortstop value, speaking to the importance of his run production and the general terribleness of the position. His positional flexibility helps some, too, but as a player who has never looked a threat to hit .275 consistently, Lowrie’s value hinges a good deal on his ability to clear the fence.

And again, that’s not happening, with just four home runs to date and a career-low isolated slugging of .109.
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After talking a bit with Eno Sarris about his pitch type benchmarks, we decided to change up the process a bit. Instead of taking the full average of all of the pitches thrown in a category, we limited the pool to only pitchers who had thrown 20 innings from 2011 to 2013. And we limited the number of pitches we counted to ones that had been thrown 50 times. Hopefully this takes out gimmick pitches and small sample anomalies, for the most part. We’re focusing now on regularly-thrown pitches from somewhat-established pitchers.

We also decided to take the median value within each pitch type. This is a better representation of what’s out there — the old way could have allowed the very excellent pitches to pull the benchmarks north of what could actually be considered an average pitch. We also decided to show you where the 40% benchmark was — the ‘good’ but not ‘above average’ pitches. There are a lot of pitches thrown here that are neither ‘show-me’ pitches nor are they ‘strong’ — think ‘useful.’

Eno will take a look at Matt Cain to bring this all into focus after the new table of benchmarks.

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Brian McCann, whose batting average rests at .230 after a 3-for-5 performance on Monday night, is acutely aware of the quality of his performance at the dish this season. Despite the usual shortage of media attention on the New York Yankees, his feelings on the subject weren’t lost in the shuffle. He’s notorious for high expectations of himself, and he may have taken that to a new level this year, but he’s confident that he’ll turn it around. So is his manager. “He’ll figure it out,” Joe Girardi says.

But what if he doesn’t? McCann, 30, hasn’t hit .270 or better since 2011. His ISO is at .149 and his home run and doubles totals are at just 10, however. Fantasy owners drafted McCann with the expectation that 20 home runs were practically a given and that 25 or even 30 were possible, thanks to the move from spacious Turner Field to the new Yankee Stadium, complete with short right-field porch. It seemed like a good fit. What kind of effect does pressure on oneself have? What if he just stinks?

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