Yesterday, I discussed the players fantasy owners in CBS have been scurrying to pick up over the last week. Today I’ll look at the opposite side of the coin, those players you’re dropping like a hot potato. In general, fantasy owners seem to be far too quick with their mouse clicking, willing to drop players after a week-long slump. Even if they are near replacement level to begin with, there’s no benefit to such churning and playing the “hot hand”. It will just increase your stress level, without actually improving your team. So let’s see if that’s the case with the top dropped players this time, or if the moves are justified. I have excluded players on the disabled list.

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Fantasy owners are heavily influenced by the forces of recency bias. A hitter is in the midst of a hot streak, having hit .400 over the last week with a pair of long balls? Pick him up! Unfortunately, we know that such streaks have limited, if any, predictive value, resulting in this strategy usually being a losing one. But that’s not always the case, as a hot streak could lead to increased playing time and we’re always chasing at-bats (and innings pitched). So let’s take a gander at which players have been added the most in CBS leagues over the last week and determine whether picking them up is a good move. Obviously, context plays a huge role in decisions like these, but since we have no such information, we’ll do our best.

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Episode 234

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss the injury news around Matt Adams and Scott Kazmir before finishing w/the brief injury scare around Wei-Yin Chen that turned out to be nothing… so far. They dive into the performances of Josh Donaldson, Alex Rodriguez, Hanley Ramirez, David Ortiz, Mark Trumbo, Noah Syndergaard, and Anibal Sanchez. They end with some talk about call-ups Buck Farmer and Eduardo Rodriguez, both debuting tonight, Farmer’s 2015 debut and Rodriguez’s MLB debut.

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It is fashionable to ridicule a fantasy owner for panicking in April. It’s early, they say. Something about small sample size, they say.

Yet here I am in late May — which is pretty much June to the common antiestablishmentarian — watching y’all sit stoically with your coveted, probably somewhat expensive shares of Matt Kemp (96% owned in Yahoo! leagues) and Carlos Gonzalez (94%) as they flounder in the batter’s box. That was condescending, yes, but I know I benefit from the luxury of not facing such painful decisions (nor enduring the mighty struggles of once-established sluggers).

I recently discussed CarGo and Kemp here and here, respectively. Unless you can get a decent return on name value from someone who thinks he’s buying low, it may be time to cut bait. I’m here to remind you: it’s OK to let go, to start anew. It’s just hard sometimes, I know. I’m here to help you transition.

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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.

–League-Neutral FIP–

A few weeks ago, I was researching quality of opposition and stumbled upon the unsurprising conclusion that there are major differences in the AL and NL. For pitchers, one difference between the leagues is obvious. In the NL, they face opposing pitchers. In the AL, they face designated hitters.

It can be difficult to tease out the impact of that difference for pitchers in stats like ERA because runs are the result of a series of events that are not easily attributable to individual players. However, with FIP, pitchers are measured only by their strikeouts, walks, and home runs, each of which can be assigned to a specific batter. As such, you can adjust FIP for league by measuring those strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed by pitchers against only non-pitcher, non-DH batters. It does not wholly capture the differences in quality of competition between the leagues, but does account for the most glaring discrepancy in types of batters faced.

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Strikes are good. Your favorite starting pitcher throwing a higher rate of them is a wonderful sign. In fact, I like to identify high strikeout starters with control issues as breakout candidates. Control is much easier to improve upon then strikeout rate and it tends to get better with maturity. So let’s take a look at eight American League starting pitchers throwing a higher rate of overall strikes than last season. For context, the league average Str% is 64.2%

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Craving some serious deep league action? Look no further as I have another one of those popular 0% ownership names!

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Episode 233

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss the injury news around Devin Mesoraco, Yasmani Grandal, Yan Gomes, Jonathan Lucroy, Travis d’Arnaud, Matt Wieters, Avisail Garcia, Michael Morse, Shane Victorino, James Loney, Devon Travis, Steven Souza, Johnny Cueto, Danny Duffy, and Wily Peralta. They dive into the performances of Charlie Morton, Phil Hughes, Drew Hutchison, and Prince Fielder. They end with bullpen discussions about Oakland, Texas, and Arizona.

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It’s the unofficial start of summer, and as the fantasy season heads into June, here are two bats who have been hot lately. As a reminder, the players discussed in this column are typically more suited for mono leagues, and I use CBS for the ownership percentages.
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The batted ball distribution metrics, for both pitchers and hitters, are some of the most stable statistics around. A pitcher’s ground ball rate stabilizes after just 70 batters faced, which is basically just three starts. So what this means is that when we see a significant change in a player’s batted ball mix, we have to take it seriously. Let’s take a look at the starting pitcher’s who have enjoyed the largest surges in their ground ball rates and see if we could uncover an explanation.

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