Archive for Head to Head

Episode 280

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris continue their discussion of 25-and-Under players to target for 2016 by jumping into starting pitchers. Of course we couldn’t finish all of them so we’ll do more on Thursday, but we do get into plenty including Noah Syndergaard, Julio Teheran, Michael Wacha, Carlos Rodon, Lance McCullers, and Luis Severino among others.

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There’s no getting around it: it’s late September and fall is officially upon us, and as the seasons give way to one another, we mark the end of the waiver wire column for 2015. It’s been rad surveilling the deep fantasy seas with you, but we’re reminded of that line about all good things, so with an eye on closing the deal in the fantasy playoffs, here are two arms who could help the cause in deep leagues.

As usual, the players listed in this space are better suited for mono leagues, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.

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It’s been one heck of a year for rookie hitters. Though, if you’re in a CBS league and take a look at the season-to-date value rankings, you will only find one rookie that made the top 50, Kris Bryant. That’s no surprise though as it’s not often a rookie is that good that he’s able to break into elite fantasy territory in his first season. Of course, some hitters were just promoted too late in the season, like Carlos Correa, to build the counting stats necessary. So while the counting stats from this year’s rookie crop are what we generally expect, the power is not.

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Say it ain’t so! There’s only two weeks of the season left? Wow, how time flies. Hopefully you’re either already in a prize spot or fighting to reach one. The final two weeks are fun because you might decide to make roster moves you would never consider during the earlier part of the season. So here are some random pieces of advice and thoughts for these final two weeks.

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Well, I have had making a two-start evaluator on my to-do list for a while. With the help of Jonah Pemstein, the project is done. A problem is its usefulness with only two weeks left in the season. I am going to roll it out anyway and take comments over the next couple of weeks. It will then be ready for full implementation to start next season.

The setup is pretty simple right now.
•Find the games a pitcher is expected to start this upcoming week.
• Determine the starters projected Steamer stats per start.
• Use my Standing Gain Points formula I calculated to start the season to give each pitcher a weekly value. Then rank them by this value.

This is all the data available for now, but running it for the first time I found a few ways to improve it going forward.
• I ran into a coding error for pitchers who have no more projected starts (end of the list like Hudson or Moore) according to Steamer. I am trying to get the depth charts updated to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.
• On the same note, the stats for pitchers who are swingman (starter and reliever) may be a bit inflated because of the improved reliever rates.
• Wins are just funky but needed to show the value of the chance to pick up two Wins. Ideas?
• The strength of opponent and park factors are not shown or worked in yet. I am working on this portion now but wanted to make the list available before next week.

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Episode 279

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette discuss a group of hitters who have failed to live up to expectation. These aren’t just injury guys, either. Some have dealt with injuries, but all have a substantial amount of playing time and just haven’t done what you’d expect. Names include: Yasmani Grandal, Albert Pujols, Ben Zobrist, Evan Longoria, and Carlos Gomez among others.

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Episode 278

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris offer up their favorite 25-and-under potential keepers around the diamond. These are guys are likely attainable in your leagues, so no Bryce Harper or Jose Fernandez as they are simply cost-prohibitive at their level. These are like Xander Bogaerts, Maikel Franco, Kyle Schwarber, and Kolten Wong among many others.

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Here’s one you haven’t heard before: the baseball season is long. (Who knew?) One potential downside of the six-month grind is that it’s hard to follow everything. My work is baseball – watching it, writing and talking about it – and I still can’t possibly follow everything that is going on in this great game. It’s impossible to miss the historical seasons that Zack Greinke and Bryce Harper are having. Even a breakout season like A.J. Pollock’s is rather prominent. What I find getting lost in the shuffle at times are strong second halves that follow a down or injury-riddled first half.

The underperformance or injury sets the tone for the perception of that player’s season and it can carry throughout the season even in the face of high-end performance refuting the initial look we got at that player. Here are three strong second-half performances that you might be missing:

Travis d’Arnaud [C, NYM]

A solid second half last year plus the rich prospect pedigree of this former first-rounder was enough to make him one of the more appealing C2 options this year sitting 13th among backstops by ADP according to FantasyPros. He came out of the gates firing with a .317/.356/.537 line including 2 HR and 10 RBI in his first 11 games before a fractured right finger sent him to the DL.

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Marcell Ozuna

Marcell Ozuna’s breakout 2014 season offered the promise of another young slugging outfielder to pair with the prodigious bat of Giancarlo Stanton. Ozuna smacked 23 HRs in 612 PAs and the power that he had shown in the early Minors, where he eclipsed 20 HRs on 3 occasions, seemed to have returned. Best of all, as Mike Podhorzer pointed out in his 1/15/2015 article in RotoGraphs about 2014 Batted Ball Distance Surgers, Ozuna was prominently highlighted based upon a gain in batted ball distance of almost 34 feet from 255.51 feet in 2013 to 289.03 feet in 2014. Everything seemed be in place for another strong season for the 24 year old slugger. Except it didn’t happen. In fact, Ozuna was sent down to the Minors for 33 games. His 2015 season has produced a .249/.296/368 slash line with only 8 HRs in 423 PAs. His ISO dropped to an anemic .119 down from last seasons .186 mark.

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The title of the article is an allusion to Schott’s Miscellany, which you should definitely check out if you never have and feel compelled to know that a group of larks is called an exaltation or that a member of the 32nd degree of Freemasonry is known as a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

—Matt Harvey and High-Stress Pitches–

Like most of the baseball world, I’m fascinated by Matt Harvey and the question of whether it is worth it for him to exceed his surgeon-prescribed innings limit because of the Mets’ place in the standings this year. To start, let me stress that I have absolutely no medical training. As a layman, I find it interesting that we rely on innings pitched as the barometer of stress for a pitcher. I expect the reason we do that is because innings pitched is the most accessible measurement of how much pitching a pitcher did. Innings pitched no doubt correlates well with total pitches thrown, so there is little lost by relying on the easier stat to find. Still, would pitches thrown even be the best way to capture the stress a pitcher faced?

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