Archive for Roto

I do love change. No, not that jiggle jiggle that my fellow kids and I love to talk about these days but simply the act of one thing turning into another. Change doesn’t have to be good or bad; it can be both, either, or neither. And perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than when looking at the arsenals of major league pitchers. More of this pitch, less of that one, more velocity here, less movement over there. More horizontal for that, less vertical for this, one fish, two fish, v fish, nu fish.

But just because a pitch changes how it moves, doesn’t guarantee the results will fare better, a quality that is already rather subjective when needing to factor in a pitcher’s intent that isn’t fully known. However, changes are useful flags and can serve as starting points. And when seeing dramatic movement changes in key pitches, I can’t help but wonder, why. We’ll take a look at two such pitches today, thrown by two left-handers who’ve had similar overall fantasy value in 2022, though, not quite of the top-tier variety. More like SP4/5’s that have 2/3 aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »

Woe. Malice. Dread. These are the emotions that have come to mind in the past when considering the prospect of rostering Martín Pérez for fantasy purposes. But these tempers have been tamed by Pérez in 2022 as he’s now frolicked his way to a top-25 SP. And yet, we still do not fully trust him, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the home runs to once again rain down on his pristine ERA. But I, for one, would like to take a break to say I’m sorry. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to the internet’s premier home for breaking down any and all minutiae from a 2006 Matthew McConaughey vehicle that inexplicably co-starred a naked Terry Bradshaw. Jay Kay, let’s talk about baseball dongs instead. Or rather, the lack of them.

Last time out, we looked at three players that have started 2022 out with a fizzle but had some underlying metrics that point to better times ahead. In case you missed it, we’re splitting 2022 into two periods – the first month of the season (up until May 8), as well as the time since (stats through June 15th). Besides looking at the raw HR per PA rates, we’ll also use percentile rankings to better capture how players compare to their peers, as to see better into the relative changes without being dragged down too much by the new offensive environment (new ball, humidors, etc). Read the rest of this entry »

Eno Sarris’s latest article and starting pitcher ranks include details about pitcher recency and how starting pitchers tend to “go in and out of funks”. It’s a good article, you should read it. But, I was much more intrigued by a Rob Arthur article Eno referenced from 2017 that I had never read before. Arthur and Greg Matthews summarize their research that seeks to predict in-season starting pitcher highs and lows, or hot and cold streaks, based on a pitcher’s fastball velocity. As a fantasy manager whose starters recently gave up 19 earned runs in one night, my interest was peaked by this gem of an article. Read the rest of this entry »

The runs have been raining down as of late, at least relative to the spongeball square offenses that we’ve had to suffer through during the first part of the season. Whether this is due to the increasing temperatures decreasing the overall effects that league-wide humidors have wrought, or to MLB more nefariously (definitely not) switching out the baseballs, doesn’t matter as much.

What does matter is that these dongs of summer are finally giving fantasy managers a respite in their offensive categories. With that in mind, let’s take some different looks at the so-called power hitters that have hurt their drafters the most through the first third of the season, starting with the ones most likely to turn things around. Read the rest of this entry »

At the start of the 2022 season, the always gracious Nick Pollack and friends at PitcherList lent the FanGraphs staff the pVal draft template and a few of us conducted a slow draft of all slow drafts. It was great! Tweets were tweeted, points were tallied and now, it’s time to take a look at how we’re doing. If you want a little pVal background, you can read my previous posts, Highfalutin pVals or Sweet Swirlin’ Secondaries. Or, you can read our glossary explainer, or just head over to the 2022 leaderboard and click around.

Before we get into the results, here’s a quick rundown on how this works. Each participant drafts an individual pitch and your goal is to maximize the sum of your pitch pVals. Just like a traditional fantasy manager must draft certain positions (OF, SS, SP, RP, etc.,) the pVal drafters must choose different pitches:

Luke Hooper, Nicklaus Gaut, Paul Sporer, Alex Chamberlain, and I are all part of this year’s FanGraphs contingent. We’re off to the races and Luke Hooper has taken a quick lead:

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Participant: Lucas Kelly
Current Place: 3rd
Best Pitch So Far: Michael Kopech’s four-Seam fastball
Worst Pitch So Far: Walker Buehler’s four-Seam fastball

3x Fastballs:
Walker Buehler’s four-seamer was my first pick and I thought I had taken candy from a bunch of babies. The pitch earned a pVal of 17.9 in 2021 and with his 207.2 innings pitched that season, I thought it was a guarantee points getter. This year, however, opponents are hitting .377 against the pitch and slugging .638. It’s being hit hard 51.6% of the time and has a very low 8.6% K%. The pitch has been used only 33.1% of the time, a career-low, and he’s increased his cutter usage to 25.1%. While the cutter is performing better than the four-seamer, the effective combination of both pitches led to success for Buehler in the past. Nicklaus Gaut wrote about Buehler’s spin rate decreases in his latest post. He did a great job of analyzing what has been going wrong with the pitch.

Zack Wheeler‘s four-seamer is right where I want it to be. Its usage is in the low 40% range which is right in line with where it was when it earned 16.7 pVal points last year. It has a 36.7% K%, a career-high, and hitters are getting to it with a .215 batting average. It is being hit hard 47.4% of the time which is a little concerning, but just a little. Alex Cobb’s splitter is being used at a career-high 40.8% and has an xBA of .149! That’s great. We’ll have to see if his health can keep him throwing the pitch. He’s currently on the IL with back trouble.

