Archive for Head to Head

Sadly, this is my last post of the week, which means it’s my last set of starting pitcher recommendations. Perhaps if you’re nice, you could convince another RotoGrapher to take the mantle for the last two games of the season.

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Episode 283

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris have got six pitchers who failed to live up to their lofty draft status. The two discuss what went wrong for these pitchers and decide whether or not they will re-invest in 2016.

• Andrew Cashner
• Alex Wood
• Gio Gonzalez
• Yordano Ventura
• Jordan Zimmermann
• Corey Kluber

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Value is nebulous term in fantasy sports. In fact, some (namely colleague and friend Todd Zola of Fantasy Alarm) don’t even like the term anymore as it can be often misused. I believe Zola has some good points against using the word so often, but nevertheless we’ll push forward with it as it conveys the idea I’m going for today. Who delivered the most bang for their buck? For this particular piece, I’ll be looking at those who were drafted regularly.

Determining who was drafted “regularly” will come via the excellent FantasyPros data on average draft positions (ADP) across six different sites. I used a 350 ADP as the cutoff, that covers 10- and 12-team leagues easily (23-man roster plus reserves) and gets pretty deep into 15-team leagues. Here is the overall ranking and then you can click by each position. I’m looking at this by position and comparing a player’s draft slot at his position to where he stands now.

To qualify as the best value, they must be in the top 12 at their position per the FantasyPros Player Rater. It’s great that Adam Lind is 32 spots higher than his draft spot at 1B, but he’s still only 17th at the position. Mark Teixeira is similar in that he’s 26 spots better than his draft slot, but sits just 20th at the position (due in part to an injury shortening his season, obviously).

CATCHER

Stephen Vogt [OAK – Draft: 23rd at C, 315th Overall; 2015: 6th at C]

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Brian Dozier

Brian Dozier has 28 HRs this season making him the most prolific power-hitting second basemen in the game. Coming off a 2014 season where he hit 23 HRs, and tied Neil Walker for the most HRs by a second baseman, this is a significant jump and provided fantasy owners with some unexpected extra returns in the power department. On the positive side of the equation this season, his LD% is at a 23.4% rate and his hard hit % is 29.4% which are both career highs. But there are some areas of concern to consider if you want to bet that he keeps up this level of HR production next season.

Clear indications in his hitting profile suggest that he has sold out for extra power. His overall contact rate dropped from a respectable 84.2% last season to 79.3% this season. Dozier is making substantially less contact on pitches outside the zone which has contributed to 3% increase in his K%. He is pulling the ball more than ever, which may account for part of his HR surge, but his Chase Rate is up to 30.7% from 28.4% last season.

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Thanks to you commenters, it’s clear that getting the scheduled starter right for even just two days after I type this is a difficult task for my source. How did it tell me that Adam Conley would start today when he actually started the previous day?! I am using my fantasy site on CBS since the format of the probable starters was easiest to copy to Excel and eventually get into this post. Hopefully there aren’t any more mistakes!

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So as I figured, you guys benefit significantly more from start/sit advice for starting pitchers scheduled the following day. For the rest of my posts this week, that’s what I’ll do. Unfortunately, that means that tonight’s starters won’t get a write-up. However, if you have any questions about who to start or bench today, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to monitor and respond while at the office.

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Episode 282

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette meander along the baseball highway on this penultimate Sunday of the regular season. Jason brings up the second-half leaderboards and we hit some surprises scattered on each end of said leaderboards. It’s a pretty chill episode, small technical glitch in the middle, you’ll hear it.

If you have anything you’d like to hear us discuss next week, let us know in the comments. 

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It’s the last week of the season! And that hopefully means that all our wonderful advice will result in a first place finish after the final pitch is thrown this Sunday. But this also means that I was expecting to spend hours tonight trying to figure out what to write about. How does one dole out advice with just one week left in the season?! So I’ll go with an unoriginal daily starting pitcher start/bench theme. Naturally, with everyone in different league formats and sizes, it’s hard to offer a one size fits all recommendation. So I’ll do my best. Also, you’ll notice these are tonight’s matchups. I believe for some of you, you cannot actually pick up and start a pitcher on the same day, so advice on the following day’s pitchers would be more beneficial. If this is indeed your situation, speak up in the comments!

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After his first nine Major League starts, Luis Severino has somehow failed to excite any of us RotoGraphers enough to convince us to write an article about him. So here it is, finally. Before the season, Kiley ranked Severino as the Yankees top prospect and the 26th best prospect in baseball. He figured that Severino would get his cup of coffee late this season or first debut in 2016. So pitching his first game on August 5th was probably earlier than most expected.

