For a change, this week’s pair of recommendations are not the result of injury. One of them could be usable in more than just deep leagues, depending on your specific format, while the other is truly for the deep leaguers.
Episode 225
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss the injury news surrounding Alex Cobb, Anthony Rendon, Hanley Ramirez, and Oswaldo Arcia. They also dive into the April performances of Stephen Vogt, Josh Reddick, Brandon Crawford, Dee Gordon, Dallas Keuchel, and Alex Wood. They close talking about some call-ups: Chad Billingsley, Tyler Lyons, and Eddie Rosario.
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Yesterday, I dove into the Baseball-Reference S/Str (swinging strike rate) metric and identified those starting pitchers who have enjoyed the biggest surge compared to last season. So naturally, today I’ll check in on the other side of the coin — those starting pitchers who have suffered through the largest decline in swinging strike rate. Obviously, knowing that a pitcher is inducing fewer swings and misses is worrisome, but we’ll see if there’s any hope for a rebound.
A week ago, I identified the starting pitchers whose xK% marks were most above their actual strikeout rates. The swinging strike component is the most significant in my xK% equation, so let’s take a look at which pitchers have enjoyed the biggest surge in their S/Str (Baseball-Reference metric) this season. The 2015 numbers do not include yesterday’s starts.
Episode 224
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette discuss the news related to T.J. House, Desmond Jennings, Zack Cozart, Blake Swihart, Billy Burns, Dilson Herrera, Miguel Castro, Drew Hutchison, Evan Gattis, Stephen Vogt, Nate Karns, Chase Anderson, Brett Anderson, Julio Teheran, Sonny Gray, Trevor Plouffe, and Craig Kimbrel.
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For the first time in years, Justin Maxwell is in demand.
OK, so it’s not a crazy, opening-scene-of-a-Beatles-movie demand, but still, his ownership has jumped 20% in CBS leagues in the past week, and for good reason: He’s off to a hot start. He has an .843 OPS entering Friday’s play, and, for about a week after wrestling away the starting rightfielder job in San Francisco from Gregor Blanco, he had been tattooing the ball with a .333/.407/.833 slash line before he ran into two guys named Kershaw and Greinke. He’s been blasting line drives at a 34.2% clip, the fly ball rate is back to a healthy percentage, and although it’s a young season, his average batted ball distance of nearly 300 feet backs up his 20% HR/FB ratio.
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Episode 223
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss the injury news related to Jed Lowrie, Albert Pujols, Alcides Escobar, Archie Bradley, Anthony Rendon, Mat Latos, and Phil Hughes. They also touch on the call-ups of Tim Cooney and Jack Leathersich (and how it relates to Rafael Montero, who ended up getting hurt during his spot start on Tuesday). And finally they look at some recent performances from Ryan Braun, Denard Span, Hanley Ramirez, Shane Greene, Drew Hutchison, Dallas Keuchel, Mike Pelfrey, and Ubaldo Jimenez.
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NL OF Tiers: March (Preseason) 2015
Also, David Wiers’ AL OF Tiers: May
This is my second ever installment of tiered rankings so, I admit, I’m still figuring out how to properly balance a hitter’s present and future values. It’s too easy to rank them by, say, their current ESPN Player Rater rankings, but it would be foolish to still rank them simply by expected end-of-season value, as I did in March.
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.
–Stolen Base Opportunities–
I did something similar to this a few weeks ago when I looked at RBI relative to plate appearances with runners in scoring position, which I used as an estimate of RBI opportunities. For stolen bases, I decided to define an opportunity as (1) a plate appearance that (2) features at least one received pitch—e.g. the first pitch was not put in play—where (3) the runner in question is on first base and (4) second base is open. Obviously, that’s imperfect for a variety of reasons. Not all plate appearances have the same number of pitches. Counts can matter. And sometimes runners steal third base. Still, I think it’s a decent attempt at a simple measure of how frequently a runner had the opportunity to attempt a stolen base.
It’s tier update time! I’m notoriously stubborn when it comes to changing my opinion of a player and three or four starts is far too small a sample to convince me to make any real dramatic adjustments. However, there are some scenarios in which I will reconsider — a change in fastball velocity, a change in pitch mix, an injury, or perhaps the pitcher’s defensive support performing better or worse than expected. That’s really about it. I care little for actual results at this point unless there’s a significant change in results not explained by the aforementioned factors. Like, if Mark Buehrle was suddenly striking out more than a batter per inning. My xK% equation is fantastic in small sample sizes since it’s based on per-pitch metrics and not innings or batters faced. But still, the underlying components themselves could quickly change.
As a reminder, the tiers are named after the best characters from the FXX show, Man Seeking Woman.
