If you think about rookie outfielders who have taken the league by storm in 2017, chances are Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger immediately jump to mind. Both have been excellent sources of offensive production, posting wOBAs of .419 and .392, respectively. However, if you’re reading this, chances are that the excellence of Judge and Bellinger doesn’t come as a surprise. They have been excellent. Each of us knows they have been excellent.

However, there is a more recent promotion who belongs in a similar tier to Judge and Bellinger, when examining sources of surplus value in Ottoneu, and that player is Rhys Hoskins.

Dave and Carson have both covered Hoskins in the past week, with Dave likening the offensive skillset to that of Daniel Murphy, Matt Carpenter, Justin Turner, Ian Kinsler, or Anthony Rendon. Carson, examining the players in the minor leagues currently showing similar skill sets. Today, I want try to look at the production Hoskins has shown and see if we can potentially get a better idea of his future Ottoneu FG points value. (For those in non-ottoneu leagues, this should still translate relatively well).

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If you’ve followed baseball over the course of of the past few seasons, you’ve probably noticed the new data available to us with the advent of Statcast. This has led to the development of new metrics to measure player performance, with xwOBA being one of the most notable. If you’re familiar with xwOBA, you have likely seen it used to examine the quality of contact made or induced by hitters or pitchers.

Today, I want to look at the pitcher side of things. While it is generally accepted that some pitchers are better at inducing weak contact than others, to this point, the baseball community is still working through the best ways to process the implications of the relatively new data available to us.  As Craig Edwards wrote yesterday on the main site, there isn’t a strong relationship between weak contact year to year.

Acknowledging all of this, I want to look at pitchers who have recently improved the quality of contact they have allowed. There are a couple assumptions to acknowledge here (included at the bottom of the following table). First, I am only looking at pitchers with over 1000 pitches in 2017 before the All-Star Game. Additionally, I am only including pitchers who have thrown 500 pitches since the All-Star Game.

My intent with this is to try to get a better look at starting pitchers, who have made more than a couple of starts, and remove relief pitchers. I have also limited the group to players who’s post All-Star Game expected wOBA is less than the sample average at the time of the break (this works out to be around .315, for reference). The last stipulation I have included is that I am only showing pitchers who have seen an improvement of .010 or greater in their expected results (10 points or greater). The reason for this is simple, I would rather show 25 results than 45.

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Contending teams in ottoneu are gearing up for the stretch run, and rebuilding teams are turning every stone over in the hunt for a keeper. Let’s take a look at the most added players in ottoneu over the past week and past month.

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It’s once again time for a macro level view of the ottoneu landscape, and as of the end of July the teams involved in championship races are well known. Let’s take a look at the top performing teams and leagues:

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Are hitters consciously deciding to hit more balls in the air, now that more data is available? I don’t know. There is certainly evidence that more players have hit the ball in the air over the past 2 years. Maybe it’s the ball. Maybe it’s the availability of StatCast, though teams have had more batted ball data than what is publicly available for some time. Would more widely available data be all that was needed in order for a player to see the merits of hitting the ball in the air?

I’m skeptical. Perhaps, hitters have always known that hitting the ball in the air is valuable, but now we have a standardized way of articulating these changes? These are just a couple of questions that sift through my head as we sort our way through changes in league wide batted ball tendencies over the past 2 years.

We know that expected production based on qualify of contact changes as we change launch angles and increase exit velocities, with the least valuable batted balls being those hit under 0 degrees and over 39 degrees. Balls in play fall into these buckets nearly 50% of the time.

Given this, I was curious if players increasing their launch angle are, on average, increasing their expected production. Much could be said about Yonder Alonso deciding to hit more fly balls. It’s worked out well for him, but there’s some survivor bias involved here. We remember Alonso because he has succeeded. Has everyone who has added more lift to their swing seen similar improvements? Read the rest of this entry »

Just like last Sunday, another meltdown for the Angels ‘pen was the highlight of the day. With a four-run lead and two outs in the eighth, Blake Parker allowed a single to Jed Lowrie, a home run to Khris Davis, and a double to Ryon Healy. With the lead down to two, he was pulled in favor of Bud Norris, who surrendered a run-scoring single to Chad Pinder (the run was charged to Parker), a double to Matt Chapman that put the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second, and finally he allowed a two-run single to Bruce Maxwell that gave Oakland an 11-10 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another installment of the ottoneu prospect report, where I highlight the top performances in the minor leagues (limited to players in their organization’s top 15 prospects) year to date, and over the past month.

The trade deadline has passed, and with it has come the promotions of top prospects such as Rafael Devers and Amed Rosario, but there are still prospects knocking on the door of a call up. In addition, some of these players are a bit further out (A/A+), but represent some high ceilings prospects that could be the next big marketable prospects going into 2018. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year around this time I took a look at the Steamer600 Update projections to try to identify potential keepers that were currently undervalued or overlooked. As a refresher, the Steamer600 Update projections represent the current Steamer rest of season projections, but scaled to 600 PA/200 IP (SP)/ 65 IP (RP) for all players. I like to look at these projections periodically to get a sense of how Steamer is estimating true talent level regardless of playing time (due to injury, a bench role, or being in the minor leagues). I have taken those Steamer600 Update projections and applied ottoneu FGPTs scoring to find some interesting potential keepers.

Before I go any further, I thought it would make sense to highlight a few of the names I mentioned in last year’s article(these are the hits, there were many misses as well):

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Another month gone by in the ottoneu season, another edition of this article highlighting how desperate teams are for pitching. Seven out of the ten most added players in the last week are pitchers, though things are more even when looking at the most added players over the past month.

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‘Tis the season for reviewing bold predictions, let’s check in and see if my second year of predictions is going any better than my first did (1 for 10):

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