Clayton Kershaw is ridiculously good. You know this. I know this. There is not much to say about him for fantasy owners other than you should start him every time in every format. But perhaps because I hit my dog days of summer two months early this season, I wanted to write an article about Kershaw to wrap my head around just how good he has been.

For the purposes of this article, I am going to rely on a stat called Game Score, which Bill James came up with to compare starts to one another. You can look up exactly how Game Score is calculated here. Unless you are in a format that rewards pitchers for getting outs, Game Score is not a perfect proxy for the fantasy value of a start, but it does reward pitchers for strikeouts and penalize them for earned runs, hits, and walks, all of which play into the standard rotisserie categories. Meanwhile, Game Score is a convenient way to place one number on a start that reflects its quality.

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Throughout his career, Danny Duffy has shuffled between the Royals starting rotation and their bullpen. Let’s compare his underlying skills in each role:

Danny Duffy Skills – Starter vs Reliever

Role	K%	BB%	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	SwStr%	BABIP	LOB%	HR/FB	ERA	SIERA
Starter	18.6%	9.7%	21.6%	36.3%	42.1%	15.1%	8.3%	0.288	75.5%	8.7%	3.89	4.48
Reliever	31.2%	7.1%	21.7%	43.4%	34.9%	10.3%	15.0%	0.298	79.2%	3.4%	2.08	2.48

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Last week, I took Alex Chamberlain’s xBABIP equation for the first drive of the 2016 season, identifying those hitters whose xBABIPs most exceeded their actual BABIP marks. That was your potential BABIP surger list. Today I’ll check in on the flip side, those hitters whose BABIP marks greatly exceed their xBABIP marks. These hitters are at serious risk for BABIP, and resulting batting average, regression.

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We have two months of data in the books, so I have decided to deviate a littler further from my previous first base tier rankings. In case you were curious about where the first basemen ranked previously, here you go:

Preseason 1B Rankings

May 1B Rankings (although I mistakenly put April)

I’ve decided to add some tiers this go around because there are players who fall into two categories who I am having difficulty tiering with the rest of the first basemen. The first additional tier will be guys out for any significant time be it injury, suspension, or are simply in the minors. It’s great to stash some of these guys if you have the room, but you should be looking elsewhere for playing time so I simply ranked them in value in their own tier.

The other tier is for those multi-positional players. I had been very adamant that you should not be using catchers as your first basemen. That was until I had Kevin Plawecki, Yasmani Grandal, and Miguel Montero in a two catcher NL-only league, and needed to trade my starting first baseman for speed. So I am more sympathetic to wanting to put different people at 1B, but still struggle where to rank them amongst the more regular first basemen. This tier is just ranking those players with ten or less games at 1B who will not get the majority time at first. A few guys may have slipped in who are also ranked with the rest of the 1B.

The theme for this month’s tier rankings are my favorite summer jams. I work in education and yesterday was the last day for the students at the middle school I work at, so summer has officially started for us. Some songs have summer themes, whereas others are just fun songs that I like to hear during the summer months. If you disagree with my song selections, please make sure to list your favorites and why I am wrong, and I will do my best to ignore them. Just kidding…sort of. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
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Wade Davis was given the night off after recording his 16th save last night. Luke Hochevar and Kelvin Herrera each earned holds (10 and 15 respectively), as Hochevar pitched a clean 7th and Herrera, well, not so much as he gave up a run on two singles and a walk. Joakim Soria pitched the 9th, which is semi-surprising since it seemed like Herrera would be the next in line for saves if the moment arises. Guess Ned Yost thought it’d be best to not mess around too much with the bullpen order and give the save situation to the guy with more experience. Didn’t work out so well for the Royals as Soria blew his second save of the year giving up two runs on two hits (including a triple) and a game-ending sacrifice fly. I could change the chart based on tonight’s usage, but also feel like if a long-term situation was to come up, Herrera would be the guy.
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It’s that time of year again, American League starting pitcher tier update time! I still pay no attention to ERA, as it’s not a metric I use for evaluation and ranking pitchers for rest of season performance. Player movement between tiers will only occur when there’s a change in underlying skill, pitch mix, or velocity.

Tiers are named for the best characters on the brilliant FXX show, Man Seeking Woman.

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Have you ever had an idea that seemed crazy? Or maybe tried something with no real clue how it would pan out? Well, this is one of those times. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll pick up on the prospect theme that Justin and Tom touched on in this week’s podcast: helium watch.  In other words, here are a four somewhat under the radar prospects that have caught my eye this year that could have increasing value over the second half of the season and turn into real assets in the near future in Ottoneu (and other deep leagues).

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If you were dying to roster a Michael, today’s deep league waiver wire gives you two options. Given that Michael is the world’s best name (I’m obviously not biased), then why wouldn’t you be racing to the free agent pool to dive in and catch one?

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It’s hard to believe that we’re now about two months into the season and this has been my first post on xBABIP all year. Well, here it is. While I developed my own xBABIP equation back in early 2015, the availability of new data since my formula was published allowed Alex Chamberlain to create an equation I prefer and use instead. Not only is the r-squared slightly better, but all the metrics are available here on FanGraphs. When I’m looking to buy low, the most attractive targets are hitters whose power is fine, but are simply suffering from an unfortunate BABIP. Below is that list of hitters.

For the first time, I have included all the components of the xBABIP equation so we can get a better sense of which component(s) each hitter is excelling in and where he could improve.

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