Archive for Head to Head

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.

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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I’d like to talk to you about Dellin Betances.

Wait! Wait. No. No, I wouldn’t. I’d like to talk about Mike Podhorzer first. Mike has published a lot of great work covering the fundamentals of the xK% (and xBB%) metric for pitchers (and hitters), so if you are unfamiliar with or falling behind on his work, I recommend you first click here, here or here. But if you’re lazy, the short of it is: xK%, or expected strikeout rate, is an equation birthed from a linear regression that measures how a pitcher’s looking, swinging and foul-ball strike rates as well as overall strike percentage correlates with his strikeout rate. It doesn’t predict future strikeout rates as much as it retrospectively adjusts past strikeout rates; thus, it is a good tool for identifying pitchers who potentially benefited (or suffered) from good (bad) luck in a previous season – say, 2014.

Like many other metrics completely unrelated to xK%, however, there is evidence that certain players consistently out-perform (or under-perform) what their xK% rates predict their actual K% rates should be. (Mike alludes to this trend in his quip about Jeremy Hellickson, a xK% underachiever, in one of the articles linked above.) Similarly to how a power hitter will post consistently higher ratios of home runs to fly balls (HR/FB) than a non-power hitter, or how Mike Trout will probably post some of the highest batting averages on balls in play (babip) in the league for years to come, it appears there is some skill, or perhaps a particular characteristic, inherent to pitchers who consistently best, or fall short of, their xK% rates.

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Episode 195

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss some news, dive into some of Eno’s pitchers, and wrap up the AL Central with KC and MIN.

Relevant to today’s show:

• Eno’s Pitchers

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 96 minutes of joyous analysis.