Just over a week ago, Lance Lynn signed a one-year contract with the Cardinals. It marks a triumphant return to the team he started his career with, last pitching while donning their uniform back in 2017. Since, he’s been a member of five different rotations. Now coming off the highest ERA of his career, let’s dive into the park factors to determine whether his new home park might provide an assist in his quest to rebound.
Note: For the next few weeks, I’m going to focus on some pitchers who I thought were interesting but haven’t had time to dive in. Most were late-season debuts while others had an arsenal change. Others came of the IL as the season was coming to a close. I’m just going to work through them in alphabetical order and once done, I move to my normal late-round starters.
The 27-year-old Beck was a multi-inning reliever until late in the season when he made three starts including five innings of one-run ball on September 30th. He leans into his slider (55% usage, 14% SwStr%) since it is his only above-average pitch. His fastball averaged 94-mph but it didn’t miss many bats (6% SwStr%).
With just the two pitches (showed a horrible curve), he struggled the second time through the order when starting (5.97 xFIP) and relieving (4.82 xFIP). For his fantasy value to increase, he needs another average secondary or his fastball to take a step forward. Read the rest of this entry »
Today we move on to reviewing Steamer’s favorite starting pitchers compared to THE BAT. As a reminder, Steamer actually proved closer in projected dollar value than THE BAT for all six of the latter’s favorites. Will THE BAT sweep Steamer’s favorites? Let’s find out.
After finishing our review of projected hitter dollar value compared to actual, let’s now skip on over to starting pitchers. We’ll start by reviewing THE BAT’s favorite starters, with projected dollar values significantly higher than Steamer.
Part one of this installment looked at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two analyzed sinkers and splitters. Part three, our final act, will detail sliders, curveballs, and changeups.
pVals are a topic of debate among pitch-level data masterminds. One side may consider them useless. Good pitches get hit and bad pitches get taken for strikes and pVals don’t explain any of that. On the other side, people like to know what actually happened. If a splitter left in the middle of the zone gets a called third strike when it probably should have been mashed for a home run, then pVals still credit the pitcher. The strikeout is what actually happened.
Keep in mind as you peruse this season’s best fastballs just that; pVals aren’t perfect. You’ll read about Chris Bassitt’s sinker and think, Chris Bassitt is a clear candidate for being drafted, but read on and you may back away from that stance. pVals help us understand what occurred, but take caution when using them to predict what will happen. Confused? Let’s just watch some GIFs.
Part one of this installment looked at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two will focus on sinkers and splitters.
Today is the final ERA forecast review as part of the 2023 projection showdown. We finish up with six more of Steamer’s ERA favorites compared to THE BAT. Let’s see which system fared better.
Unlike the other projection showdowns, I decided to go a bit deeper on the ERA forecasts, reviewing the next six names on each system’s bullish list. Today, we’ll jump back into THE BAT’s starting pitcher ERA favorites. As a reminder, these were the system’s top six.
Today we continue to review preseason ERA projections from THE BAT and Steamer as part of the 2023 projection showdown recap. Yesterday, I reviewed THE BAT’s ERA favorites, so today it’s time to scamper on over to Steamer’s ERA favorites.
Today, we continue reviewing the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X against Steamer forecasts in various fantasy categories. We’ll stick with pitchers, but this time move on to ERA, starting with THE BAT’s favorites. After dipping below 4.00 in 2022 for the first time since 2015, leaguewide ERA jumped back above 4.00 this season, so its possible the more optimistic ERA projections were less accurate than the bearish ones. Let’s find out how THE BAT’s favorites performed.