Good morning! Coming at you from a different time after a late slate of games, and the same may be true for the 14th. Apologies to all the night owls, who may just need to pull a couple of all-nighters. Ok, onto the report.
Read the rest of this entry »
Contrary to what you might assume given my status as a veteran RotoGraphs writer and member of the Tout Wars and LABR leagues, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to players on none of my fantasy teams. So every so often, I express surprise, or perhaps even shock, when I peruse the day’s box scores and notice a batting average or counting stat from a player at a level far off from our expectations. “Player X has 15 homers already?!?!” is how I will frequently react. Let’s discuss some of these players.
Yesterday I had mentioned that the Rockies had not announced a closer. Well, that was wrong as Weiss named Carlos Estevez as their closer while McGee is out. This came after Estevez recorded his first save and Weiss had said earlier that Estevez would be sharing duties with Jason Motte. Must have been nice for Estevez owners to hear their guy would get most of the saves, right? That was until Boone Logan got the one out save today, after Motte started the 9th off retiring the first two batters. He then walked his third hitter, and then Weiss called on Logan to get the last out as he earned his first save of the season. This wasn’t a case of Weiss going against his word. Instead, Estevez was due some rest after throwing 28 pitches on Friday and closing out last night’s game despite Weiss saying he wanted to avoid that. This was just a normal day of rest for Estevez, and he should be getting the rest of the save opportunities. I left it at Yellow because it is a Colorado pitcher and I don’t think the Rockies will hesitate to pull him if he began to struggle in the 9th.
Read the rest of this entry »
I understand that BABIP data is not necessarily complete data. However, I do think there is some value in looking at what players’ BABIP looks like relative to their careers. For this article, I just explored qualified 1B according to Fangraphs data and took out rookies (think: Byung Ho Park) since we don’t have past data to compare it to. Again, this data should not significantly alter your fantasy plans, but is worth considering when looking to buy or sell the MLB qualified first basemen.
For this table, I simply subtracted Career BABIP from the players’ 2016 BABIP. I could’ve included more players, but I wanted to start small instead of filtering out every single player with 1B eligibility regardless of sample size. A positive difference means that a player is outperforming their BABIP, whereas a negative difference means the opposite where a player is underperforming their career BABIP. Here is what the table looks like:
Read the rest of this entry »
Clayton Kershaw is ridiculously good. You know this. I know this. There is not much to say about him for fantasy owners other than you should start him every time in every format. But perhaps because I hit my dog days of summer two months early this season, I wanted to write an article about Kershaw to wrap my head around just how good he has been.
For the purposes of this article, I am going to rely on a stat called Game Score, which Bill James came up with to compare starts to one another. You can look up exactly how Game Score is calculated here. Unless you are in a format that rewards pitchers for getting outs, Game Score is not a perfect proxy for the fantasy value of a start, but it does reward pitchers for strikeouts and penalize them for earned runs, hits, and walks, all of which play into the standard rotisserie categories. Meanwhile, Game Score is a convenient way to place one number on a start that reflects its quality.
Throughout his career, Danny Duffy has shuffled between the Royals starting rotation and their bullpen. Let’s compare his underlying skills in each role:
| Role | K% | BB% | LD% | GB% | FB% | IFFB% | SwStr% | BABIP | LOB% | HR/FB | ERA | SIERA |
| Starter | 18.6% | 9.7% | 21.6% | 36.3% | 42.1% | 15.1% | 8.3% | 0.288 | 75.5% | 8.7% | 3.89 | 4.48 |
| Reliever | 31.2% | 7.1% | 21.7% | 43.4% | 34.9% | 10.3% | 15.0% | 0.298 | 79.2% | 3.4% | 2.08 | 2.48 |
Last week, I took Alex Chamberlain’s xBABIP equation for the first drive of the 2016 season, identifying those hitters whose xBABIPs most exceeded their actual BABIP marks. That was your potential BABIP surger list. Today I’ll check in on the flip side, those hitters whose BABIP marks greatly exceed their xBABIP marks. These hitters are at serious risk for BABIP, and resulting batting average, regression.
We have two months of data in the books, so I have decided to deviate a littler further from my previous first base tier rankings. In case you were curious about where the first basemen ranked previously, here you go:
May 1B Rankings (although I mistakenly put April)
I’ve decided to add some tiers this go around because there are players who fall into two categories who I am having difficulty tiering with the rest of the first basemen. The first additional tier will be guys out for any significant time be it injury, suspension, or are simply in the minors. It’s great to stash some of these guys if you have the room, but you should be looking elsewhere for playing time so I simply ranked them in value in their own tier.
The other tier is for those multi-positional players. I had been very adamant that you should not be using catchers as your first basemen. That was until I had Kevin Plawecki, Yasmani Grandal, and Miguel Montero in a two catcher NL-only league, and needed to trade my starting first baseman for speed. So I am more sympathetic to wanting to put different people at 1B, but still struggle where to rank them amongst the more regular first basemen. This tier is just ranking those players with ten or less games at 1B who will not get the majority time at first. A few guys may have slipped in who are also ranked with the rest of the 1B.
The theme for this month’s tier rankings are my favorite summer jams. I work in education and yesterday was the last day for the students at the middle school I work at, so summer has officially started for us. Some songs have summer themes, whereas others are just fun songs that I like to hear during the summer months. If you disagree with my song selections, please make sure to list your favorites and why I am wrong, and I will do my best to ignore them. Just kidding…sort of. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Read the rest of this entry »
Wade Davis was given the night off after recording his 16th save last night. Luke Hochevar and Kelvin Herrera each earned holds (10 and 15 respectively), as Hochevar pitched a clean 7th and Herrera, well, not so much as he gave up a run on two singles and a walk. Joakim Soria pitched the 9th, which is semi-surprising since it seemed like Herrera would be the next in line for saves if the moment arises. Guess Ned Yost thought it’d be best to not mess around too much with the bullpen order and give the save situation to the guy with more experience. Didn’t work out so well for the Royals as Soria blew his second save of the year giving up two runs on two hits (including a triple) and a game-ending sacrifice fly. I could change the chart based on tonight’s usage, but also feel like if a long-term situation was to come up, Herrera would be the guy.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s that time of year again, American League starting pitcher tier update time! I still pay no attention to ERA, as it’s not a metric I use for evaluation and ranking pitchers for rest of season performance. Player movement between tiers will only occur when there’s a change in underlying skill, pitch mix, or velocity.
Tiers are named for the best characters on the brilliant FXX show, Man Seeking Woman.
