Drew Smyly has a unique fastball. Of pitchers to throw more than 1,250 four-seamers in 2016, Smyly’s fastball was second only to Marco Estrada in terms of vertical movement, meaning, the pitch has “rise”. If Wednesday’s WBC game between the United States and Venezuela was any indication, this pitch is becoming even more unique, as Smyly is now throwing harder than he ever has.

Jeff already wrote about this game on the main site, noting why the Mariners should feel pretty good about their pair of starters, and that (at least according to the telecast) Smyly was topping 94mph. However, today, I wanted to use Smyly as a branching off point to talk about another pitcher.

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Quick looks

3/15 games

I had full game information and write-ups on each of the following three pitchers but my computer did a restart and the information was lost. Here are the condensed versions from what I remember.

• Lucas Giolito: He was a mess. His velocity is still down from his minor league reports by about 3 mph. He couldn’t throw his curveball near the strike zone. He only lasted 2/3rds of an inning with his replacement, Chris Beck, showing more promise. I am not rostering Giolito in any redraft league and recently traded Giolito for Reynaldo Lopez and Curtis Granderson in an industry 20-team dynasty league.
• James Paxton: Looked similar to 2016. No issues here.
• Cody Reed: Not ownable in redraft leagues. He throws, not pitches, with a low 3/4 arm angle which is devastating to lefties but righties can tee off on him (.131 ISO vs LHH, .385 ISO vs RHH in ‘16). Also, he can’t throw is his change for strikes (35% Zone%), so he will have issues keeping righties from waiting on the fastball. Now, if he can get ahead, his two breaking pitches, change and slider, can get some swings-and-misses so he’ll get some strikeouts. I can see the pieces which have scouts hoping but he has not put them together yet.

3/16 games Read the rest of this entry »

In the middle to late rounds of a draft, pitchers seem to blend together. Picking between two similar pitchers can be difficult. To help with these decisions, I have created a simple cheat sheet to determine which pitcher has an easier path to success based on several outside factors like schedule strength and bullpen quality.

The chart is simple. I went through each factor which may influence a pitcher’s prediction in which they have no control over. I collected projections on each metric and then found the z-score for each value. Greater than 0 is good, less than zero is bad. Then for each team, I added up the z-scores for a final overall value.

The cheat chart is not perfect. It’s to be used as a guide. For example, if a pitcher is a heavy groundball pitcher, the user may not want to add the team’s outfield defense and home park home run factor. A different user may have the perfect projection set except for bullpen and defense. They can ignore the rest of the information. Additionally, a user may want to create their own category weightings. Again, this is just a guide.

To start with, here are the categories and the where I got the values.

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The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

Who was the most surprising starting pitcher in fantasy baseball last year? The answer might just be Kyle Hendricks. We ranked him 54th among starters heading into the season and he ended up earning $29.10, fourth most among starters at the end of the year. Oh, and he finished third in the Cy Young award voting. He also posted a suppressed .250 BABIP, a LOB% above 80%, and outperformed his SIERA by the widest margin among all qualified starters. So obviously, the knee-jerk reaction would be to figure some severe regression this season. Right? Let’s find out.

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We are updating our rankings for the stretch run of draft season!

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Brad Johnson
• Justin Mason
• Al Melchior

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

March Updates:

• OF

February Editions:

• OF
• SP
• 1B
• SS
• 3B
• 2B
• C
• RP

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We’re winding down our comparison of the Pod Projections and Steamer projections and will finish things off by moving on over to starting pitchers. What do we care about most? ERA, of course. So we’ll begin by checking in on a smattering of fantasy relevant hurlers in which I’m forecasting a significantly better ERA than Steamer. Interestingly, it appears that I’m simply far more bullish than Steamer in general, as I’m forecasting a lower ERA for 141 of the 161 starters that I project! That’s pretty crazy.

