Archive for Meta Analysis

It’s time once again to analyze the batted ball distance leaderboard! Woohoo. There are many ways to utilize the distance data, one of which is for validation purposes. This method of analysis is backwards looking. Does the distance back up the HR/FB rate? We can’t necessarily say a hitter is going to maintain such a distance, but we could point to it to determine whether the hitter’s performance has been legitimate or not. Has he been the beneficiary of some good fortune or has he truly been crushing/not crushing the ball?

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A week ago, I discussed six American League starting pitchers with the largest increases in fastball velocity from April to May. Today, I’ll check in on seven AL starters who have suffered through a decline in fastball velocity. But since we’re 2 1/2 weeks into June, I’m now comparing May velocity to June velocity. Since velocity stabilizes rather quickly, then the three starts or so in June should be enough to analyze the data.

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Spoiler Alert: We’re going to tell you two sentences from now where we come down on the subject of Brad Miller, enigmatic Mariner. Jump to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know until the end of the article. Spoiler: We have no idea. The point of this piece is to call your attention to what we discovered when we started investigating this subject: we found that new, exemplary, state-of-the art, microscopic, persuasive explorations of Miller and his stats, in sickness and in health, by undisputed Fantasy All-Stars, wind up in opposite corners, and can’t be reconciled. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I discussed four starting pitchers due for an improved walk rate moving forward, according to my expected walk rate equation. Today, I’ll highlight another four pitchers, this time a group who is at risk of suffering from an increased walk rate over the rest of the season. These pitchers all sport xBB% marks well above their actual marks.

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I don’t discuss it as often as my xK% equation, because the R-squared is significantly lower, but my xBB% formula is still useful to calculate and analyze the results. Even for hitters, strikeout rates have always been easier to predict from an equation than walk rates. Odd. Anyway, let’s take a look at the four starting pitchers whose xBB% marks are most below their actual walk rates. This could signify improvement on the way, which would bring both ERA and WHIP down.

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I committed Matt Holliday to my disabled list Monday, marking the 14th(!!!!) DL move I’ve made for my primary team this season. Perhaps the state of my team is implied by the length of its disabled list. If not, I’ll make it clear: my team has been bad. Pretty darn bad.

All of my drafts were especially poor. I drafted the same terrible, injured, underachieving players in every league, so it has been generally a nightmare all around. The hole I dug for myself is deep. Kyle Lohse broke ground on said hole with an 8-run Opening Day outing that lasted all of 3-1/3 innings, and we never looked back. Woe is me. Alas, it’s barely the second week of June, and I have already resorted to my Hail Mary play: buy low on everyone in sight.

Calling it “buying low,” however, is a bit misleading. It’s a shallow league, so there is arguably a stronger incentive for owners to cut bait on underachieving name-brand players in order to ride the hot streaks of unknown quantities, given they crop up more abundantly. What I’m actually doing, then, is loading up on underachievers from waivers. My team is already underachieving. These guys are already underachieving. How much worse could it get?

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Eos is extending her rosy middle finger in our direction, beckoning us to another day of Fantasy futility. Our weekly Fangraphs deadline is here, and once again, we have spent a restless night pondering, weak and weary, the question preoccupying all of Fantasyland: what’s going on with Melky Cabrera?

Since you’ve found your way here, you probably already know all there is to know about Melky, but let’s do a quick review, just for giggles. He turns 31 in August. He had some success early in his career with the Yankees, had an excellent 2011 with the Royals and an even better 2012 with the Giants, producing the highest batting average in MLB. He’d have won the official batting title, but MLB had other ideas after Melky was caught enjoying a mild stimulant composed of arrowroot, cyclopropane, and organic library paste.

He served a suspension, spent much of 2013 on the DL, then came back strong with Toronto last season (.301/.351/.458). He signed a big three-year contract with the White Sox during the off-season, and there was a broad consensus among forecasters about what would happen during 2015: Mild regression to the mean, with a slash line of roughly .290/.340/.440, a dozen or so home runs, about 75 runs scored, and maybe 65 RBIs.

In other words, a player of some Fantasy value, and he went for $10 in the Tout Wars mixed auction (same price as Joc Pederson!) and in the 12th round of the Tout Wars mixed draft. We ourselves got him in the 11th round of our NFBC draft, which was about his average draft position in the NFBC. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I put my xK% equation to good use by identifying five starting pitchers the formula suggests has strikeout rate upside. As usual, today I take a look at those with strikeout rate downside. These are the pitchers whose xK% are well below their actual K%.

Warning: these are very good pitchers!

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It’s been a little while since I last used my xK% equation to identify pitchers with strikeout rate upside. So now that we’re about a third of the way into the season, it’s time to take another look. The five pitchers discussed below all have xK% marks well above their actual K% marks. My equation isn’t perfect, of course, just like all formulas that act as skill estimators, but it should work pretty well at the extremes at predicting the direction of future stat changes.

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Like most Americans of our generation, we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we got the news about Kennedy. It seems like just yesterday. In fact, though, it was last week, and we were sitting at our computers, as usual, staring at baseball numbers, as usual. We froze with horror and disbelief as we saw that Ian Kennedy had pitched 3 2/3 innings, allowing 9 baserunners and 7 earned runs. Actually, now that we brood about it, that may instead have been May 17, when we were sitting at our computers, as usual, staring at baseball numbers, as usual. We froze with horror and disbelief as we saw that Kennedy had pitched 5 innings and given up 6 earned runs. Or, we wonder, as the mystic chords of memory begin to chime like Peter Buck’s guitar, was it instead May 12, when we distinctly recall freezing with horror and disbelief as we saw that Kennedy had pitched 4 2/3 innings, let 11 guys reach base, and surrendered 5 earned runs? No, wait—it might, after all, have been April 25, when Kennedy pitched 4 1/3 innings, with 9 baserunners and 8 earned runs the outcome, and we froze with horror and disbelief. Read the rest of this entry »