After just updating the appendix last year, The Process has been fully updated for next season and is available in digital (full and appendix) and print versions.

Some of the new highlights from the book are:

• A foreword by the great Phil Dussault, fresh off his amazing 2021 season, as well as our unique analysis of Phil’s strategies.

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

Guest: Ron Shandler

LABR Congratulations

Strategy Section

• Dealing with the current injury frequency level in baseball
  • Roster construction
  • Risk management
    • Broad Assesment Balance Sheet (BABS)
  • Reasons for injury frequency by team
  • Risk-adjusted pricing vs. managing to a risk budget
  • First round picks
    • Fernando Tatis Jr.
    • Ronald Acuna Jr.
• How to think about Binary Risk
  • Jacob deGrom
• Playing fantay against “Power Drafters” who take on more risk
• Is the market still right to draft risky elite starting pitching?
• Is the market overpricing stable closers in early drafts?
• How to value prospects in drafts?
  • Bobby Witt Jr.

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

Guest: Mike Podhorzer

Bar Mitzvah Talk

• Coke & Pepsi

Projections

• Pod Projections
• Manual vs. automated projections
• Where do automated projections fail / blind spots?

In-Season

• At what point in the season should you rely on in-season statistics vs. pre-season projections?
  • Francisco Lindor 2021

Understandings Statistics Section

• Hitting Statistics
  • BA
  • OBP
  • SLG
  • OPS
  • BB%
  • K%
  • HR/FB%
  • Barrel%
• How can you tell if a YOY increase in a statistic is real skill, or if it was a fluke?
• BABIP
• Using Statcast to identify pockets of value / undervalued players
• What in-season statistics should you use when setting waiver wire pickups for hitters?
• Pitching Statistics
  • ERA
  • WHIP
  • Swing Strike %
• How to adjust for a potential universal DH in 2022?
• Strand Rate (LOB%)
• ERA Estimators
  • FIP vs. xFIP vs. SIERA
    • Descriptive vs. Predictive
• What in-season statistics should you use when setting waiver wire pickups for pitchers?
  • K% is superior to K/9
  • K-BB% or K% – Which is more valuable to track in-season?
• What statistics should one track to tout relievers for saves in 2022?
• Scouting for saves in 2022
• Other important statistics to track
  • Plate discipline metrics
    • O-Swing%, Z-Swing%, O-Contact%, Z-Contact%, etc.

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The latest episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Jeremy Hefner, New York Mets

Interview

• Highlight of career
• Game preparation
  • Preparing players for the mental & physical aspects of the game
  • Is game planning more about having players pitch to their strengths, or about exploiting weaknesses of your opponents ?
  • In-game management
    • 3rd time through the order
  • Use of an “opener”
  • How “first-in” and “next-in” pitchers coming out of the bullpen are decided

• Health
  • Keeping pitchers healthy throughout the season
  • Extended rest between outings – good or bad?
• Analytics
  • How best to use analytics as a coach
    • Objective vs. subjective view
  • Analytics vs. Gut
    • Pulling Blake Snell in the World Series
    • Trusting analytics, and when to go with your gut
  • How are stats/analytics used to help players on the major league level?
    • Which are the key stats/indicators that you look at?
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Rule changes in baseball
  • Universal DH
  • 3 batter minimum rule for pitchers
  • Extra inning runner on 2nd base rule
• Position players pitching in baseball
  • Effectiveness of Ariel pitching in the major leagues

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Experiment alert! Prepare yourself to digest a very simple linear model that looks at plate discipline data. I’ll do some explaining of the model along the way, but here are a few points to cleanse your already superb palate before sampling the charcuterie:

1. I’ve limited to players with at least 60 PAs because it is a good point of stabilization for hitter K%.
2. I’m using 2017-2019 as a training set and then deploying my model on 2021 data to look for differences between model predictions and actuals.
3. My model only tells us what should be expected from a hitter who accumulates at least 60 plate appearances in a season based on what other players have done in the same situation from 2017-2019. 2020 is excluded. The predictions of this model should not be confused with expectations.
4. Hasn’t this been done before? Probably.

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The latest episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Trevor May, New York Mets

Interview

• Highlight of Career
• Game planning
  • Is about pitching to your strengths, or exploiting your opponents weaknesses?
  • Game planning team by team
  • Helping other teammates with game planning
  • Having a “default” game plan
  • Using MLB the Show
  • Learning from other teammates
• Health
  • Recovering from TJS
  • Switching from starter to reliever
  • Keeping healthy all season long
  • Extended rest between outings – good or bad?
• Injury Guru Trivia of the Week
• Analytics
  • Trevor’s own stat – Command Quality Ratio (CQR)
  • Trevor’s CQR and Ariel’s wPDI
  • Horizontal movement vs. vertical movement on pitches
  • Pitch velocity, spin rate, spin efficiency
  • Hanging out with the analytics staff
• Mailbag
  • Who do you NOT want to face with the bases loaded?
  • Why #65?
  • Day games vs. night games
  • Favorite inning to pitch in
  • Love of cats
  • Favorite podcast

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Cedric Mullins was one of the best breakouts of 2021 with a 30 HR/30 SB season that came out of nowhere. But what comes next? There have been 11 seasons of at least 30/30 since 2011 featuring 10 players and Ryan Braun doing it back-to-back in 2011-12. We actually saw four in 2011 and then two in 2012 before a drought that José Ramírez and Mookie Betts ended in 2018.

Here are all 11:

I wanted to look at what these players did before and after their magical season to see if it might help us with our Mullins projection.

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I’m finally done crunching numbers (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8) with late-season pitcher rate stats being the last to go. It’s so monotonous and painstaking, but I’ve learned a few things going through it all.  The Average rises to the top … again with several other projections popping to the top.

First, here are the projections analyzed.

• Steamer (FanGraphs)
• ZIPS
• DepthCharts (FanGraphs)
• THE BAT
• Davenport
• ATC (FanGraphs)
• ZIELE (Fantasy Pros)*
• Pod (Mike Podhorzer)
• Masterball (Todd Zola)
• PECOTA (Baseball Prospectus)
• RotoWire
• Razzball (Steamer)
• Paywall #1
• Average of the above projections

To create a list of players to compare for accuracy, I took the NFBC ADP (players in demand at that time) and selected all the pitchers in the top-450 drafted players (30-man roster, 15 teams in the Main Event) in ten or more leagues. Then I removed all the pitchers who never threw an inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I share the final review of my pre-season Pod Projections posts. This time, we shift to a starting pitcher, Zach Plesac, whose original writeup is here. Plesac did post a sub-4.00 ERA during his 2019 debut, but it wasn’t backed by his skills, as he handily outperformed his ugly 5.13 SIERA. During the short 2020, he enjoyed a true breakout as his strikeout rate surged thanks to pitch mix changes. Let’s see how he did for an encore and how it compared to the projections.

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Let’s continue reviewing the Pod Projections I shared early in the year. Today, I’ll review my Trent Grisham forecast. You can find the original writeup here. Grisham enjoyed somewhat of a fantasy breakout during the short 2020 season, as he went 10/10 over 252 plate appearances, putting him on a 20+/20+ pace over a full season. We fantasy owners salivate over that power/speed potential. Let’s see how he followed up and compare it to my projections and the rest of the forecasts.

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