We’ve done a good thing for those of you that still care about fantasy baseball right now. The Auction Calculator now has 2016 stats as an option so that you can look backwards at what has just happened. That’s going to be part of our effort, on the way to the end of the year, to look at last year to learn more for next year.

This is an important part of fantasy that usually gets ignored. Not only does the league itself change year to year, so retrospection is important in that way, but we can learn things about fantasy itself that will improve our ability to value players going forward.

The fourth-best player in the game last year, by this list, has already inspired a possible change to the auction calculator going forward. Let’s see what else it jars loose.

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Let’s finish up my preseason starting pitcher strikeout rate articles by looking at those I identified as possessing significant downside, as hinted at by my xK% equation. It’s a very different list than the one generated by the upsiders, as these tend to be the pitchers with high strikeout rates with seemingly the only direction to go moving forward is down.

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Joe Camp won his league, probably because he reads us and listens to our podcasts here, I dunno, but that’s my guess, totally not because he’s an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. Anyway, he won his league, and his leaguemates started chirping about a couple trades he made that year that may have appeared lopsided at the time — my personal opinion is that vetoes suck, and are a dampener on league activity, and we should all be active and talking to each other as much as possible, so if you were on it, you would have made that lopsided trade first — and so Mr. Camp set out to prove he would have won the league anyway.

The way he did it? He took the worst team in the league and replaced everyone on the team with the best free agent pickups of the year. He then compared that team with everyone’s originally drafted teams. The free agents easily won — 96 points to 87 for the best drafted team.

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Let’s continue the strikeout rate theme by reviewing my list of starting pitchers my xk% equation deemed holding strikeout rate upside in 2016. In the original article, I expressed that the list of names was rather boring, so let’s see if that turned out to be the case or if any gems were uncovered.

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I have a total of 28 preseason prediction type articles I need to review, so let’s get rolling! Fingers are crossed that these recaps don’t make me look like a fool. Let’s begin by reviewing my spring training starting pitchers strikeout rate surgers and breakout candidates. The idea here was that underlying skills posted during spring training do carry em>some predictive value, so perhaps those starting pitchers that enjoyed a strikeout rate spike would see a jump in rate during the regular season as well.

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Well, the season is over! This is the second full season of xStats, and they have undergone numerous upgrades over that span. I some of you found them interesting! Perhaps even useful. With this second season under the belt, it feels fitting to throw out a few xStats awards: Best Starting Pitcher, Best Relief Pitcher, and Best Batter. So, without further ado, here we go:

Best Starting Pitcher: Clayton Kershaw.

Not a terribly big surprise. He has the best curve ball in MLB by xOBA, registering only .126 (min 200 thrown). His slider has the 7th highest swinging strike rate, 23.5% (min 200 thrown). You can see all of the pitch stats here.  It will come as no surprise when I say Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball, he’s just about the best in every individual category xStats measures. No other pitcher really got anywhere close to his dominance. While Noah Syndergaard and Jose Fernandez got somewhat close to Kershaw scFIP and xOBA respectively, the gap between Kershaw and the second best picture is still impressively wide. There is little more I can say about Kershaw, he needs to get called up to a higher league to face better opponents, MLB is too easy for him. Read the rest of this entry »

There were big expectations for Marcus Stroman coming into last season on the heels of a strong rookie campaign that saw him throw 130.7 innings of 3.65 ERA, but a very impressive 2.84 FIP. A heavy groundball focus, 4.0 K:BB ratio, and stifling homers (0.5 per 9) laid the foundation for the lofty expectations before a torn ACL in Spring Training put all of that on hold. To his credit, he returned in time to make four starts in the regular season and three more in the postseason which rejuvenated the hype to the point where he was the 26th starter off the board this past draft season.

I don’t need to a deep breakdown of his season to show that it didn’t live up to said hype. His 4.37 ERA says it all. However, he did have a 3.71 FIP and the breakdown of his season might actually be enough to yet again foster some hype heading into his age-26 campaign. He likely won’t go as a top-30 arm again, but those who look beyond the surface stats will see a tale of two halves, the second of which saw a surge in strikeouts unlike anything he’d done before and at no expense to his league-best 60% groundball rate. This jump in strikeouts will be our focus today.

(By the way, I’m splitting the sample right down the middle – April through June, July through September.)

In the first half, he pitched to a 5.33 ERA in 101.3 innings with just a 16% strikeout rate – worse than the passable-but-modest 20% rate he’d posted in 2014-15. His fastball was the biggest issue, netting a 7% strikeout rate that stood 94th of the 96 qualified starters. This folds in both his four-seamer and sinker, but neither were anywhere near the 16% league average strikeout rate for fastballs. Adding in the cutter boosted him to 10%, but he still slotted just 81st. The soft stuff had a passable 31% mark, just over the 29% average, but the slider, curve, and change accounted for just 30% of his plate appearances, muting the impact of those strikeouts.

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I usually get three or four of these Bold Predictions right every year, and I’ve grown comfortable with that level of success. Any more and they aren’t bold enough, any less, and they’re useless. That said, wait till you see number one. It’s a doozy. It’s *so* wrong that it should probably invalidate all my hits. It’s *so* wrong that I’m questioning why any of you are here right now. It’s *so* wrong I want to throw crap.

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First, a few words about my offseason writing at Rotographs. Besides reporting any possible relevant fantasy news, I plan on systematically going through two groups of players and work on their 2017 values. I will start at the top of the 2017 rankings and also somewhere in the middle and work my way down each list. I may be able to do a handful of players each article or I might by limited to just the two players. Either way, I will start putting together a 2017 draft ranking.

Additionally, I will try to follow Eno’s schedule for the other writers (e.g. players on playoff teams for the next couple of weeks). If they are looking at outfielders for that specific week, I will also look at outfielders.

The other project I will work through is being able to put a better evaluation on prospects for fantasy purposes. I will use the evaluations of various prospect writers and publications and put their evaluations into something which can be used in fantasy circles. I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish, but I am sure there will be some roadblocks and detours on the way. I will start this series Friday.

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