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.
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:
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.
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).
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?
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.
Sorry I missed you all for most of this weekend, so I’ll make sure to catch you up on the long weekend. There were some mighty stumbles this weekend, but none that should rock the closer grid. Per usual, there were the fair share of saves and only one that so far has made movement in the grid since you last saw it. Let’s talk about the falls first.
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From the day I started playing fantasy baseball, I have placed a premium on players eligible at shortstop because all of the analysis I read and performed myself suggested that the replacement level at shortstop was less productive than the replacement level at other positions. Even in the shortstop boom of the late 90s that featured exceptional fantasy shortstops like Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Jeter, and Barry Larkin, the cliff to non-productive replacement options happened much sooner at shortstop than other positions.
Over the last two seasons, we have entered another shortstop boom as elite prospects like Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor have made their way to the majors. You can check out the Last 365 Days split on the leaderboards to get a taste of their fantasy potential. Over that time frame, Correa has 29 home runs and 22 steals. Lindor has 15 and 21. Xander Bogaerts has hit .335 with 14 steals, and he has projectable power growth ahead of him. Even though players like Mike Trout and Paul Goldschmidt have been projected to have better fantasy statistics, I was prepared to thrust the likes of Correa and Lindor to their rankings neighborhood because I believed that positional scarcity would bridge the gap in their production. I no longer believe that is true.