Archive for Hitters

Joe Camp won his league, probably because he reads us and listens to our podcasts here, I dunno, but that’s my guess, totally not because he’s an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. Anyway, he won his league, and his leaguemates started chirping about a couple trades he made that year that may have appeared lopsided at the time — my personal opinion is that vetoes suck, and are a dampener on league activity, and we should all be active and talking to each other as much as possible, so if you were on it, you would have made that lopsided trade first — and so Mr. Camp set out to prove he would have won the league anyway.

The way he did it? He took the worst team in the league and replaced everyone on the team with the best free agent pickups of the year. He then compared that team with everyone’s originally drafted teams. The free agents easily won — 96 points to 87 for the best drafted team.

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First, a few words about my offseason writing at Rotographs. Besides reporting any possible relevant fantasy news, I plan on systematically going through two groups of players and work on their 2017 values. I will start at the top of the 2017 rankings and also somewhere in the middle and work my way down each list. I may be able to do a handful of players each article or I might by limited to just the two players. Either way, I will start putting together a 2017 draft ranking.

Additionally, I will try to follow Eno’s schedule for the other writers (e.g. players on playoff teams for the next couple of weeks). If they are looking at outfielders for that specific week, I will also look at outfielders.

The other project I will work through is being able to put a better evaluation on prospects for fantasy purposes. I will use the evaluations of various prospect writers and publications and put their evaluations into something which can be used in fantasy circles. I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish, but I am sure there will be some roadblocks and detours on the way. I will start this series Friday.

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Today’s MASH edition is brought to you by some questions I hand listening to Ringer’s The MLB Show podcast featuring Ben Lindbergh and guest Stan Conte (former head Dodgers’ trainer). I would recommend listening to the entire podcast as there is quite a bit of information on injuries. From the podcast, a couple of pieces of information were mentioned by Conte I just wanted to verify them.

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I’m finally back from my two week Slovenia/Croatia jaunt (feel free to discuss the wonders of either of those countries in the comments) and what else does one write about when not totally in the loop? More home run surprises, of course! I continue to be in shock at some of the home run total, so let’s discuss more of them.

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Baseball is a long and glorious season and as we near the finish line, I’m more inclined to push for a longer season* than a shorter one just because I don’t want to let go, but one of the downsides of the six-month grind is that some seasons go unnoticed. A big April can overshadow regression down the road and a bad one can leave the turnaround overlooked. Sometimes a guy just comes up midseason and never really hits the radar despite performing.

*kidding (sorta)

Here are three solid seasons you might’ve missed:

Hernan Perez [MIL, 3B/OF]

Perez didn’t suffer through a bad April because he only played three games that month. The issue with him is that he was just so far removed from anyone’s radar that if you’re not a Brewers fan, I’m not sure how you would’ve noticed him until the numbers reached a level where we all had to give it a look. Perez has been a counting category stud with 13 homers and 30 stolen bases and the most impressive aspect is that he has needed just 371 plate appearances to reach those marks.

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Back in mid-June, I discussed a handful of hitters who had hit a shocking number of home runs at that point in the season. Since it was fun, and you no doubt enjoyed it, let’s do it again. Obviously, there are more surprises than just this short list, so feel free to use the comments to, ya know, comment on such lads.

Here are five of the biggest surprises, all of whom I chose for different reasons. I included some relevant metrics from 2016 and compared them to their 2015 rates so we have a better idea of what’s fueling the home run surge.

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Shockingly, it has been nearly 100 plate appearances since Gary Sanchez was recalled by the Yankees for a full-time role and this is his first dedicated RotoGraphs post. Of course, in itself, not talking about a recently recalled prospect 24 games into his career isn’t noteworthy. Except, when that career begins the way Sanchez’s has.

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The following is an experiment. I wanted to see if hitter exit velocity (EV) drops and by how much when a batter players through an injury. I am not sure before starting it where it would head and after a small stab at the data, I seemed to end up with more questions than answers.

The following may sound like a scientific study and in many ways, it is one. I am trying to take a theory and find a solution. Let me start with the theory.

First, injured players perform worse while playing through injury. I have tackled this idea as I looked back at the players’ stats the season before, of, and after the injury.

Talking to several hitters, they say they know when something is bugging them. They just can’t get hit the ball as hard as when they are healthy. Instead of trying to figure out if a player’s slump is from bad luck or injury, we have StatCast’s exit velocity to help us see if they are hitting the ball as hard.

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If you’re still fighting for a money finish (and you should be because we give you the best advice here, duh), then here are two thrilling recommendations for your deep leaguers.

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There, there, poor Giancarlo Stanton owner. Calmly walk to your bathroom, locate your tissue box and wipe those tears away. I did that before sitting down and typing this. Feel free to do the same and then return to continue reading this here article. So, naturally, Stanton has done his annual injury thing and this time it’s a severe groin strain that is expected to knock him out for the remainder of the season. Awesome.

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