Here’s how Justin Mason put it in last Friday’s edition of The Sleeper and the Bust:

 “This is one of the things people should really be thinking about, strategy-wise, the rest of the way…look for these opportunities where you can grab the follower in good matchups because as teams start to limit their guys…this is a time where you can really get some guys without going over any kind of starts limits.”

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The Closer Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

Closers

• How to form a closer hierarchy
  • Pre-season
  • Mid-season
  • Closer by committee
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• What is the optimal closer strategy for drafts?
  • Bank an elite closer?
  • Is drafting two top closers a viable strategy?
• Using FAAB resources on closers
  • How much is too much?
• Non-elite closers that may experience a saves surge in September
• What to observe in September to assist us in prep for the 2022 season
• Kenley Jansen
• Organizational & manegerial philosophy

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Recently, I started working through predicting which pitchers limit hard contact and by how much. Today, I dive into if contact out of the strike zone can be predictable and if that contact is weaker than contact in the strike zone. First, I need to go over a couple of concepts

WAR Allocation to Position Players

The division of credit for WAR goes with 50% to hitting and 43% to pitching and 7% to fielding. People way smarter than I have determined that split.

Major Note: For simplicity, I’m going to adjust the pitching percentage up to 100% so the fielders are allocated 14% of the credit for what happens when a pitcher is on the mound.

On top of the fielding allocation, not every batter puts the ball in play with the league at an 8.7% BB% and 23.4% K% this season. So now, 68% of all at-bats end with a ball in play with 14% points of that 68% goes to the fielders and 54% (68%-14%) to the pitcher’s batted ball talent. So it works out that 79% (54%/68%) of a pitcher’s batted ball results should be attributed to him. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes conclusions to tough questions just don’t sit right, especially when the answer is “We don’t really know.”. How pitchers control batted balls has never had a simple definitive answer. I’m going to give it another shot.

I have some ideas of what might be a cause, but I want to start with a blank slate. What’s got me diving back in is the following table from a recent article of mine.

While a few percentage points of difference may not seem like much, I expected a lot more regression to the mean with my limited sample size. With just the above information, I felt I needed to re-investigate the subject. I know that some of the regression amounts have previously existed, but I wanted to dive in with some fresh eyes and new batted ball data. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Sunday, there were just a few available middle relievers who seemed to be better additions than some starter, so my co-owner Fred Zinkie settled on Ranger Suárez. Right now, Ranger Suárez has a 0.93 ERA, 0.72 WHIP, and 8.1 K/9 and is ranked as the 52nd pitcher according to our auction calculator. While his strikeout rate isn’t the highest, he does average 1.7 IP for each appearance and accumulates 1.5 K in each of those appearances. Also, he has been able to get 3 Wins so far this season (18% Win Rate).

The other option was Giovanny Gallegos who has also been great this season (2.53 ERA, 0.70 WHIP, and 10.3 K/9). He’s averaged throwing 1.2 IP per appearance with 1.4 K per appearance. He’s been able to get 5 Wins during that time (14% Win Rate).

Since the pitcher was supposed to take a starter’s spot, the hope was to get good ratios, some strikeouts, and possibly vulture a Win. After historically finding pitchers with these traits, our two choices were fine with a major flaw. We ignored recent usage.
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Today we continue our look into middle reliever targets (AL is here), switching over to the National League. As a reminder, here are my filters:

>=30% strikeout rate
>=20% K%-BB%
>=15% SwStk%

I also required a minimum of 20 innings pitched.

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Injury or poor performance from your starting pitchers often times leads to a decision — do you want to replace that starting pitcher with a starter from the free agent pool who could potentially harm your ratios, or pluck a strong middle reliever who could stabilize those ratios, but might limit your win and strikeout totals? There’s no correct answer. However, if you do decide on the latter strategy, let’s review some of the names that should be at the top of your shopping list.

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It’s well known amongst MLB The Show players that certain pitchers are difficult to hit due to their, dare I say, funky, delivery. It’s a testament to how realistic the video game is, or, so it would seem. I’ll never actually know. Regardless, The Show players often rely on relievers like Pat Neshek, Sergio Romo, or, more recently, Huston Street to throw off their online competitors. If you’ve gotten used to seeing the ball released from a certain point or angle for 7 innings, then a quick and drastic change from that look can be challenging. Outside of the fantasy world of video games are real-life relievers who can either throw very similar to the starter they are relieving or, drastically different. I wanted to know if there was a major difference in performance between the two.

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Let’s imagine that Jacob deGrom is pitching for the New York Mets and has just faced the number nine batter his second full time through the order. Let’s also imagine, and this one is hard to do, that deGrom isn’t himself this fine day and shouldn’t go through the order a third time. Manager Luis Rojas pulls a hot dog style folded paper out of his back pocket and looks at multi-colored charts, doodles, heat maps, and whatever analytical imagery made its way into tonight’s report. Could the image below ever make its way onto that paper?

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There have been some really exciting starts from young pitchers so far this season. On Sunday, Michael Kopech pitched five innings, faced 18 batters, and struck out 10 of them. When I saw that he was starting in place of Lucas Giolito on Sunday morning, I totally rolled the dice and got lucky. Adding a young pitcher who I’ve been rooting for over the past few years and it paying off was great. But, I’ll admit, it made me feel a little empty inside.

As I stared at the tv and excitedly encouraged whiff after whiff I slowly began to realize that a win wasn’t going to be possible. I knew Kopech would be on a pitch count and I knew he wasn’t going to suddenly become a rotation mainstay, but I went for it anyway, dropping a set-up reliever in order to gain some strikeouts. I felt oh-so-sad when Tony La Russa effectively looked into the camera and told me not to get used to it. Monday morning had me reflecting, was it worth it? Which is better to roster, low-pitch count starters like Kopech or middle/set-up relievers?

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