There’s nothing I love more than a cliche for the title of a post.

Today I want to take a look at a few of the players who have seen some of the biggest drops in ownership percentage on ESPN.com so far this season. Because we’ve only played a few games this year, determining whether I think these guys should be snatched off the wire comes down to whether I liked them in the preseason. I put hundreds of hours into preseason prep work, so I might as well milk it for all it’s worth while I can.

Dillon Gee — 7-Day % Change: -27.6%

There was a point where four of the five most recent articles that showed up on Gee’s player page were written by yours truly. I loved what he did in 2012 when he saw a big spike in swinging strike rate which pushed his strikeout rate comfortably above league average. He also had a solid ground ball rate just over 50%, and he limited walks. But his ERA was north of 4.00 thanks to a strand rate that was in the lowest quantile among pitchers with at least as many innings as Gee. I was all over the guy with solid strikeout, walk and groundball rates going into 2013.

Gee delivered in a way with a 3.62 ERA last year. But he didn’t do it like I wanted him to. His swinging strike rate and strikeout rate fell back below league average to where they had been prior to 2012. His groundball rate also fell significantly as well, but his walk rate did hold. The main reason he was able to post a sub-4.00 ERA was a reversal of strand rate fortune. His strand rate went from 68.9% to 77.9%. To repeat his 2013 ERA he’ll either have to regain the above average strikeout and groundball rates or get lucky again. The good rates of 2012 seem to be the exception and not the rule, and you can’t own a guy banking on strand rate. Leave him on the wire, and use him as a streamer if the right matchup comes along. Read the rest of this entry »

Padres pitcher Ian Kennedy is ready for a rebound. After just 11 innings, it’s starting to look like his move to San Diego will pay off. Kennedy opened the year as a late-round flyer in most fantasy leagues. After three years of consistent production in Arizona, everything seemed to fall apart for Kennedy last season. Kennedy not only walked more batters, but also saw his home run rate jump to obscene levels. This continued even after a mid-season trade to one of the largest parks in the game. When the dust settled, Kennedy’s ERA was a disappointing 4.91. Since he wasn’t an elite option before the drop-off, Kennedy became nothing more than late-round fodder. Based on what he’s shown thus far, it looks like the old Kennedy is back.

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages…I’m going to have a hard time concentrating today. As you can see in the byline below this article, I am a shameless pro wrestling fan — with WrestleMania XXX coming up this Sunday, I’ll do my best to prevent my subconscious from letting this turn into an endless stream of irrelevant wrasslin’ references. Let’s take a swig of beer for the workin’ man and get this show on the road, shall we?

Roenis Elias is making his first major-league start tonight, and he’s a pretty interesting guy to talk about. The 25-year-old Cuban has lively raw stuff and a decent track record in the minors over the last couple seasons, but no one went into Spring Training expecting him to crack the major-league rotation. However, with Hisashi Iwakuma and Taijuan Walker on the shelf to open the season, and veteran reclamation project Scott Baker pitching so poorly in March that the Mariners released him, the left-handed Elias finds himself making the jump from Double-A to the big leagues.

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You know, I can advocate for different types of leagues. I can talk about the pros and cons of head-to-head, and how redraft leagues are great for the refresh, and about deep leagues and shallow leagues. It’s my job!

But when it comes to playing, to the leagues I actually join, the rubber hits the road. In other words, I vote with my wallet when I join these leagues, because I’m spending actual time and energy in this way. So I thought I’d look through my leagues and see what kinds of leagues I like. And while I’m there, I might as well count up my pitchers so you can see what sorts of arms I’m investing in. My arms and my leagues, and now you know what I *really* like.

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Though my love for Carlos Carrasco is no longer a secret, I feel like I haven’t shared my optimism as much as I did for my favorite sleeper from last season, Andrew Cashner. However, I did first recommend him in deep leagues last summer (he failed to deliver, oops), discussed a bit of his intrigue when delving into the Indians rotation depth chart this year and then boldly predicted that he would outearn names like Danny Salazar, Justin Masterson and Corey Kluber to finish as the most valuable Indians starter. Now that he has officially won the fifth starter job in Cleveland, there is cause for celebration.

