Yesterday, I reviewed the extreme hitter performers that both sit atop and at the bottom of various statistical leaderboards. We don’t necessarily expect the majority of these results to continue, but it’s fun to review them. Strong early results could give some hitters a longer leash, increasing their job security, while weak results could result in a playing time cut. So even if we think regression or improvement would come, managers may already taking action on the early performances, rightfully or wrongfully. Therefore, we should be aware of the outliers.

Today, we’ll switch over to starting pitchers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.

I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.

A few general schedule notes:

• It looks like the Phillies have a pretty easy schedule this week; they’ll host the Rockies and White Sox. Citizens Bank Park is fairly hitter friendly, but both Colorado (outside of Coors) and Chicago have been punchless to start the season. Aaron Nola is the lucky recipient of a two-start week against these weak opponents.
• I’m also recommending you start everyone in the Giants rotation; they’ll start the week in Miami and then return home to face the Diamondbacks next weekend. Arizona could pose some problems, but the cavernous ballpark in San Francisco should prevent things from getting too out of hand.
• After their easy week this week, the Braves face both Texas teams next week. That will present some tough matchups, and after Max Fried’s blow up last weekend, it’s hard to trust anyone from Atlanta’s rotation next week.
• It’s possible we’ll see the season debuts of Walker Buehler, Jordan Montgomery, Edward Cabrera, Braxton Garrett, Michael Lorenzen, and Jameson Taillon next week. If you roster any of those guys, you’re probably already monitoring their rehab starts. Buehler and Montgomery both have pretty easy matchups if they stick to their schedule — those would be the only two I’d recommend starting so quickly off the Injured List.

Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.

I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.

A few general schedule notes:

• It’s a great week to roster any of the Braves starters; they host the punchless Mets and then travel to Miami. Charlie Morton and Reynaldo López are the lucky starters to pull a double shift next week.
• If I had any confidence in their starters, this would also be a great week for the Nationals; they’re on a West Coast swing through the Bay Area next week and play six games in those cavernous stadiums. As it is, I can only recommend MacKenzie Gore wholeheartedly with the rest falling somewhere between “maybe” and “risky.” That’s a shame.
• The Astros and Rangers have a wrap around four-game series that ends on Monday before meeting up again over the weekend. That means Framber Valdez lines up to face the Rangers twice in one week. After a rough first start to the season he looked much better against the Blue Jays on Tuesday. Still, I don’t really have much interest in seeing if he can tempt fate twice against the Rangers high-powered offense.
• It’s a rough week to roster any of the Marlins starters; they travel to New York to face the Yankees and then host the Braves.
• There are a handful of starters who are slated to come off the injured list next week including Blake Snell, Nick Lodolo, and possibly Michael Lorenzen. Normally I wouldn’t recommend starting a pitcher coming off a stint on the IL but Snell and Lorenzen have pretty juicy matchups against the Nationals and A’s, respectively.

With just three games in the books of the 2024 regular season as I type this (or five for the Dodgers and Padres), there’s not a whole lot of statistical analysis to be done that avoids running into sample size issues. What does stabilize relatively quickly is pitcher velocity. Of course, that doesn’t mean that one game is enough to celebrate a gainer or panic over a decliner. Velocities fluctuate from game to game and also tends to increase as the season progresses. However, the data is far more valuable than the majority of other metrics we have to stare at on the very, very young season.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.

I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.

A few general schedule notes:

• The first week in the Ottoneu season runs from March 20 through April 7 (including the two games in Korea). If your head-to-head league has a games started cap, you’ll have four extra days of games to juggle with a cap that isn’t proportionally bigger. And if you started any of the four starters from those games in Korea, you’re already down a start. Make sure you’re really keeping track of the best matchups and plan out your starters accordingly.
• Most teams have either one or two off days over these first 11 days of the season. The Twins and Brewers have three off days which should give their starters an extra bit of rest.
• I think JP Sears has a particularly nice pair of matchups to start the season. He’s had a great spring training and he’s lined up to face the Guardians at home and then the Tigers in Detroit. He’s an under-the-radar starter who could get off to a quick start this season.
• The Astros have a particularly tough schedule to start the season with series against the Yankees, Blue Jays, and Rangers lined up. You could start Framber Valdez since he feels pretty matchup proof, but I’d fade Cristian Javier and Hunter Brown.

