The 2023 Pre-Draft Injury episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
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Today, let’s continuing comparing starting pitcher ERA forecasts as part of our 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT against Steamer. This time, I’ll discuss the next six names on each system’s leaderboard. Today, we’ll jump back to THE BAT’s favorites. If you forgot who their top six bullish names were, here’s a refresher.
The Relief Pitcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Guest: Greg Jewett
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Question: What’s the most important thing to remember when drafting in any fantasy baseball league?
Wise-Guy Answer: The type of beer you have on deck.
Wise-Guy’s Friend’s Answer: Making sure you have snacks that don’t grease up your keyboard!
Serious Answer: Your league’s scoring system.
Last week I built two hypothetical fantasy teams. The first team, the ATC Swiss-Army Knives, was comprised of players from each of the first ten rounds (12-team) with the lowest ATC IntraSD measurement. The second team, the ATC Scary Single Blades, was built in the opposite way, taking the player in each round with the highest IntraSD. For kicks, I then built a third team that was a healthy mix of the two. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I moved on to comparing ERA forecasts as part of my 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT against Steamer, discussing the starting pitcher THE BAT was more bullish on. Now let’s switch on over to Steamer’s favorites.
Today, I’ll continue the starting pitcher side of the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT against Steamer projections. This time, we’ll hop on over to ERA. This is probably what we all pay most attention to and it’s likely what keeps a pitcher in his team’s rotation. There are a number of drivers of a pitcher’s ERA, such as skills like strikeout and walk rates, along with luck-influenced metrics like BABIP, LOB%, and HR/FB rate. So let’s begin by reviewing the starting pitchers that THE BAT is more bullish on for ERA compared to Steamer. It’s important to note that THE BAT’s ERA projections are meaningfully higher than Steamer, so you’ll see smaller differences among its favorites, compared with Steamer’s favorites that will be revealed on Thursday.
Yesterday, I flipped my 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X projections against Steamer, to the pitching side. I began by comparing strikeout rate between the two systems, discussing those starting pitchers THE BAT is more bullish on. Let’s now find out who Steamer is more bullish on. It’s important to note that Steamer K% forecasts are higher on average than THE BAT’s, so the differences are higher than in yesterday’s article. That’s why relative projections are much more important when valuing players in your fantasy league than absolute projections.
At last, we have completed our 2023 hitter projection showdown pitting THE BAT X against Steamer in various categories. Let’s now jump over to starting pitcher. I’ll start by comparing K% forecasts. THE BAT X only projects hitters, so I’ve switched over to the original THE BAT system to compare with Steamer. Let’s see which starting pitchers (defined as starting at least 75% of total games appeared in, and also using a minimum of 100 projected innings) THE BAT is more bullish on for strikeout rate.
Yesterday, I identified and discussed five hitters with an ADP of at least 300 who THE BAT X is more bullish on for wOBA than Steamer. You might call these hitters “sleepers”. Let’s now flip over to Steamer’s implied sleepers. I made a small change to my filters here, adding a maximum of 450 PAs, to go along with my 300 PA minimum. This was to remove some names that have appeared multiple times in these showdowns, as there’s no sense in discussing them yet again.