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This past Thursday, I spoke at the SABR Analytics conference on my per pitch valuations (pERA).  I originally created them to form an understandable framework for comparing prospect pitching grades and major league results. Some byproducts of the work became useful like the effects of dropping a pitch. Today, I will make available new information I provided at the conference.

For the readers who aren’t familiar with the original work, it can be read in its 2500 word entirety in this previous article. Here is a summary.

• The key is to give each pitch an ERA value (pERA) based on the pitch’s swinging strike and groundball rates. All the values are based on the average values for starting pitcher. Closers will have higher grades because their stuff plays better coming out of the bullpen.
• The pitcher’s control is determined from their walk rate which is separate from the pitch grades.
• Each pitch is placed on the 20-80 scale with 50 being average, 80 great, and 20 horrible.

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Some time ago I went through my database searching for batted balls that produce the greatest offensive benefit. I settled on a range of vertical launch angles between 21 and 36 degrees. This range of angles accounts for the majority of home runs and extra base hits, and are generally among the most valuable batted balls.

These are the most valuable balls, and this is, generally speaking you want to see batters maxing out balls on these angles and pitchers minimizing them. In the traditional sense, this range encompasses “fly balls”, as you would see reported on Fangraphs (FB%), but some sources consider balls hit between 20 and 25 degrees to be line drives. Either way, this is an important range. This isn’t ground breaking material, but you may not be familiar with it being described in terms of angles.

We know home run rate went up dramatically in 2016, at least in part due to an increased average exit velocity. However, this home run surge took place almost entirely for balls with a launch angle between 25 and 36 degrees. Balls hit above and below this launch window saw little to no increase. Alan Nathan wrote a relevant article which I encourage you to read. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot was expected from Matt Harvey and the New York Mets starting rotation in 2016, but aside from the Norse God of Thunder, the season was a bit of a let down (to say the least). Having fully recovered from Tommy John Surgery, and a consequent missed season in 2014, Harvey missed the end of the 2016 season when he was diagnosed with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and opted for season-ending surgery. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are baseball fans know what Tommy John Surgery is, and where the ulnar collateral ligament resides. A lot less is known about Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, so let’s dig in.

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Luck, as Branch Rickey famously observed, is the residue of good fortune, and it seems to us that a lot of what we Fantasists do amounts to determining who’s been lucky and who hasn’t. This is the stock-in-trade of one genre of preseason Fangraphs article that we, for two, are suckers for: Player A, the article will assert, had bad (or good) Fantasy-relevant numbers last season, but a massage of those numbers or an examination of more granular stats suggests that his performance wasn’t as bad as (or was worse than) his Fantasy outcomes.

The closer look or the more granular stats, the article will continue, reflect the guy’s true performance, whereas the Fantasy numbers are artifactual, and largely produced by the guy’s luck. Since luck evens out, the article will conclude, the guy will do better (or worse) than people who haven’t looked closely at the numbers think, and will be worth more (or less) than the market thinks he is.

One of our relatively accurate forecasts of our rather pitiful 2016 season derived from this approach. At mid-season, we opined that Danny Salazar (first half ERA: 2.75) would decline sharply thereafter, whereas Carlos Rodon (first half ERA: 4.50) would improve significantly. And so it turned out. We reached these conclusions by asking: which starting pitchers, if any, were in the highest (i.e. worst) quartile of Batting Average on Balls in Play and Home Run to Fly Ball Ratio, and in the bottom (i.e. best) quartile of Hard-Hit Ball Percentage?

And which starters, conversely, were in the lowest quartile of BABIP and HR/FB and the top quartile of HH%? Our reasoning wasn’t abstruse: if a guy’s not getting hit hard, and yet is giving up a disproportionate number of hits and home runs, maybe he’s been unlucky, and if his only problem is that he’s been unlucky, maybe his luck will change. And, on the other hand, maybe the luck of a guy who’s getting hit hard but doesn’t yet have the scars to show for it will run out. Read the rest of this entry »