Introduction

Before I came to Rotographs – I wrote a lot on my own site, and in the FanGraphs community section. My first foray into baseball analysis was developing a metric to try and quantify “Stuff”. A New York Times article by John Branch in October 2015 discussed the elusive definition of the pitching term “stuff”. Talk of “plus stuff” and feelings of “all the stuff being there” was scattered throughout the article.

Despite interesting commentary discussing the ability for pitchers to over-power hitters, there was no true definition of the nastiness of a pitcher’s stuff. My favourite quote from the article is that stuff is “both meaningful and meaningless. There are no synonyms. Like pornography, stuff is defined mostly by example. An only pitchers have stuff. Hitters do not have stuff (Branch, 2015)”.

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Rays traded Logan Forsythe to the Dodgers for Jose De Leon

After looking over several factors (e.g. league, park, etc.), the biggest change for Forsythe will be the players surrounding him and his lineup position. Currently, we have the Dodgers projected for 4.6 Runs per games while the Rays are at 4.3 Runs per game. A better offense equates to more plate appearances, Runs, and RBIs.

My one worry is lineup position. In the games he started last year, he always led off. Right now, RosterResource.com has him again leading off. If he struggles, the Dodgers have better lineup replacement options than the Rays did. His value could plummet if moves down, especially to the eighth spot.

As for De Leon’s value, the key will be how many innings he throws. With the Rays not really contending this season, he could spend quite a bit of time in the minors or be up in a couple of weeks. No one knows for sure.

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Quote of the day

“People tell me that, and I’m like, ‘Shut up.’ ” –Trea Turner when asked why he hits so many home runs and doesn’t bunt more.

Quick (Long) Look at Matt Andriese

Andriese intrigues me as a potential sleeper. Historically, he has never been a highly rated prospect when he was a third-round pick out of Clemson. Baseball America ranked him at the Padres 20th rated prospect (50 overall grade) in 2013 and in 2014 he was 15th in their system (50 grade again). Then the Rays traded for him where he fell off the prospect map. From his old Baseball America profiles, he was working on several pitches but nothing stood out. When Kiley McDaniel graded him in 2015, he graded him with future 45’s to 55’s but put his overall grade at 40. No one extolled his virtues when he was finally called up to the majors.

I first noticed him when his 3.30 pERA (ERA based on each pitch’s results) was quite a bit lower than his 4.37 ERA. The per pitch grade had him with a plus change (60 grade), average fastball and curve (50 grade), and below average cutter/slider (45 grade). Additionally, he showed plus-plus control with his 1.8 BB/9 which when combined with his pitch grades put him as a 55-grade (above average) pitcher. Examining his 2015 season, his pitches were graded the same except he was throwing a below average two-seamer and didn’t have as much control.

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When pitchers injure their ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), there are very few things to be happy about. If you’re cheering for your favourite player, or your favourite team, you don’t get to see the best players compete. If you ARE the pitcher injuring your UCL, it means you don’t get to play your sport for at least a year, and you have a painstaking rehabilitation process ahead of you. Go ahead and read “The Arm” by Jeff Passan – and tell me you’d want to wish the process described by Todd Coffey and Daniel Hudson on anyone.

Tommy John Surgery is an exceptional feat of modern medicine. First being performed by the legendary Dr. Frank Jobe in the mid 70’s, this surgery allows pitchers who suffer an injury that was once career ending, to continue pitching at the highest level. Check out Jon Roegele’s Tommy John Surgery list (https://twitter.com/mlbplayeranalys) – there were no teams in the MLB in 2016 who did not employ a pitcher who once had Tommy John Surgery. Despite it no longer being a death sentence for pitching careers, it does keep pitchers out of the game for a long period of time. The average time to return from a Tommy John Surgery (or UCL reconstruction) remains between 11 and 30 months (Erickson et al., 2014).

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Hyun Soo Kim signed with the Orioles before last season on a two-year deal. He struggled mightily in spring training and because of the nature of his contract, the major league team was forced to roster him. After just 17 plate appearances in April, he became a decent semi-regular in the lineup. The left-handed hitter got on the strong side of a platoon with Joey Rickard or Nolan Reimold being the other half.

He became a decent fantasy option in daily transaction leagues by posting a .329/.410/.454 in until July 10th when he went on the DL with a hamstring injury. After the injury, he hit only .275/.353/.386. The second half numbers are decent numbers, but not as good as before the injury.

