Back in early April, I wrote a Five Under 50% post in which I implored fantasy owners to invest in the likes of Nick Franklin and Dan Altavilla. I urged readers to steer clear of Marwin Gonzalez, and promised that Edwin Diaz’s job was as safe as they come.

Naturally, Franklin has a 38 wRC+, Altavilla has a 6.60 ERA, Gonzalez has a .419 wOBA, and Diaz is no longer the Mariners closer. Sorry about that.

Before you quit reading this post because, really, why should you trust me, just know that my predictions weren’t all terrible. I also forecasted success for Scott Schebler (.365 wOBA), Mark Reynolds (.419 wOBA), and Ryan Zimmerman (.469 wOBA), who have been among the best hitters in baseball this year.

Not every gamble will pay off. But when it does, it can transform a fantasy team. It’s been about a month and a half since my last Five Under 50% post, and with renewed confidence, I’m prepared to do it again now.

Below are five (actually seven; I cheated) players owned in less than 50% of Ottoneu leagues whom I think may be worth an add in most leagues. There’s no need to jealously yearn for these players later when you can win them now for pennies on the dollar.

1. Chris Taylor (2B/SS/3B; 39%) Read the rest of this entry »

To date, all of my Effective Velocity research has centered on pitchers. That is probably because the story that introduced me to the concept of EV focused on Trevor Bauer in the narrative, which tied the concept to the position in my mind. However, the more I’ve thought about it over the last several weeks, the more convinced I’ve become that catchers would likely share the responsibility for their pitchers’ EV adherence. After all, for every Bauer, there are probably dozens of pitchers who rarely if ever shake off the signs their catchers throw down. Meanwhile, the concept of EV falls into the game-calling strategy bucket that we more typically associate with catchers than pitchers.

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The research I’ve done on Effective Velocity to date has led to some interesting examples that in many cases suggest the strategy has an impact on pitcher success.  But to be able to really take advantage of that implication, I felt I needed to create an ERA estimator that would apply to all pitchers.  If that metric were more predictive of future performance than our current best ERA estimators like FIP, then fantasy owners could systematically use it to make better decisions based on pitchers’ adherence to the philosophy of Effective Velocity.

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It’s a well-established fact that AT&T Park is one of the worst ballparks in the major leagues for offense. That’s why, despite putting up a 132 wRC+ over his last 1,500 or so plate appearances, Brandon Belt is not a very valuable fantasy first baseman. It’s also why Buster Posey, a catcher with a career 136 wRC+, has never really been worthy of a top-10 pick on fantasy draft day.

In recent years, however, a new and troubling trend has emerged for the Giants offense. While the league has been on an historic home run tear the last year and a half or so, the Giants have not kept up. In fact, they’ve done the opposite: they’re hitting more ground balls (and fewer fly balls) than just about any other team in baseball.

Ground balls are almost always worse than fly balls, even for a team that plays in a cavernous ballpark like the Giants. Since 2014, Giants hitters have a .245 AVG, .263 SLG, .223 wOBA, and 45 wRC+ on ground balls at home. On their fly balls at home, however, they have a .226 AVG, .598 SLG, .332 wOBA, and 119 wRC+ since 2014.

While the team batting average is actually higher on ground balls, the slugging percentage, wOBA, and wRC+ are so, so much worse. This is strong evidence to the effect that even a team that plays in an extreme pitcher’s park is not better off hitting ground balls — flies seem to be indisputably better no matter what. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I discussed 10 hitters whose FB% has increased the most compared to last year. So now let’s check in on the other end of the list — the hitters whose FB% has declined the most versus last season. These hitters may be in danger of disappointing in the home run department.

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At the time of this writing, there are 37 major league hitters with a wRC+ of 150 or higher. There are the usual suspects: Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, and Nolan Arenado are on the leaderboard to no one’s surprise. There are exciting young prospects, including Mitch Haniger, Aaron Judge, and Joey Gallo. Then there are unexpected names like Eric Thames, Cesar Hernandez, and Robbie Grossman.

Lengthy articles could be, and have been, written about any of the players above. One player who hasn’t received much publicity despite some relatively prolonged success is Grossman.

He checks in with a 158 wRC+ in 67 plate appearances so far this year. Steamer projects a .322 wOBA and 99 wRC+ for the rest of the season (ROS), and that projection puts him just a few ticks behind his highly-touted teammate Max Kepler. Although Kepler is three years younger and may have a higher ceiling, the point is that name recognition can play a pretty big role in how we analyze players.

Also, Grossman used to be bad. From 2013 to 2015, he had just a .281 wOBA and 77 wRC+ in 202 plate appearances against left-handed pitching, despite being a switch hitter. Since 2016, however, Grossman has a .417 wOBA and 166 wRC+ in 170 plate appearances against lefties. Even with his early-career struggles against lefties, Grossman now has a lifetime .344 wOBA and 118 wRC+ against them. Read the rest of this entry »

In his debut season last year, Ryan Schimpf enjoyed one of the most extreme set of underlying skills I have ever observed. He posted the second highest fly ball rate over a single season since 2002, the first year we have data for. He also hit a ton of pop-ups and few line drives. Oh, and he struck out over 30% of the time and walked at a double digit clip. He was a man of extremes.

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In my previous article on Effective Velocity, I discovered that the pitchers who had EV Adherence rates above the 80th percentile collectively had an ERA that was 10 points below their FIP between 2013 and 2016. Put differently, the pitchers who most closely followed the principles of Effective Velocity seemed to be able to consistently outperform their peripheral numbers, presumably because their sequences of pitches had large perceived differences in velocity for hitters, which kept those hitters off-balance and generated weaker contact on average. That is a pretty notable finding because EV Adherence is a strategy that anyone can pick up, and my research for this week’s article demonstrates that many pitchers have done so in recent seasons and found success.

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Just before the season started, the FanGraphs staff (including RotoGraphs contributors) was asked to make its official predictions for the upcoming season. We took our best shot at predicting the playoff teams, MVP and Cy Young Award winners, and Rookies of the Year for 2017. Perhaps in the coming weeks we will check in with the top picks for MVP and Cy Young, but in this article, we’re going to look at the top rookies.

Our staff picks on the American League side had Andrew Benintendi (40 votes) as the overwhelming favorite to be named the league’s top rookie, with Jharel Cotton (4) and Mitch Haniger (4) rounding out the top three.

Over in the National League, Dansby Swanson (27 votes) was the favorite by a wide margin, followed by Robert Gsellman (12), Manuel Margot (5), and Hunter Renfroe (4).

While it’s extremely early and still much too soon to make any concrete statements about who will win this year’s awards, let’s take a look at the wide-ranging early season performances of the players we expect to be the game’s top newcomers: Read the rest of this entry »

We know that pitch velocity stabilizes rather quickly and while a pitcher’s pitch mix each game could vary, sometimes wildly, it’s generally consistent from year to year. But often times, pitchers introduce a new pitch or switch up their current pitch mix in an effort to be more effective. Those changes could lead to a breakout if the pitcher lands on the optimal mix. Although we’re still only a couple of games started into the season, let’s take a gander at those starters who have thrown any of their pitches 15% more or less frequently than last season.

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