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We have been told ad nauseam that spring training stats mean nothing. For the most part, this is true. As soon as you begin reading an article quoting a pitcher’s spring ERA or a hitter’s batting average, you could safely skip any analysis the author provides. But two years ago, with the help of Matt Swartz, I discovered that a pitcher’s strikeout percentage actually does carry some significance with regards to his regular season performance. Knowing this, we could look to the spring stats to identify which starters are punching out batters at a significantly higher rate than they have in the past. These make for an interesting group of breakout candidates.

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There’s an intriguing battle taking place on the Nationals between two rather similar pitchers. Both Taylor Jordan and Tanner Roark debuted in Washington last year and impressed. Though Roark did post a sparkling ERA, neither one of them is getting a whole lot of preseason fanfare, perhaps because their strikeout rates don’t wow us. But the winner of this battle is likely to be a strong source of profit in NL-Only leagues, while offering the potential for mixed league value.

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Alternate Titles
What Do They Call Doing The Same Thing Over And Over Again And Expecting Different Results?
How Blake Spent Four Hours On A Monday And A Poll If He Should Smash Computer
Do Spring Stats Matter? The Answer May Surprise You
Five Reasons Your Dog Can Identify A Power Breakout
No Signal In Spring Power Noise

Back around 2005 or 2006, John Dewan, founder of STATS Inc. and co-founder of Baseball Info Solutions, made a very fantasy-relevant discovery: He could predict power breakouts with a 60 percent success rate based on spring training statistics.

His methodology – simply finding a player whose spring slugging is 200 points higher than their career mark (minimum 200 career plate appearances and 40 spring plate appearances) – was simple and easy to understand. It also made it easy for those drafting late to identify breakout candidates.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work.
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When it comes to analyzing minor league players, it is certainly important to consider both the statistics they compile and the connection between that performance and the visual/mechanical elements of their process behind the numbers. However, if there’s one group of prospects who can be effectively analyzed (in a shorthanded fashion) from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s probably first base prospects. In general, they’re below-average defenders–none of the 25 qualified first basemen in 2013 posted a positive FanGraphs Defense value, after all–and as a result, they are held to extremely high offensive standards. Evaluating a first base prospect, then, often comes down to a simple method: If he hits, he’s interesting, and if he doesn’t, he’s not.

Applying this crude method to White Sox first base prospect Rangel Ravelo probably would lead many toward the second conclusion. Ravelo’s not entirely off the radar–he hit .312/.393/.455 with High-A Winston-Salem this year as a 21-year-old, enough to slot him into the final slot on Baseball America’s top 30 White Sox prospects. But he’s a first baseman who is a career .298/.359/.402 hitter–that’s a meager .104 Isolated Power and just seven home runs in 1179 plate appearances since being drafted in sixth round in 2010 out of a Florida high school.

The logical conclusion to draw, then, is that Ravelo, while perhaps a talented hitter, is never going to have the power required to make an impact given what’s likely to be little defensive ability. Then again, maybe the visual/mechanical aspect still retains importance for first basemen, because it paints a very different picture of Ravelo than his production does.

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Ordinarily, I like to focus on prospects, or at least relatively young major-leaguers. However, Eno recently suggested that everyone take a look at the RotoGraphs Consensus Rankings to find players we think are underrated/overrated, and I was surprised to see how low our experts have Shane Victorino in the outfield rankings, way down at No. 52, in between Chris Carter and Ben Revere.

Last year, despite playing in just 122 games, Victorino finished the season as the No. 21 outfielder in standard formats, between Mark Trumbo and Allen Craig. He put up a .294/.351/.451 slash line while hitting 15 homers and stealing 21 bases, and his weighted offense was 19% higher than league average. So why do our experts have him ranked so low?

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