Episode 198

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss a potential position change for Kris Bryant, Joba Chamberlain back to Detroit, and Lucas Duda dealing with an oblique issue. Then they discuss Eno’s Pitcher Ranks and finish up by beginning the NL Central team-by-team previews with Chicago and Cincinnati.

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I spend a lot of time looking at pitching in any given offseason. Doing the starting pitching guide every year makes me fully aware of the pitching pool from top to bottom. I don’t have a similar exercise for digging as deeply into hitters so one thing I like to do is take a look at the part-time players, level set them at 600 PA, and see what shakes out. Let me be clear: extrapolation is dangerous. There is a lot of noise in small samples as there just isn’t enough time for everything to stabilize.

The purpose of this exercise is to unearth some potential playing time breakout candidates. Sometimes opportunity is the only real thing fueling a player’s breakout. I don’t just pick from the top of every leaderboard and tab those as potential breakouts. First off, I use 200-400 PA as the threshold so this will include a lot of injury guys. I think Troy Tulowitzki is on it yearly. Obviously we know about those guys.

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

The Mariners’ rotation might not boast the immense quality of, say, the Washington Nationals, but fantasy owners will find plenty of useful pieces in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, the party is led by one of baseball’s undisputed aces, but he’s joined by two solid rotation men and a host of talented upside guys on the back end. Meanwhile, the Mariners, coming off a strong 87-75 record last year, should give their starters plenty of chances to cash in on wins, especially with a bullpen that was among the league leaders in WAR, a lineup that just added Nelson Cruz and a ballpark that caters toward pitchers.
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Yesterday, I discussed some of the starting pitchers ranked inside the top 100 who us rankers most disagreed on. Though it was suggested that a better comparison would be solely between ranks within the position and not overall, I’m not sure that matters since it’s all relative. If one ranker devalues pitchers (Jeff), then all his pitchers will be ranked lower, so it’s moot.

Here is a selection of starting pitchers ranked outside the top 100 who we greatly disagree about.

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• I will steal the words of the great philosopher Ned Yost to intro this list of broken down ball players:

“… everything being written at this time of year is just ‘fluff’.

So much ‘Fluff’ right now. I am getting a ton of small updates with how everyone is feeling great and/or making outstanding progress. I am not going to write about each of these “Best Shape in Whenever” reports, but will put them into the injury spreadsheet. I will just try to concentrate on bad news until some games start.

• The Braves Shae Simmons will miss all of the 2015 season because of Tommy John surgery. He was the first player to officially go on the DL in 2015. Chris Withrow and Brandon Beachy has since joined him.

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Last week, I discussed which hitters us rankers most disagreed on based on our consensus top 300. Today I move on to the starting pitchers. Keep in mind that innings pitched plays a major role in valuations. Aside from the boost in both wins and strikeouts that come with more innings, the ratios have more of an effect. For example, an $8.16 Michael Pineda in 155 innings is worth $15.49 in 200 innings! Now it’s on to the head-scratchers.

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Episode 197

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette discuss a light news day which is pretty Dodgers-centric and then finish the NL West team previews with LAD, SD, and SF.

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

There aren’t too many infields that can match the Indians’ selection of quality options at typically hard-to-fill positions, including a catcher coming off a breakout season, a corner infielder with solid power capability and a second baseman ready to return to his all-star form. As a bonus, there are several interesting depth pieces as well that owners in deep leagues might find useful.
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Episode 196

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss Jurickson Profar, Kenley Jansen, Chris Owings, and Everth Cabrera and then dive into the NL West team previews with ARI and COL.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed. Please rate & review the show in iTunes letting us know what you think!

Thanks to Ian Miller, aka Teen Archer, for the intro music. Approximately 78 minutes of joyous analysis.

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Tyler Matzek’s 2014 is why teams are so reluctant to ever give up on a guy, especially if he’s left-handed. It was a grim outlook for Matzek. Like, really, really, really grim. His minor league numbers in total have him with a 4.33 ERA which isn’t the worst, but then you keep looking and your ipecac-fueled vomit-fest starts to kick in with a 1.58 WHIP and impossibly-high 15 percent walk rate in 549.3 innings. And most of that was done before even getting to Triple-A.

The former blue-chip prospect (twice a top 35 prospect at Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America) had a 21 percent walk rate in 97 innings back in 2011. Again, he had a TWENTY-ONE PERCENT WALK RATE in a real amount of innings. That was on the heels of being ranked 34^th and 32^nd at the two outlets in the preseason.

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