With the new StatCast data, I examined it to determine if there was a drop in Kim’s exit velocity around the time of the injury. Using a 10-day rolling average, the available data may not look like it but the rolling average generally stays around 7 mph of the overall average. Additionally, there was  no huge pattern change around the time of the injury.

The problem is that StatCast is not able to collect all the available data as documented at FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. The missing data is normal weak groundballs or high infield popups. I am not going to regurgitate the reasons and the exact details from the previous articles but I am going to take a step forward in accounting for the missing data.

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Information is slowly coming out on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the major league owners and players. Most of the news centers around the All-Star game no longer determining home field advantage or changes to draft pick compensation for free agents. All that information is useless for people playing fantasy baseball, though.

Almost all of it. Buried in all the news is that the minimum disabled list (DL) stint has gone down from 15 to 10 days according to the Associated Press.

In addition, players and management agreed the minimum stay on the disabled list will be reduced from 15 days to 10.
…
The DL change will allow teams to make quicker decisions on whether to bring up a roster replacement rather than wait to see whether the injured player would be ready to return to action in less than two weeks.

I never read or knew this change was even on the negotiating table so I haven’t had a lot of time to ponder the change. While it won’t drastically change the fantasy or real world game, I think it may add a little bit more stability to fantasy baseball. The following are some initial ideas I had after hearing the news.

I think the move will have different implications for hitters and pitchers. Let me start with the hitters.

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One item is always hanging over my head once the season ends, is the final clean disabled list report in which I have published every year since 2010. This morning, I completed finalizing the list and it is now time to run some queries. Most of the general information will be available in my annual article at The Hardball Times later this month or early next month.

For today’s MASH Report, I am going to publish my yearly starting pitcher disabled list chances. For this report, I have always incorporate the following factors.

• Age: The older the pitcher, the more the injury risk (+1% point increase each year older)
• Injury history: Nothing predicts future injuries like past injuries (+10% points for each season of the past three on the DL).
• Games Started: A pitcher needs to show they can throw for an entire season without breaking down (-3% points for each full season up to three).

Every year the average disabled list chance hovers around 40% which works out to two out of every five starters in a rotation will miss some time. Some teams will get hit with more injuries while others less.

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Today, I am going to look at some hitter who missed most of 2016 and some 2017 expectations.

Kyle Schwarber (Torn knee ligaments, sprained ankle)

Schwarber has the most upside of all the players I will look at today, but his price will likely be too high for me next year. The variables in his value are playing time, health, and position eligibility.

The first key is his health. Until we can see him run and turn and hit a baseball, the results of the knee surgery and rehab will not be known. Besides the lost production, hitters with knee injuries are more likely to go back on the DL with a knee injury than any other injury. Everyone will have to wait for spring training for this answer.

Second, I am not 100% sure where he is going to play in the field. It is very unlikely he will catch again, so he will need to go the outfield with Anthony Rizzo playing first base for the Cubs. In the outfield, he will be competing against some combination of Jorge Soler, Ben Zobrist, Kris Bryant, Jason Heyward, Albert Almora, and maybe Dexter Fowler (if option picked up). It is going to be tough to predict over 450 plate appearances for him.

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• Reports from Scott Boras have Matt Harvey returning at 100% health to start spring training.

….. Harvey underwent surgery on July 18 to remove a rib. The goal was to free compressed nerves traveling from his shoulder to his armpit, allowing them to function normally again. For much of this season, Harvey was pitching without complete feeling in his arm and fingers.

“When you lose that sensation, man, it’s scary for a pitcher,” Boras said. “You don’t know. He’s sitting here struggling and he’s struggling and he’s struggling, and it’s so mentally stressful not to be able to execute.”

I am little more optimistic with Harvey than other pitchers coming back from other elbow surgeries because the injury wasn’t because of damage to his arm.

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• Michael Brantley is in the news after an article by Jon Heyman stated:

Sources familiar with Cleveland Indians outfielder Michael Brantley’s shoulder surgery suggest they believe it is quite serious, and that he could in fact miss significant time next season.

Word based on those sources is that “they had to re-anchor the muscle to the bone.”

This was news to Brantley and the team and they shot back with:

“Our expectation is that he’ll be ready for spring training,” said Chris Antonetti, Indians president of baseball operations. “We were told after the second surgery that the timeline (for recovery) would be four to five months. As far as I know, nothing has changed.”

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