Archive for Meta Analysis

Yesterday, I looked at the batted ball data for full time hitters. Today, I moved onto the hitters that had between 150 and 400 PA in 2011. There are more outliers in these groups because the hitter’s batted ball data did not have a chance to stabilize.

HR/FB%

No young players sneaking up onto this list. Just the 2 part time vets

LD%

Salvador Perez – Sal should see plenty of attention going into next season. A catcher that hits 0.300 will get noticed. He won’t continue to hit LD at a near 30% rate. Pitchers will find a weakness in his swing and the numbers will come down.

BABIP

Alejandro De Aza – He is getting mentioned as next year’s lead off hitter for the White Sox. The possible drop he may see in AVG could easily be made up with SB and Runs.

Hank Conger – He always had a BABIP over 0.300 in the minors. He can’t seem to get it over 0.250 in the majors. He needs to finally break through or he may have a long future as a journeyman catcher.

Brian Roberts – He was hitting bad before losing the season to a concussion. I like him as a buy low candidate in 2012. I would not have him as my first choice at 2B, but would take a late round flier on him.

Chone Figgins – I have no idea why the Mariners just haven’t cut the cord on him.

Anthony Rizzo – He was one of the players that came over in the Adrian Gonzalez trade. He is a long ball hitter with 20 or more HRs over the last 2 years in the minors. While with the MLB club, he hit only 1 HR. A low LD% (13.4%), high K% (30%) and fly balls that won’t leave the stadium (2.8% HR/FB) will lead to the 0.141 AVG. Hopefully he will have a better 2012. It almost can’t get any worse.

Tyler Colvin – Tyler looks like a home run hitter that can’t hit home run. After hitting 20 home runs with a HR/FB ratio of 19.4% in 2010, he only hit 6 HRs in 2011 with a 8.6% HR/FB ratio. I just don’t think he can hit good enough to make it in the majors.

On Friday, I looked at some 2011 Luck leaders and laggards among full time hitters. Today, I am looking at pitchers that pitched over 180 innings. They were the workhorses of a pitching staff.

I would like to make a couple of points to begin with. First, if a pitcher struggles, they are not as likely to pitch as much. The list shows more lucky pitchers than unlucky pitchers. I see this as totally expected. Second, I assumed a league average BABIP for each pitcher. There is some evidence that some pitchers are able to have some control over their BABIP. Feel free to adjust the ranking if you believe the numbers to be incorrect for a pitcher.

Here are the leaders and laggards for 2011 (a complete list of hitters and pitchers from 2009 to 2011):

Here are my thoughts on some of the players:

Jeremy Hellickson – In his first full season in the majors, Jeremy had a great year. He had an unbelievable BABIP (0.223). This value allowed his ERA (2.95) to be about 1.5 less than his FIP (4.44) and xFIP (4.72). He has no history of out performing his BABIP like Cain or Weaver. He may be a decent pitcher, but it is time to SELL HIGH.

Clayton Kershaw – The key to his emergence as an ace is the drop in BB/9 over the last 3 years from 4.8 to 3.6 to 2.1. As long as he keeps the walks down, he will remain a top pitcher. Now, I would say that I would have no problems moving him in the right deal. His value is pretty much topped out after winning the pitching triple crown.

Josh Beckett – Last season, he ranked as the most unluckiest pitchers (-9.7 Luck) among those pitchers that threw over 100 IP. This season he rebounded into one of the league’s better pitchers.

Ian Kennedy – I am not sure what to think of his 2011 season. He had a lower home run rate (1.21 HR/9 to 0.79 HR/9) and walk (3.2 BB/9 to 2.2 BB/9) in 2011 compared to 2010. I really don’t like to have a pitcher that pitches 1/2 their games at Chase Field. I would be careful about picking him up too early/high, but don’t be afraid if the price is right.

Bronson Arroyo – While he was never considered to be a great pitcher, his 2010 was decent for fantasy purposes. His 2011 was brought down by a career high 2.04 HR/9. I would see little interest in him, even in a deep league. He could be picked up for little next season.

Fausto Carmona – Fausto is not a good pitcher. He is still getting too much love from the 2007 season when he got 19 wins. He does not even had a K/BB rate over 2.0 in 4 seasons. Just stay away.

A.J. Burnett – All of his problems this year came from giving up the long ball. His xFIP (3.86) is inline with both Cain’s (3.78) and Weaver’s (3.80) xFIP. Also, his career xFIP (3.78) is close to his ERA (4.10) and FIP (4.01). I would expect a nice rebound from him next season.

