Archive for Meta Analysis

Yesterday, I identified the hitters who have experienced the largest increase in their Contact% as compared with last year. So today I will check in on the other side of the coin, the big decliners. Just like the Contact% surgers, an appearance on this list isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. Sometimes a hitter consciously decides to swing harder in an attempt to increase their power output, so it’s a trade-off. This is exactly the opposite of what I said might happen for the Contact% surgers, so let’s see if any patterns emerge.

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We here at FanGraphs University always preach patience and to now allow small sample performance weigh too highly on our panicky brains. For the most part, this is a strong principle to adhere to, but not every metric requires hundreds of plate appearances to stabilize. In fact only 100 plate appearances are needed before Contact Rate, or Contact% in the Plate Discipline section, becomes reliable. That makes the metric the second quickest to stabilize, following Swing%. Obviously, all else being equal, the more contact a hitter makes, the better. All things aren’t always equal though, and sometimes more contact could lead to lesser power. So let’s check in on the hitters whose contact rates have surged the most this season compared to last and figure out if we can glean anything.

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Last summer, Jeff Zimmerman updated the xBABIP formula and provided a spreadsheet calculator to perform the dirty work. So with a month of the season in the books, let’s take a look at the hitter’s who have outperformed their xBABIP marks the most. It would be easy to simply sort by BABIP and note that the .400+ guys won’t maintain that pace, but it’s very possible that their batted ball profile supports a BABIP above .350. You wouldn’t know that without the calculator.

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Relief pitchers who have starting pitcher qualifications are a valuable resource in leagues who have both starting pitcher (SP) and relief pitcher (RP) slots and daily moves. If a team can’t use all their starting pitcher slots on a particular day, a good SP qualified reliever can be used to help with rate stats and maybe holds. These type of pitchers have become so useful, they were effectively outlawed in Ottoneu because of a rules change (only pitchers starting can get stats for SP slots and non-starters can only get stats on the RP slots). Today I am going to look at few useful candidates to use with this strategy.

Truthfully, the list of ideal candidates are slim this year. I far as I could tell, no SP qualified pitcher is currently a full time closer or set up man. A few fall into the category of middle relief, but most are long relievers. Here is a quick look at some of the better option in 2013.

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Last night, I participated in the other division of expert drafts, Tout Wars. If you recall, in mid-February I partook in the LABR mixed online draft league for the second year after its inaugural 2012 season. Not surprisingly, Tout Wars wanted a piece of the online snake draft action as well and started up their own version this year. When I received the invite to take part in Tout Wars, I was super excited, as it was my goal since I started my fantasy baseball writing career. The format is essentially the same as LABR, with one big difference — it counts OBP instead of AVG. It is a 15-team league with the standard 23-man rosters and a 4 man bench. The reserve roster is smaller than the six allowed in LABR. Interestingly, and strangely, Eno Sarris is also a member of the league. Without further ado, let’s see how I did.

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In case you haven’t noticed, the past few weeks have brought the unveilings of many of the baseball industry’s most respected and reputable Top Prospects lists. As is, these make for good discussion and great debate, but there’s also a difference between evaluating prospects for real life Major League Baseball and evaluating them from a fantasy baseball perspective. With four Top 100s available for perusal, it’s time to focus on the latter.

This week, we’ll highlight some prospects who are top-of-the-class elite — in fact, each is included in all four of the Top 100s — but actually might be overrated in fantasy compared to reality, given where they stand in these rankings.

For a look at the other angle — Top 100-caliber prospects who are underrated in fantasy compared to reality — you can find it here.

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As a FanGraphs reader, you are no doubt familiar with the many projection systems we display statistical lines from on the player pages of the site. These are fantastic models and I have mentioned many times how big a fan of the Steamer pitcher forecasts I am. Unfortunately, it is thought that these systems only have around a 70% accuracy rate, which may or may not seem high to you. The belief is that any additional factors added to the computer models will barely move the needle, so hope for an 80%+ success rate should probably be given up. That said, there are many reasons why these models cannot become better at projecting players, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that we are dealing with human beings and no matter how much data we have, sometimes that .001% event happens. Projection systems have weaknesses and they are pretty easy to identify. Let’s discuss them, shall we?

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In case you haven’t noticed, the past few weeks have brought the unveilings of many of the baseball industry’s most respected and reputable Top Prospects lists. As is, these make for good discussion and great debate, but there’s also a difference between evaluating prospects for real life Major League Baseball and evaluating them from a fantasy baseball perspective. With four Top 100s available for perusal, it’s time to focus on the latter.

This week, we’ll highlight some prospects who are really, really good — in fact, each is included in all four of the Top 100s — but actually might be underrated in fantasy compared to reality, given where they stand in these rankings.

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Yesterday, I unveiled the top 10 list of good names with regards to both No Doubt percentage and Just Enough percentage from the home run classification buckets on ESPN Home Run Tracker. Today, I will present the negative nellies. These hitters are at greater risk for HR/FB rate decline this season, so it might not be a bad idea to use as a tie-breaker if debating between a hitter on the list and someone else.

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Yesterday, I published the results of an exhaustive study I conducted to determine the predictive value of the data available on ESPN Home Run Tracker. As we suspected all along, the various home run classification buckets do indeed provide some valuable information. Today, I will unveil the names of the hitters who get a positive boost from knowing this new information.

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