Finally! If you follow my chat, you know I’ve been promising my SP rankings for quite some time, but after we made the decision to do this rollout, it didn’t make sense for me to just do a 1-to-152 ranking and then release these a week or two later. I appreciate the patience and now that they’re finally here, you can expect plenty of updates. There will be added write ups for guys who didn’t get mentioned as well as updates when someone’s outlook changes (which is particularly important for the pending FAs).

Let me know if you think I left anyone off and I’ll look into adding during an update.

Changelog

• 3/23/2024 – Updates: Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jack Flaherty, Trevor Rogers, Gavin Williams, Eury Perez, A.J. Puk, Casey Mize, Matt Manning ☹, Eduardo Rodriguez, Jordan Montgomery, Jared Jones, Emmet Sheehan, Kyle Bradish, Will Warren | Profiles: Louie Varland, Michael Lorenzen, Garrett Crochet, J.P. France, Keaton Winn, Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks, Wade Miley, Anthony DeSclafani, Jameson Taillon, | Removal: Michael Kopech (moved to the bullpen)
• 3/13/2024 – Updates: Gerrit Cole, Dylan Cease, Shane Bieber, Gavin Williams, Taj Bradley, Alek Manoah | Profiles: Nick Pivetta, Charlie Morton, Reese Olson, Luis Gil, Clayton Beeter, Casey Mize, Bowden Francis | Removal: Lucas Giolito (out for the year)
• 3/7/2024 – Profiles: Braxton Garrett, Kutter Crawford, Gavin Williams, Griffin Canning, Nestor Cortes, Logan Allen, Nick Lodolo, Graham Ashcraft, Jared Jones, Jackson Jobe, Kyle Harrison, Cole Irvin, AJ Smith-Shawver, Will Warren, Chase Hampton | Ranking Changes: too many to list ’em all!
• 2/23/2024 – Profiles: Kenta Maeda, James Paxton, Aaron Civale, Bryan Woo, Jon Gray, Jackson Jobe | Removal: Hyun Jin Ryu 류현진 (signed in KBO) | Ranking Changes: Maeda, Woo, Kodai Senga, Kyle Bradish, Cole Ragans, Joe Ryan, Walker Buehler, Yu Darvish, Shane Baz, John Means, Tyler Wells, Erick Fedde 페디
• 2/2/2024 – Profiles: Corbin Burnes update, Ross Stripling | Added: Ricky Tiedemann, DL Hall, Ben Brown, Alex Wood
• 1/26/2024 – Profiles: Eduardo Rodriguez, José Urquidy, Chris Bassitt, Merrill Kelly 켈리 | Added: Jordan Hicks (for real this time!), Mitch Spence
• 1/24/2024 – Added Tyler Wells, Cade Horton, Erick Fedde 페디, and Jordan Hicks plus write-ups for Marcus Stroman and James Paxton after they signed
• 1/11/2024 – First Release

Ranking Methodology

• ADP is based on 30-day rolling NFBC Rotowire Online Championship Leagues.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net (though that’s not a big deal at SP).

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s not get too hung up on the actual phrasing of “Breakout”. These are guys I like at their market rate and have them outperforming their draft cost. Breakout, Sleeper, whatever your term is… these are the guys I like buying because they can deliver a strong profit.

• My Breakout Hitters

Changelog

• 3/15/2024: Initial list

Ranking Methodology

• ADP is based on 30-day rolling NFBC Draft Champions Leagues.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net (though that’s not a big deal at SP).