At the end of March, I posted a list of 20 predictions that I considered rather bold. On the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable Show, we have a segment called “Are you Crazy?” in which the lucky roundtabler of the night makes a bold prediction. To be considered not crazy, the prediction should be expected to have at least a 20% chance of actually happening. I generally used this baseline when coming up with these predictions, meaning that the hope is I get at least four of these predictions right. Now let’s see how I did.

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In two leagues I am in, there has been some complaining of teams streaming starting pitchers this last week of the season. Streaming is using as many starting pitchers as you can to try to accumulate as many counting stats as possible (Wins and Ks). It is a method to make up make up quite of bit of ground quickly, with little draw back.

Is Streaming Wrong?

There is nothing wrong with streaming, if the leagues rules were to allow it. It could be done by any owner during the season. It usually comes to the fore front at the end of the season for a couple of reasons. First, owners are able to dump starters that are done for the season. These pitchers have no value in the 2011 season. Dumping these pitchers is especially done in single season leagues. In keeper leagues, the dumped pitchers can be picked up for next year, so streaming is limited.

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Here at Rotographs, it is brought up quite often that a player’s xBABIP and BABIP don’t agree. With the help of slash12, I have created a quick and easy method of calculating a hitter’s xBABIP. I have a downloadable spreadsheet that takes the batted ball data and calculates a xBABIP.

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On Saturday, I looked at three starting pitchers with the potential to experience a K/9 surge in 2012. Today I will use the same methodology of comparing the pitcher’s SwStk% to his K/9 to look for those who may see a K/9 decline next season.

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As we near season’s end, it is time to start looking toward 2012 and to determine which players may see a performance spike, and therefore be a target in your fantasy drafts. As I have mentioned many times in the past, SwStk% is one of my favorite advanced metrics to analyze for pitchers. It correlates highly with a pitcher’s strikeout rate, and the relationship is intuitive to both stats freaks and stats haters alike. Here are three pitchers whose SwStk% suggest better strikeout rates could be in their futures.

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John Mayberry started the season in AAA for the Phillies and eventually got the call to the majors. He has been a pleasant surprise by hitting 15 home runs in only 275 PA. He had shown power in the past, but a large K% was limiting his HR and AVG production. Read the rest of this entry »

This previous off season, Cameron Maybin was traded from the Marlins to the Padres for  Edward Mujica and Ryan Webb. Before that trade, he was traded from the Tigers to the Marlins as part of the the Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera trade. He is now having an outstanding season with the Padres by generating 4.3 WAR (only 2.2 WAR previously in his entire career). He has been a nice source of steals (38) and Runs (79) this season. If his cards fall right next season, he should see similar or better numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

I have several projects to complete this off season to help fantasy owners for the 2012 season. Please let me know if there are any other ideas you would like me to examine over the off season. If I can’t get to the subject, others may be able look into the issue.

Fantasy “WAR”

Every player has factors that they can and can not control that factor into their stats. Pitchers can control the number of strikeouts and walks they allow, but they have little control over run support and defense. I want to get a player ranking system that shows the player’s true talent: contact, speed, and power. Then add in the factures they have no control over like the batters around them (more RBI and Run opportunites) and position in a lineup (more SB and Runs from the lead off spot).

The process will take a few weeks, but it should help an owner understand where the player gets their fantasy value and which surrounding changes affect the player.

Positional Rankings

Once the Fantasy “WAR”, or whatever it ends up being called, has been finalized, I will come up with a systematic way of ranking the players using talent, health, batting position and surrounding team talent. It will not be like what ZIPs does on Fangraphs where they guesstimate the final season stats. Instead, the values will constantly project the player’s talent using several factors.

Injury Information

Finding out how a player performs after an injury is important information. I am in the middle of examining pitchers coming back from TJS, so this information will be made public soon. Also, I will look into back injuries. They seem to really take a player off their game and seem to linger for a while. Let me know if there is any other specific injuries that you would like to see looked at.

Draft Rankings

I will be keeping my pre season overall rankings in a Google Doc with information and links on each player. It will be only the players I have examined in articles or otherwise. As I examine more and more players, the list will grow. I prefer to have a good understanding of a player than a vague notion from every player.

Reader Requests

Let me know what you want to see. It is a long off season, so I will be hurting for topics. Do you have keeper league questions? Ranking a few players? Draft strategy? Now is the time to let me know how I can help you answer any questions you have bouncing around. If I can’t find an answer, one of the other writers may certainly be able to find it.