A tale of two Shoulders, how Carlos Martinez and Luis Severino differ for 2019.

Let’s begin with Carlos Martinez.  In ’18 he missed time in June due to an oblique injury. After returning, he left a game vs. Colorado on July 30th with a shoulder strain. Martinez returned just three weeks later in a relief role. He excelled as a closer the rest of the season. This season took a negative turn in February when the shoulder started acting up again. Instead of a traditional cortisone shot Martinez received A PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection a few weeks ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few sidelined Seattle Marines may not return as most expect. Here’s the inside information to factor in on draft day.

Mallex Smith

Despite an elbow injury that has kept Mallex Smith out for the entire spring, not many people seem to be worried. Well, I for one, am quite concerned. Mallex Smith was approved to begin throwing on March 8th. Throwing programs for outfielders entail ramping up in throwing distance & volume. Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago I posted an article about designing fantasy league incentives.  While the popularity of customized, add-on incentives is hard to measure across the fantasy community, it’s clear that leagues conceptually understand the potential value of features and rewards that attempt to keep owners engaged over the course of a long baseball season.  In the standard winner-takes-all format of many points leagues, commissioners are often left to mitigate the wreckage of AWOL owners that sell off and check out early, so carrots, even small ones, can help in cross-checking drastic, standings-shaking transactions if designed thoughtfully. But designing the right league incentives is easier said than done because owners are motivated by different values.

The purpose of this article is for you, the reader, to help me design the right incentive structure for the very first 20 team Ottoneu league (more on this soon), an exciting experiment that will dramatically alter the traditional economic model that serves as the foundation of standard 12 team Ottoneu leagues. Your feedback will be critical to building a league that lasts, but the discussion will hopefully be a helpful reference for others attempting to structure leagues that are as engaging as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

The spring training fastball velocities are live and available in this spreadsheet with other spring training tidbits.

Note: I’m not sure not detailed and often I’ll be able to go with future notes. MLB.com had a nice free RSS feed with all of their stories and I could quickly find needed information. They ended the feed with no explanation. So now, I’m forced to go to each website to get information. I’m working on a solution but I haven’t found one I’ve liked.

Injuries

● I’m not tracking every injury unless it’s going to cost a position player some regular season time. For pitchers, I never assume they are healthy so they may see more notes. For example, Odubel Herrera has a hamstring strain but should be back in a week. I don’t care … for now.

Odubel Herrera has a Grade 1 hamstring strain and is "coming along," #Phillies manager Gabe Kapler said. Herrera has missed the first four games of spring training and the team is not sure when his first game will be.

— Matt Breen (@matt_breen) February 25, 2019

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days back, I determined the replacement levels for hitters who will miss some time this upcoming season. Today, the pitchers take center stage.

It’s tough to give any pitcher a full season of innings with almost half of them heading to the IL. Today’s focus is to find those pitchers who won’t see a full workload for one reason or another. Workload limits. Injuries. Time in minors. Since the missed time is known, an owner can the fill in the rest of the season with a replacement pitcher. It’s time to dive in.

Injured or coming off Tommy Surgery

Note: The standard minimum return time from Tommy John surgery is now 14 months. No one in years has come back in 12. I’m skipping any pitcher who had a mid-season or later surgery since they may just be back for a few September starts. I’m not going to worry about September starts in Spring Training.

Brandon Morrow
Out until: ~May 1st

While it may be a mistake, I’m fading Morrow hard. He’s an injury-prone pitcher who is starting the season hurt. And for a closer, he’s good (~2.00 ERA the past three seasons) but not great (9.1 K/9 in 2018). I could see Pedro Stroop take the job and run with it over the first month. When Morrow returns, he may never get another Save. He’s a late round DL stash for now.

Read the rest of this entry »

News broke on Friday that Francisco Lindor would be out seven to nine weeks with a strained calf. The reaction to the injury was swift. In NFBC’s Online Championship before the injury news, he had a 4.8 ADP in ten contests. In the two contests over the weekend, his ADP dropped to 16.5 after Jose Altuve, Javier Baez, Alex Bregman, and Trevor Story. So, is the drop deserved or did they drop him too far or not far enough? I’m going to fully breakdown how much I would change his value in a sample league.

With so many league variations, I need to pick a lane with his value adjustment. I going to take a 15-team roto league using AVG. For this league, I’ll use the Standing Gains Points (formulas in my book) as a shortcut to help determine his value and use couple tools to help speed along the process.

Add in replacement level

Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries analysis is becoming a pain in the butt. First, MLB goes and changes the days missed from 15 to 10 thereby nullifying several projection models. And now they’ve gone and renamed the Disabled List the Injury List. I think of naming it the BDL (Broke D__k List). I’ve been waiting for a few more seasons of DL data to create a new formula which will become obsolete with the 12-day DL but why wait. I have two seasons of 10-day IL information to create a few comparisons, especially for pitchers.

While I’ve historically collected the data, Ryan Brock jumped in and completed the 2018 season. I’m not sure if I would have gotten to pulling it together because when I normally do it (post-season), I was finishing my book. I can’t thank Ryan enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries of the Leading Shoulder in Power Hitters

When a hitter is in the batting stance, their leading shoulder is more responsible for power production than the trailing shoulder. For a right-handed hitters the leader shoulder is the left shoulder and it is just the opposite for left-handed batters. An injury to either shoulder will affect a hitter, but an injury to the leading shoulder is far impactful. The leading shoulder deals with a tremendous amount of force at two points during the swing. First, when the hitter accelerates the arm forward and extends their elbow. Second, during the follow through the front shoulder has to decelerate the arm and bat. An injury would cause pain at both points. The body is very good at protecting itself subconsciously from pain. Despite a player’s best efforts, the body will decrease the amount of force produced to avoid pain. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m finally at the point where I need to start working in replacement level production into my projections. Today’s focus is on hitters will miss a set time frame or just assume will miss some time. I’m not going to work in players who will miss time here and there (e.g.the Ryan Braun special) for this or that nagging injury. Instead, I’m focusing on batters who can be DL’ed and someone else can take their place.

To evaluate these players, their time off needs to be determined (my goal today) and then replacement level stats can be added in for these off weeks. The replacement level stats will be an average of the available waiver wire batters. While these replacement level players aren’t great, they will provide some production until the rookie/injured/suspended player returns. With every league being unique, owners are going to need to find this talent level for their own league.

And remember, these are my estimates (link to on-going updates). Each owner should make their own adjustments for their own risk tolerance.

Injured with a known time frame

Gregory Polanco: He had shoulder surgery in mid-September and had a seven to a nine-month recovery time frame with a mid-April to mid-June return.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Back Problem

Full disclosure, I am a huge Los Angeles Dodgers homer, so it pains me to write this article, but it has to be done. Clayton Kershaw won’t be a top 25 starting pitcher in 2019, despite his tenacity, drive, and historical value. Whether people realize it or not, he was not a top 20 pitcher in 2018. Kershaw’s well-known diagnosis of herniated discs that he’s battled for several years and a physiologic phenomenon known as pain inhibition will limit his innings and his production. Here is the simple version.

Read the rest of this entry »