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With few exceptions, this has been a very poor year for fantasy production from the catcher spot. As always, injuries had a major role to play as Devin Mesoraco, Matt Wieters, Travis d’Arnaud, and Jonathan Lucroy fell victim to injury and experienced what amounted to lost seasons.  But other catching stalwarts or expected rising stars also disappointed. Let’s take a look at this epidemic of missing stats.

* Only 222 PA this season

While Miguel Montero was close, Buster Posey was the only catcher projected to be in the top 10 in 2015 that met or exceeded all of their pre-season stats projections.

Below are the current overall CBS Player rankings for the top 10 catchers compared to their pre-season expected rankings.

Evan Gattis, Carlos Santana, and Wiln Rosario were 3 players who qualified at Catcher, were ranked in the Pre-Season top 10 at the position, and actually played their games in 2015 at other positions. They all have disappointed this season.  This performance hurts fantasy owners even more because they were probably drafted higher than they normally would because of the expected advantage in counting stats over catchers who normally miss a game or two a week.

Wiln Rosario continued to demonstrate very troubling splits in 2015 that resulted in the significant loss of PAs and he has only logged 222 PAs this season. Here’s more on the other two….

Evan Gattis:

After a 2014 season with the Braves where Gattis batted .263 and produced 22 HRs and drove in 52 in just 108 games, great things were expected with a move to the AL and the more friendly confines of the Astro’s Ballpark. Many had predicted that with increased PAs and forgoing the wear and tear of catching duties Gattis would easily top the 30 HR mark this season.  While his PAs increased significantly to 565, his ISO receded from .230 to .209 and he has clubbed 26 HR to date. What has stayed consistent is his BA which at .243 is closer to his career .249 mark. His .249/.281/.452 slash line is well off the .257/.296/.507 numbers that were projected by CBS Sports.

The biggest culprit seems to be a change in approach at the plate where he is pulling the ball far less and making less authoritative contact. He also seems to have developed some issues driving the fastball and the cutter now completely confounds him. His batted ball distance on HRs is down 20 feet and he has lost 3 mph on his bat speed. Even though 26 HRs in a catcher eligible position is nothing to sneeze at, according to the ESPN Home Run Tracker, almost 50% of those HRs have been of the JE or “Just Enough” variety which does not portend well for his power numbers next season. Considerng the fact that he has also lost 100 points of average against lefty pitching this season and you have more than enough reasons for missing projections.  New league, new batting approach, and new ballpark are three very impactful changes, so hopefully Gattis will recapture his mojo next season but his catching eligibility is gone.

Carlos Santana:

Carlos Santana erupted for 27 HRs in 2014 which tied for his career high. Since he played 11 games at catcher in 2014, he came into the 2015 season eligible at that positions in many leagues. Last season he appeared in 152 games and had 660 PA’s so the expectations for his counting stats was very high. He was projected to be the kind of player who would yield a significant advantage to those who could slot him in at catcher. Right now, he is projected to reach the 660 PA plateau again this season but he most likely will fall short of hitting even 20 HRs. Santana’s 11 SBs this season is an unexpected gift, but his .236/.362/.380 slash line is below expectations. Santana’s .153 ISO is the lowest of his career.

While he has maintained his excellent plate discipline, his hard hit % is down 6% to a career-low 29.5% and he is undercutting the ball to the tune of a 20.3% IFFB rate. Last season only 7 of his 27 HR’s were of the ESPN Home Run Tracker JE or “Just Enough” designation while 6 of his 16 are this season. Santana is just not hitting the ball with the same authority as he did last year and his power stats have suffered. Like Gattis, his eligibility at catcher will be gone in 2016.

Brian McCann, Russell Martin, Stephen Vogt, Derek Norris, Rick Hundley, Welington Castillo, Yasmani Grandal, and Kyle Schwarber provided some solace for fantasy owners who invested wisely and did not overpay for catcher production. But even among this group, only one of these catchers, Stephen Vogt, is batting over .249.

There is some hope for 2016. If the injured contingent of Mesoraco, Lucroy, and Wieters are able to return to health, and quality youngsters like D’Arnaud,  Schwarber, Swihart, and Realmuto continue to develop, led by the super talented Buster Posey and some of the performers above, we could have an altogether different picture next season. And Baseball Prospectus lauds the catching depth in the Minors as “potentially historic”, so the future could be very bright at the catcher position for years to come and help erase the stench of the 2015 season.