A summarized version of this post was originally presented as part of PitcherList’s PitchCon online baseball conference for charity to support the ALS Association.

Pitch location, especially pitch height, enables pitchers to augment hitters’ launch angles. This is hugely important for pitchers given that hitters exert outsized influence on exit velocities (EVs), while pitchers exert little influence on EV. As such, EV is more predictive of hitter success than launch angles are. Yet EV remains at the mercy of its launch angle counterpart; a 115-mph blast isn’t half as valuable on the ground as it is in the air. A pitcher can improve his chances of inducing those suboptimal launch angles by weaponizing optimal pitch locations.

There’s a corollary to this for pitchers: capital-S ‘Stuff’ is more predictive of pitcher success, yet it’s pitch location that primarily dictates the outcome of a pitch or plate appearance. Max Bay, now of the Astros’ R&D department, once said Stuff makes a pitcher “resilient” to bad locations–it allows more room for mistakes. But mistakes are still made, and for the majority of pitchers, they are made (or avoided) largely through pitch location.

How sensitive, then, is launch angle to pitch height? If we raise or lower a pitch by an inch or a foot, how much can we expect the resultant launch angle to change? How much can we expect rates of ground balls (GB%), line drives (LD%), fly balls (FB%), and pop-ups (PU%) to change? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I detailed how I am preparing for an upcoming Ottoneu re-draft and how I set my hitter targets. In this post, I finish the job and detail my approach to targeting pitchers. I should note that this is an iterative process. It is necessary to go back and forth to figure out a good balance between hitting and pitching and so much of that is dictated by who you have on the free-agent list. Regardless, I’m a planner and need to set my targets ahead of time. I need to see what happens if Plan A fails and what Plan B really looks like. Sadly, I was never the kid in school who could just roll out of bed, head to the exam in their pajamas, and get an A without studying.

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2/10/22

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

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• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
• Watch the video feed replay on YouTube

NL RP PREVIEW

• ARI: Kevin Ginkel (RP63), Joe Mantiply (RP66)
• COL: Daniel Bard (RP15)
• LAD: Evan Phillips (RP25), Daniel Hudson (RP32), Brusdar Graterol (RP50)
• SDP: Josh Hader (RP3), Robert Suarez (RP49)
• SFG: Camilo Doval (RP11), Taylor Rogers (RP35)

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From the shared draft boards of Twitter to the unruly outlaws in the Reddit commentsphere, closers seem to have gone scorched earth on the fantasy baseball landscape, turning us all into post-apocalyptic warriors fighting over a precious and disappearing resource. Saves remain concentrated at one end of the closer spectrum but are increasingly diffused amongst the rest of the population. All the while, the ADP tide rises. Chaos.

Cars on fire, people wandering the streets making nonsensical declarations like, “At that point, I felt like I just had to take Jose Leclerc at pick #92”, or “If Kyle Finnegan just takes another step forward, he’ll be a steal at pick #175”; Justin Mason was just spotted wandering the halls of FanGraphs with his head down, muttering over and over that he’s “totally fine with Doval and Lopez as my top-two, it’ll be okay…totally fine…totally fine, tot-…”. Read the rest of this entry »

2/6/22

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

PATREON

• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
• Watch the video feed replay on YouTube

AL RP PREVIEW

• BAL: Félix Bautista (RP8)
• BOS: Kenley Jansen (RP10)
• NYY: Clay Holmes (RP12)
• TBR: Pete Fairbanks (RP21)
• TOR: Jordan Romano (RP4)

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This list is a little different than the others. First, RP in FanGraphs Points leagues, where saves and holds have value but are not a category, function fairly differently than in more traditional formats. You don’t need a closer, but having a middle reliever who never gets late-inning work isn’t ideal either. Role matters but it isn’t as simple as “go get the closers to pile up saves.” Second, I value RP differently than the market or any auction calculator. So we are going need a slightly longer intro before I just drop a table on you.
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Just as important as monitoring fastball velocities for spikes to identify potential breakouts, velocity declines might hint at potential injury and/or a drop in performance. So let’s now review the six pitchers who experienced early season velocity declines versus 2021 and find out if their velocities rebounded.

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Aside from discussing starting pitcher fastball velocity surgers at the beginning of the season, I also did the same for relief pitchers. In mono league formats, relievers could generate positive value, even without recording any saves, with strong ratios, and a high strikeout rate. Identifying breakouts early might allow you to pick up a reliever for free and shield a pitcher slot from ratio damage by a weak starter.

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2023 Drafts are now in full force over at the National Fantasy Baseball Contest, which has become an industry leader in terms of research for average draft position (ADP) data. NFBC ADP is especially useful because it involves only paid contests and many of the top players in the world play on the platform. As of now, there have been 11 completed drafts on the site with many more being done as we speak. Most of these drafts are 15-team draft champions leagues which are 50-round draft and hold formats. After completing one of those drafts myself recently and looking at the ADP, here are some of my thoughts on how the early ADP is shaping up. Read the rest of this entry »

• 2022 pVal Check-In #1.
• 2022 pVal Check-In #2.

How do you really know how well a pitcher’s fastball will perform before the season starts? You don’t. You basically just make an educated guess. Choosing good fastballs from the previous year seems to be a good way to go. But, choosing changeups that performed well in the past can bite you. While it may seem silly to get this micro, this niche, it can be a lot of fun to make picks before the season begins, and then forget about them. There’s no IL, no waiver claims, and no bench to ride. It’s just your preseason picks and the ever-rolling season and when it ends, you get to look back and either ask yourself, “What was I thinking?”, or, you get to puff your chest out and spend the winter months assuring yourself that you are a pVal prediction wizard. Pitching coaches should really be calling you when spring training kicks off again. Let’s take a look at where each of us FanGraphs contingent pVal competition participants finished out the 2022 season. As a reminder, here are all the picks you can make, provided to us by our friends at Pitcher List.

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