This week I wanted to check on three teams with injuries at first base and what timetables those teams are looking at for returns, along with analysis of their replacements. I skipped the Cardinals in this write-up because most fans should be rather familiar with Matt Adams and Jedd Gyorko is being picked up like crazy in most leagues, so his availability has started to get limited in deeper leagues.
I’m no artist, but as we enter August let me paint a picture of what I see happening in many fantasy leagues:
“My team started fast and I was optimistic in May, but since then I’ve fallen out of the race and am now looking only towards next season.”
“My league’s title chase appeared to be close in June, but just a month or so later it now looks like it’s really over – it’s a one (maybe two) horse race.”
“Our league trade deadline is still 30 days away but no one is really buying at this point. It makes for a tough sell.”
“A lot of the owners in my league seem like they’ve checked out for the summer. There’s just not a lot of activity from those teams lower in the standings.”
Familiar? Of course I’m using very broad brush strokes here but you get the point: it’s rare to find a fantasy league that has a hot race involving half your league’s teams in August (and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one in September). But this isn’t really surprising, is it? Still, if you’ve ever won a fantasy league then you know the only thing better than winning is winning a competitive fantasy league. We all want to win among the best, don’t we? That’s what bragging rights are all about.
My original intent for this article was to debate whether or not it’s possible to legislate competitiveness within your fantasy league, but we’ll just skip to the conclusion and say “it’s not”. This fact is probably obvious to you but in 20 years of being a fantasy commissioner I can tell you I’ve tried many times to drive competition up and down the standings each season, but in the end there’s no secret sauce. Instead, I’ve come to the conclusion that attempting to build an active league is far better than trying to manufacture a competitive one, so today I’ll leave you with a few ideas that might help increase engagement in your league, and also ask for your feedback on what else might be working for you.
On Tuesday night, Steven Wright was roughed up for nine hits and eight earned runs in 4.2 innings against the Tigers. Amazingly, he remains seventh among qualified starters in the AL with a 3.12 ERA, but there seems to be this constant fear that Wright could become a bad pitcher at any moment. Given his lack of track record before this season, I think some apprehension is justifiable. However, my perception is that the greater part of the mistrust of Wright’s performance to date is tied to his being a knuckleballer, which I believe makes people think these sorts of blow-up performances are all but guaranteed when he loses the feel for his most important pitch.
After missing the entirety of the 2015 season and nearly two-thirds of this season, former top prospect Tyler Skaggs finally made his triumphant return from Tommy John surgery on Tuesday. Though the surface results are meaningless, he did go seven innings, striking out five, while issuing just one walk. The now-25-year-old showed serious strikeout ability in the minors and his ground ball spike in 2014 was intriguing. And although his strikeout rate slipped in 2014, his fastball velocity jumped three miles per hour, which is almost unheard of when it’s not related to a move from the starting rotation to the bullpen. So we had the makings of a true sleeper here. Now that he’s back, is he worth rostering?
No, your computer screen hasn’t frozen from several weeks ago, nor is FanGraphs on repeat. Instead, I’m double dipping, reiterating two recommendations I have made over the past month.
Yesterday, I discussed some of the starting pitchers whose xK% significantly exceeded their actual K% marks, suggesting strikeout rate upside over the rest of the season. Today, I’ll check in on the opposite end of the spectrum, looking at those fantasy relevant starting pitchers whose strikeout rates are far exceeding their xK% marks.
Let’s do one final rest of season xK% update. If you recall, my xK% equation uses Baseball-Reference.com metrics to calculate a pitcher expected strikeout rate. It’s missing a sequencing component, though who knows if that’s even a skill. But even without accounting for such, it has proven to be one of the best expected metrics we have developed, at least by R-squared. So let’s begin with the fantasy relevant starting pitchers whose expected strikeout rates are well above their actual marks, suggesting significant upside over the rest of the season.
Washington is said to be looking to make a move for another major bullpen arm. Wade Davis is one name they are looking at, and Aroldis Chapman is another guy they have inquired about. No deal is imminent at this point, but you may need to start thinking about and potentially acting on the implications of one of these guys going to Washington. Would the Nationals move Papelbon out of the closer’s role? Even though he has posted a 2.64 ERA and 2.94 FIP, it’s hard to argue he deserves a higher leverage role than a Davis or Chapman. Papelbon has a lower HR/FB% (5.3%) and GB% (36.8%) than his career norms, which would concern me as a Papelbon owner. Papelbon is also known to be territorial about his closer’s role, so that is also a scenario to monitor if the Nationals do acquire a big arm for the bullpen. Trading Chapman would move Andrew Miller into the closer’s role, who should be owned in most leagues, whereas Davis’ trade would give Kelvin Herrera a nice hold on the job, especially after Joakim Soria had another rough outing tonight.
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I wanted to try something I have never done before, but always enjoy reading when others do it. I’m referring to blind comparisons, where you compare two or more players’ statistics without saying who they are. When Paul Sporer and I went to an HQ seminar, the presenters did this a lot. Sporer was pretty good, where I think I said Adam Eaton for every player with a low ADP and a decent amount of stolen bases. Like I said, this is my first shot at this so I doubt I will come up with any crazy pairings just yet, and I limited this article to first basemen so the sampling is a bit smaller than if I did the whole league. In the words of Ghostface Killah, “Be Easy.”
These are numbers I compiled Thursday morning, so if anything big happened yesterday, I would’ve missed it. Though one game shouldn’t skew these numbers that much, obviously. Also, for ADP, I went to FantasyPros who compiled the ADP from NFBC, CBS, Yahoo, ESPN, and RTS, then averaged those numbers. Let’s get started.
| G | PA | HR | R | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | wRC | ADP | |
| Player A | 92 | 386 | 10 | 46 | 47 | 0 | 0.285 | 0.389 | 0.491 | 0.375 | 142 | 63 | 136.4 |
| Player B | 83 | 304 | 10 | 42 | 40 | 0 | 0.289 | 0.368 | 0.467 | 0.361 | 129 | 46 | N/A |
Wade Miley hasn’t been a fantasy-relevant pitcher this season with his 5.36 ERA, but his performance on Tuesday night against the White Sox piqued my interest nonetheless. He wasn’t particularly good in the start, allowing three runs with just four strikeouts and three walks over 6.1 innings. However, Miley was just two pitches away from preventing the White Sox from scoring at all.
