Yesterday, I reviewed and discussed the hitters who had posted the largest HardHit% gains over the last 30 days. In inadvertently filtered for AL batters only, so today, I’ll flip on over to the NL hitters. Remember this HardHit% includes all batted ball types, so an increase shouldn’t necessarily drive a higher HR/FB rate.
Hitters go through slumps and hot streaks as a normal part of the season. These types of trends are magnified at the beginning of the year, but can easily get overlooked in the middle as a couple of weeks of good or poor performance don’t dramatically change the player’s full season results. It’s difficult to determine whether a hitter on a hot streak has made a legitimate change that has taken his skill level higher or is simply experiencing the standard ebbs and flows of a season. Let’s review the hitters who have posted the largest gains in HardHit% over the last 30 days. We can’t be sure if this is a new skill level, but it could be a sign of just that.
Just a quick note: This article got “lost” and was not published early last month. The information is still applicable.
Early last month, I was surprised by the scrub hitters being rostered for a game at Colorado.
These hitters would never be considered in a normal week but were assumed to morph into All-Stars. Truthfully, I didn’t have a good way to set an ‘add/no add’ cut-off, so here is my best attempt at a simple solution. I tried to come at the answer several ways, but I think the following procedure would be the easiest to use across most fantasy formats. Read the rest of this entry »
Everywhere you look, there’s a new starter. So let’s keep it going until I run out of names to discuss.
The super active Trade Deadline definitely created some new opportunities for players who could soon become fantasy worthy players depending on league size. Obviously the opportunities often come on the worst teams so they aren’t exactly elite level players joining quality lineups, but we all know that volume alone can drive a player’s usefulness for us in the fantasy realm.
I just did a piece like this where I guessed who might get the chances based on potential trades and exactly one of the players I mentioned was traded, but I partly blame that on Colorado and Detroit being run horribly. But I’m not sure why Arizona didn’t trade David Peralta or Kole Calhoun.
Rafael Ortega | OF, CHC
Ortega was already making noise before the 3-HR game with a .345/.387/.517 line in 31 PA in the last week or so of July with seven starts in nine games, all of which saw him leading off. Then on August 1st he had the huge 3-home run game that put him on everyone’s radar. He was scooped up across most 15-team leagues but remains widely available in the 10- and 12-team landscape. There could enough here to pick him up.
The lists of new regular faces never ends! Since I had two more player requests in the comments of yesterday’s post, let’s continue on discussing those who have just recently earned everyday playing time, whether because of a trade deadline deal, injury, or whatever else.
The trade deadline has now passed and not surprisingly, there was a ton of movement and new opportunities for players to take on full-time roles have arisen. All but one of these players now finding themselves with regular playing time is a result of deadline deals, with the the other being the beneficiary of an injury to the incumbent.
Man, waiting for the excitement of trade deadline day is hard. Why must teams wait until the last minute to complete a trade?! So to finish off my week of posting, let’s once again discuss another group of new everyday starters. Once the trade deadline passes, we will likely have a ton more worthy of discussion.
We don’t need to wait for the trade deadline to pass to analyze a slew of players who have recently come into regular playing time. So let’s continue our dive into new everyday starters.
I won’t claim to know as much about Bitcoin as some of my peers, but I know enough to determine that winning $100K of it would be great. For the more crypto-skeptical baseball fans out there, MLB and their new contest sponsor, FTX, are offering cold, hard cash as an alternative reward for their new promo contest. The challenge? Guess who will hit the longest home run of the rest of the season, the distance in feet of that home run, and the type of home run (solo, 2-run, etc.,). Let’s take a look at the details of the Moon Blast contest and see if our more enlightened way of thinking can help make a prediction.