Archive for Meta Analysis

This past weekend, I attended the always incredible SaberSeminar in Boston. It was great time catching up with friends (Dave Cameron sighting) but also to take in some innovative ideas. I decided to share some fantasy applicable topics which were discussed.

Pitch Tunneling

Experimentally determining the “Commit Point” – Evaluating the time it takes a hitter to check his swing by William Clark and Joe Petrich

Pitch Tunneling, Pitch Calling and Expected Outcome: A Former Pitcher’s Perspective by Dan Blewett

Pitching tunneling was brought up several times by several speakers but these two came to the same conclusion. The reaction time for a batter to determine the pitch type may be less than previously calculated. It was thought that a hitter had around 225 ms to 275 ms to decide to swing. It’s possible that the time may be under 200 ms and the batter may be keying off the release point.

Also, if a pitcher is struggling, it might be worth looking over at his release point charts (example with Jon Gray). Make sure all the pitches are clustered together and haven’t been recent moving around.
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The fantasy baseball season is in the final stretch. This section of road is the easiest going. Owners quit since their team is out of contention and/or they want to concentrate on football. With these quitters out of the way, it’s easier going for the active owners. Here’s a short ramble on how the active owner should approach the subject:

The inspiration for this rant came after I saw my FAAB bids in a league this morning. I was down to $12 in FAAB out of $1000 but $0 bids do exist. I noticed one must add (Yangervis Solarte) and bid $10 on him to keep everyone honest. I won to my surprise.

The reason I was taken off guard was that several teams were holding tons of FAAB dollars. Here are the post FAAB totals.

1. $971
2. $880
3. $767
4. $719
5. $328
6. $314
7. $260
8. $202
9. $168
10. $88
11. $85
12. $75
13. $41
14. $1 <– me
15. $0

This league is supposed to be competitive but only six owners made additions (ranks 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 13). Having some teams not bid is understandable. Some weeks I don’t add players as I have too many players coming off the DL. But nine sitting out?

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Finally. I have combed through all the NFBC Main Event FAAB bids, linked them to past CBS ownership rates, and I’m able to provide some interesting facts on the FAAB bidding process. Besides the overall FAAB breakdown, I have this week’s estimated FAAB bids.

I’d like to again thank NFBC’s Greg Ambrosius for providing the information on some missing weeks. There is no way this project could have moved forward without his help.

1. Overall Spending Rate

With the complete dataset, the ideal versus actual spending rates can be calculated.

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Yesterday, I examined hitters who owners missed on preseason and what could be done to prevent such mistakes in the future. Today, the underachievers go under the microscope. In my previous article, I used Paul Sporer’s “All First Half” articles for reference. With no underachieving articles out yet, I will look for players with differences in ADP and current rank using our auction calculator.

Extended Injury Stays

Daniel Murphy

I lamented last offseason about missing out on J.D. Martinez’s great 2017 season. I didn’t want to miss out again and was willing to take a chance on Daniel Murphy’s discount.

When I created his projection, I account for six weeks off but it was on the short side. Additionally, once he returned, he wasn’t productive for a few weeks but has a .859 OPS in July.

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We are all learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. -Charlie Munger

It’s time to see if I need to adjust my fantasy baseball beliefs by analyzing the first half busts and breakout lists. While it’s great to acknowledge these players, owners need to sit down and figure out why everyone missed on them. By hitting on one or two of these breakouts, a team could be competing for the top spot. Here are the groups and how to identify the breakout next preseason.

For the player situations I analyzed, I’m used Paul Sporer’s First Half All Value Stars and Fantasy Team for inspiration. I looked for actionable traits or tells which can be used next season.

Unknown Playing Time

Jesus Aguilar

Everyone understood coming into this season that the Brewers playing time situation was going to be a mess, so not owning Aguilar is understandable. He was to be in a platoon with Domingo Santana with middling projections. The deal with Aguilar, he really didn’t have a horrible platton split. It was .372 wOBA vs .338 wOBA in 2017. It’s .444 vs .405 this season.

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Yesterday, I discussed the nine hitters whose Auto Out% (AO%) had improved most versus 2017. As a reminder, AO% is simply the sum of strikeouts and infield fly balls (aka, popups) divided by plate appearances. Let’s take a look at the hitters whose AO% has risen most dramatically versus last season.

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Last week, I introduced Auto Out% (AO%), which is just strikeouts and infield fly balls (IFFB) as a percentage of plate appearances. I began by discussing the starting pitchers who have increased their AO% most since 2017. Let’s now turn our attention to the hitters. Using the same formula, these are the nine hitters who have most improved their AO%.

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The league-wide hard-hit rate (Hard%) is up. Like, way up, at its highest level by far in the 17 years Baseball Info Solutions has measured and tracked the statistic.

Yet league-wide home runs are down, and way down, too, not in the whole history of the game but at least in the context of the recent Juiced Ball Era^TM. Hard-hit rates and power, as measured by home runs or isolated power (ISO), increased steadily and in tandem from 2015 through 2017. You’d expect, then, that if the ball were still juiced in 2018, the league’s highest hard-hit rate ever might produce the highest league ISO ever.

No such luck, though; 2018’s .161 ISO falls a full 10 points short of last year and a tick short of 2016. Which is odd, see, because batters are hitting the ball harder than ever. Since 2015, when sabermetricians first noticed the ball was juiced…

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A couple weekends ago, Dave Appelman asked my fellow writers and me what features we’d like to see available at RotoGraphs (more additions are in the works) and a FAAB (free agent acquisition budget) bid estimator was discussed. With so many leagues and so many bidding setups, I accepted the daunting challenge. I’m beginning to produce some limited usable results.

Before I go into the many inputs in FAAB bids such as declining budgets and absentee owners, I needed:

1. A way to measure owner seniment before the normal Sunday FAAB bids.

2. A reliable source of FAAB bids.

For the first source, I’d like to thank fellow RotoGraphs contributor, Al Melchior for pointing out that CBS Sportsline displays historic weekly ownership rates. Every host website will display ownership rates. What was important with this source is they have a ton of quick grab waiver wire leagues. As soon as a player bursts on the scene, owners can go pick them up off the wire. The ownership rates for these hot commodities immediately begin ticking up. These values are available but the bases need rounding a few times to collect them.

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Leaguewide fly ball rate is up again this year, though barely. Its current 35.6% mark is the highest since 2011, which is a reminders that this so-called fly ball revolution is merely pushing the rate back to where it had been after a temporary dip. As usual, there are individual players who have changed their swing to hopefully tap into their power. Let’s discuss the eight hitters who have enjoyed the largest fly ball rate surge from May to June. All else equal, more flies equals more homers, so from a fantasy perspective, a higher FB% is typically a good thing (though not always).

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