2x Sliders:
Max Scherzer, please come back!..and wear mittens when you’re helping injured dogs. Scherzer’s slider has a very nice 32.5% K% on the year so far, but it’s well below his career-best 50% in 2017. While I don’t expect it to reach career-level marks, the pitch didn’t seem fully refined at the start of the season and I think there’s room for improvement once he’s back. I’m not sure what to make of Cristian Javier’s slider. He’s only thrown 235 of them so far this year, but it has a 44.9% K% and a .182 batting average against. In 2021 the pitch accumulated 12.0 pVal points in 101.1 innings and this year, Javier is on pace (GP%) for 126.0 innings. I think there’s room to grow here as well.

1x Curveball:
I think I did it! I think I picked a good pitch. Corbin Burnes‘ curveball is currently a league leader with a 7.5 pVal. He’s closely followed by Framber Valdez (6.4), Shane McClanahan (6.3), and Kyle Wright (6.3). It has been Burnes’ best secondary and he’s using it a career-high 19.7% of the time. It has a 47.1% K%, hitters are batting .080 against the pitch, and it is hard hit only 15.4% of the time.

1x Changeup:
Yikes! Lucas Giolito hasn’t found the changeup yet and its usage is down. Its K% is still high at 41.5% but hitters are likely laying off (.371 wOBA) and getting to it (.267 BA, 21.7% Hard-Hit%) more than what the man with a fantastic first name would like.

1x Secondary:
I have a thing for splitters and I really just wanted to take a Shohei Ohtani pitch so that I have even more to root for when I watch him pitch. As of now, he’s only thrown the pitch 25 times and it has been hit with a .333 BA. I’d say it’s too early to tell, but he’s got some catching up to do if he wants to get back to the 14.2 pVal points he earned with the splitter in 2021.

1x Negative pVal:
This one is fun. The idea is to draft a pitch that had a negative value last season and bet that it improves this season. Last season Yu Darvish’s cutter earned -2.8 pVal points. To be honest, I saw a GIF of a dirty Darvish cutter from the past and thought, “There’s no way that pitch is negative in 2022.” So far, I’ve been wrong. He’s still using it 32.7% of the time but it’s getting hit hard with a .337 xBA and a .533 xSLG. He’s putting the cutter in the zone (57%) more than the MLB average (45.8%) and that could be part of the reason for the high xBA. Darvish’s PitcherList player page shows a .321 BABIP on the pitch vs. the .295 MLB average on cutters, so perhaps there’s still some hope.

1x Negative Regression:
Matt Harvey’s changeup earned 4.7 pVal points in 2021. I didn’t think he could replicate that again and it looks like I might be right, just for reasons other than what I had in mind at the time.

2x Util:
Cool fact; Hanser Alberto and Liam Hendriks have the same wFA pVal, -0.1. Go figure. In one way, this shows how pVals really need to be understood before they’re used to make any grand statements at your local watering hole. In another, it goes to show you that Liam Hendriks has struggled with the pitch in 2022. It’s just getting hit too often and too hard; .349 wOBA, .277 BA, .462 SLG, .578 xSLG. Kopech’s fastball on the other hand is my money maker and currently sits 3rd best in the MLB according to pVal.

2x Reserves:
Last but literally not least are my reserve picks. Lucky for me, the rules of the pVal competition allow me to drop the two worst performing pitches and replace them with my reserve picks. Alek Manoah‘s four-seamer is bringing my total back up and as long as he keeps utilizing his three positive pVal pitches (6.4 wFA, 2.6 wSI, 4.7 wSL), he’ll likely be replacing another pitch all season. Hunter Greene’s slider is the only of his pitches holding positive pVal this season and that’s fine with me. Baseball fans everywhere were excited to see Greene’s 99th statcast percentile fastball velocity on a more regular basis in 2022, but the pitch has not been effective from a pVal standpoint at -12.8. It’s being put in the zone a little too much and getting hit (.352 BA) a lot too much. The slider, however, is only getting a .112 BA and has been impressive thus far with a 40.4% Whiff rate.

Time will tell if my squad will be able to reach Luke Hoopers pVal leaders. What I do know is that this pVal draft was a lot of fun to conduct and has been a lot of fun to score. If you can find a few friends to participate in one, do it. It’s another great way to interact with the game. Thanks again to the PitcherList crew for sharing the rules of the game with us and stay tuned for more updates throughout the season.

I’m sure you’ve already heard that it’s hard to be a speed junkie because stolen bases are so passe. But some teams are still running and while I’d rather have a fast player than a slow one, when it comes to the stolen base game, a team’s intent can often be just as important as an individual’s actual speed. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the lesser-owned players on the teams that have attempted the most thefts so far in 2022 and see if we can stack the probabilities in our favor. Read the rest of this entry »

Much smarter folk than I have already covered just how much hitters are suffering in this new and not-improved 2022 run environment, so let’s focus on some positivity and take a look at which players have thus far seen significant power bumps in the early goings on. Read the rest of this entry »

As I sat and wandered the databases, the thoughts running through my head were the same being pondered by every other reasonable baseball fan. Is there a bookcase in Rob Manfred’s office that if you pull on the correct book will spin around to reveal a panel of giant levers that controls which baseballs are currently being used? And if so, will “waterlogged” stay pulled, or could it be flipped to “happy fun ball” at any given moment? If that’s the case, we might as well prepare by looking at the pitches getting the most air so far in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

This early in the season it’s easy to jump all over players who are putting up big numbers. But just remember, you drafted a team while considering their projected season-long stats and while it may be tempting to drop a poor performing player at the start of the season for a hot starter, take caution. Players who hit doubles and triples and home runs early in the season can make a lot of noise, as they’re likely to put up strong category stats. Isolated power is a nice statistic that allows us to see, “how often a player hits for extra bases”. But, ISO does not stabilize until around 16o at-bats, and it will probably take another two weeks or so before we can really call this a good sample size. Let’s take a look at players who have shown strong early season ISO, how it compares to the ISO they showed at the start of last year and how that compares to their career average. Read the rest of this entry »