Archive for Roto

How can Statcast improve hitting prospect valuations? This article examines the predictive power of prominent Statcast metrics at the Triple-A level.

With Statcast data now publicly available for every Triple-A game since 2023, I wanted to look at how much it helps us evaluate hitting prospects compared to more traditional data. Specifically, this article considers how well several Triple-A metrics from the full 2023 season — wOBAcon (wOBA on contact), xwOBAcon, barrel rate per batted ball event, and 90th percentile exit velocity — predict MLB wOBAcon in 2024 (MLB wOBAcon through the games of July 26th, as I have been working on this piece for a little while now).

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It’s difficult to predict how a trade will impact a pitchers fantasy value, but we’ll try to do it anyways. It mostly seems that relievers lose value because they tend to shift out of the high leverage roles that made them a trade target in the first place. Starters provide a little more support thanks to measurable park factors, team defenses and winning percentages. In this article, I’ve provided a comparison of those statistics from one team to another and attempted a best guess at whether the trade was an upgrade, a neutral move, or a downgrade.

• Paul Sporer will cover the rest of the pitchers in a Part 2 coming soon
• Jeff Zimmerman covered the hitters here

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For a few seasons, I’ve only been involved with Roto leagues after starting with points leagues and doing both for a while. I wanted to see how close Roto values translate to point league values. When I evaluate starting pitchers, I focus on just their Roto value and want to see how much of it translates to point values.

I removed Wins, Losses, and Quality Starts from the equation. Those W/L/QS values can be huge factors in some scoring systems but I wanted to see if there were any major differences with the rest of the formulas. While a manager may cut a deserving start short, thereby limiting a pitcher’s strikeout or the weight of their ratios, most of the time Wins, Losses, and Quality starts are out of the pitcher’s control. Read the rest of this entry »

Striking out is tough. The term is commonly used in everyday life, “striking out”, and it doesn’t refer to something going your way. Some hitters fear the strikeout, some accept it, and others can’t tell you because they’ve never done it. In the past three full seasons (2021-2023) there have only been 16 hitters who accumulated at least 30 plate appearances in each season and struck out less than 10% of the time. David Fletcher accomplished this feat in all three seasons while Willians Astudillo, Luis Arraez, and Nick Madrigal each did it twice.

On the other side of the spectrum, 19 hitters struck out more than 44% in the same time period and under the same qualifier of 30 plate appearances. So which player does it better? Well, it depends on what it is. In this article, I’ll create buckets of players based on their strikeout rates and compare their fantasy statistics.

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We’re getting close to 50% completion of the 2024 season, so I thought the time was right for a midseason update to my projections-based prospect ranks. You can find more methodological detail, along with the preseason lists here (bats) and here (arms).

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This article takes a look at some of the new bat tracking metrics published this week at Baseball Savant. It aims to help readers incorporate the new metrics into their analysis toolkit.

Bat tracking metrics have now been published for 2024, starting on April 3^rd. Last year, Baseball America published a test version of average bat speed as well. The operationalization of the bat tracking metrics has been tweaked since the Baseball America version was published, but so far, this is the data we have to work with.

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Welcome to another automated installment of fastball velocity risers and fallers. For reference, here are a few articles that explain both the process and the importance of increased or decreased velocity when predicting future success:

• Using Game-By-Game Fastball Velocity to Influence SP Sit/Start Decisions by Lucas Kelly
• MLB pitching models should incorporate recency, giving us an intriguing ranks update by Eno Sarris
• Baseball’s ‘Hot Hand’ Is Real by Rob Arthur and Greg Matthews

The data for this article reflects games played through April 24th and only displays Statcast’s four-seam fastball (FF) velocity. 

A.J. Puk’s velocity decrease was likely a result of shoulder fatigue and he remains on the IL. He is expected back in the first week of May and is reportedly going to rejoin the bullpen. Dean Kremer’s most recent start showcased the most drop in velocity, but he also recorded 10 strikeouts against the Angels in that start. It’s something to keep an eye on as Kremer threw a career-high 172.2 innings in 2023.

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When you get around your friends and family who play in your fantasy baseball league and they immediately tell you how sorry they are for you, it means your fantasy team stinks. Hunter Brown had a really bad game and I won’t complain or write bad stuff about him because I’m sure he’s feeling bad enough about it as is. Our ERAs are bad, let’s leave it at that.

Did you see it coming? Did anyone? Apparently, someone in a Paul Sporer chat smelt a stinker coming just by paying attention to the underlying metrics. Brilliant! Making sit/start decisions with starting pitchers is an area of my game that needs improvement. I want to flag and bench a pitcher not because they’re heading to Atlanta or playing the Dodgers, but because I conducted sound analysis and noticed something wasn’t quite right. In this article, I will introduce PINE (Pitchers In Need of Extraction), a new and very basic model to flag starting pitchers who need to be given a little more scrutiny and possibly removed from your starting lineup, set to riding the pine.

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This article ranks the game’s top projected hitting prospects by peak wRC+ heading into 2024 (it does not incorporate any 2024 data). It is a counterpart to this February piece on baseball’s top projected pitching prospects. I only just got done with my offseason methodological updates for hitters–please forgive me for publishing this one week into the season!

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Think about where you were in September of last year. It feels like a long time ago, doesn’t it? Perhaps you’ve changed since then, just slightly. Maybe you were sitting at a baseball game. I remember sitting in the shade at Camden Yards because the summer’s sun was still beating down and, by that point, I had received my share of sunburns. The memory seems distant as the last blast of polar wind still cuts through March and my light, dog-walking, jacket. Wherever you were and whatever you were doing in September of last year likely seems like a distant memory. Now consider a pitcher like Blake Snell.
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