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I identified and discussed the most polarizing hitters, according to NFBC ADP Min/Max Pick. Today, let’s shift over to starting pitchers. In general, I would expect more disagreement on a pitcher at a particular ADP than a hitter with a similar ADP, but the numbers don’t suggest that to be the case, at least this year. Let’s dive in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to reader and LOTR enthusiast “Gandalfsstaff” for the comment they made on my article last week:

What if you hopped in the DeLorean and used the new formula pretending it was last year? Would it have predicted better picks in hindsight?

In that article, I wrote about the recipe I concocted, on the shoulders of giants, to target pitchers. I used the skills components in Ron Shandler’s LIMA plan and metrics from Eno Sarris’ pitching models to try and identify great pitchers in the upcoming 2024 season. The recipe included 2023 end-of-season stats and 2024 projected stats:

ATC 2024 Projections

• LIMA: K%>=25%, BB<10%, HR/9<1.3

2023 End-of-Season Actuals

• Stuff+ Fastball (FA, SI, FC) >=100
• Stuff+ Secondary (SL, CH, KC, CU, FS) >=100
• A called strike rate (CStr%, SIS) >12%
• Pitched at least 50 innings in 2023

Names like Zac Gallen, Gerrit Cole, and Corbin Burnes (new Oriole, no big deal) floated to the top of the bubbling, steaming pot. Ok, enough with the cooking metaphor. There’s a problem, though, with back-testing this recipe on last year’s data as Gandalfsstaff suggested. The K%, BB%, and HR/9 used in the recipe were projected by ATC. I don’t have data on last season’s projections. Next season’s Stuff+ metrics, also, aren’t specifically projected. Stuff+ is used to make projections, but we don’t see a fastball Stuff+ projection for Gerrit Cole in 2024. However, as you will see, Cole’s fastball will likely be very similar in 2024 to how it was in 2023. As complicated as that all sounds, back-testing to see which pitchers met all the requirements of the recipe by year’s end is not. Let’s go back in time. Here are the pitchers who accomplished all the bullet points above by the end of the 2022 season:

–

Now that looks pretty darn good. Anyone of those seven starters could have anchored a fantasy rotation. The true secret ingredient here is a dominant fastball. My attempt at creating a recipe pre-season 2023 did not turn out well because I wasn’t using the best metrics. pVals are not predictive and they didn’t belong in my preseason analysis. Stuff+, however, is predictive:

You can read all about the predictive power of Stuff+ and other pitching models, but the chart above explains a lot. Fastball Stuff+ is generally repeatable year-to-year. This is nothing new. Once a pitcher has a dominant fastball, they can work their secondaries with more success. Hitters, bless their hearts, have enough to deal with when a fastball’s Stuff+ rating gets above 100. Furthermore, the ability of a pitcher to earn called strikes is important because he needs something that brings the bat off the hitter’s shoulder when the hitter has the advantage. Sure a pitcher has a good fastball and secondaries, but if those pitches rarely get a “Strike!” from the umpire, hitters can just become observers. Finally, the LIMA plan skill components from days of old were just as good in 2021 and 2022. You can’t fake striking someone out. Let’s take a look at who followed this recipe to the flour-stained, bottom of the pages in 2021:

–

–

Once again, the recipe yields positive results. Don’t get too hopeful about this recipe, it’s difficult to predict which pitchers will end 2024 having met all of the very challenging criteria above. It’s even more difficult for even the top-most gifted pitchers in the world to go out and do it! If I were stuck with only one statistic to predict with confidence for the upcoming season, I would choose innings pitched every single time. Nestor Cortes was awesome in 2022 but dealt with injury all 2023 long, limiting his innings pitched and therefore, a repeat great season. If only I were Biff Howard Tannen. Unfortunately, we can’t predict anything with that much confidence, so relying on repeatable skills and moving forward with fingers crossed seems to be the best way to go.