We—presumably like the Detroit Tigers, perhaps even at this very moment—have been brooding over what to do with and about Shane Greene. For the Tigers, this is one aspect of the broad and compelling question of what to do with and about their 2016 season, which is now in grave jeopardy. Over the past week, they’ve suffered the following indignities: (1) the rehabilitation, from a fractured elbow, of their fine hitter J.D. Martinez is proceeding only glacially, so they have to figure he’ll be out for another month; (2) Jordan Zimmermann, probably their best starting pitcher, went on the DL with a neck strain, which may or may not be the reason he had serious trouble getting outs during the preceding six weeks; and (3) Daniel Norris, a starting pitcher on whom they were counting, suffered an oblique strain and likewise went on the DL. The Tigers, according to Rotoworld, are “confident” that Norris will be back in two weeks, but that strikes us as magical thinking. The over-under, we think, is about a month.

Steven Moya should be an adequate or better substitute for Martinez, and the Tigers’ hitting is otherwise fine. But what’s the deal with their starting rotation? For one thing, they are fortunate that Michael Fulmer, in the first 12 starts of his career, has pitched even better than you’d have expected their top prospect to. Justin Verlander is the useful 3rd starter he’s been since he turned 30, though not the ace he was before that. The Tigers seem committed to Mike Pelfrey, to whom they gave a 2-year contract last winter. Pelfrey is a storied innings-eater, though it would be more accurate to say that the innings eat him. He’s got positive value if he keeps his ERA at about 4; at the moment, it’s 4.78, and his FIP is even worse. They’ve got to hope that Zimmermann comes back strong, though if he’s got an ETA no one’s told us about it.

Beyond that, there’s chaos. So depending on how you calculate it and the sunniness of your disposition, the Tigers, in the short and possibly the long term, need two and perhaps three starters. There’s of course always the chance of a trade—the farm system is thin, but not as thin as it was until recently, and there are a couple of good, very young hitters who could be attractive to a team that’s going nowhere. But meanwhile, let’s review the Tigers’ in-house options: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s your favorite time of the week, the moment we dive into the deep depths of the ominous free agent pool. Who will we find?! Will we discover hidden treasure?!

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We’re in the midst of a new frontier in pitching analysis. With Statcast giving us the exit velocity on batted balls, we can now test our theories about balls in play for pitchers. It’s long been thought that pitchers have little control over the ball in play, but recent research has begun to show that maybe pitchers have a little more to say about the ball once it leaves the bat than we thought before.

It’s a little scary, because we don’t have years and years of data to make sure that what we’re looking at is sticky, year-to-year. But we do have some idea of the meaningfulness of exit velocity for pitchers. It looks like something that can change rapidly, but is still meaningful in small samples. That’s probably because it speaks well to true talent, but true talent can change quickly for pitchers, because they can make an adjustment that changes their effectiveness completely. That makes the stat cool but also hard to use.

Also, it’s possible that the things that pitchers do to suppress exit velo are perhaps more subject to slight changes in your mechanics than the things they do to strike players out. For example, Rob Arthur outlined the factors as being “getting ahead in the count, low pitch velocity, low vertical pitch location, and precise horizontal pitch location.” Sounds like exit velo is a proxy for command, and we’ve seen what a little tweak to mechanics can do to command when we looked recently at Aaron Nola.

Still, we can look at the leaders for the year in exit velocity. Those pitchers may have better numbers than their strikeouts and walks suggest, and might be more believable than we thought. And we can also look at the guys that have improved the most over the last month and a half. Maybe they’ve made an adjustment!

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So far, this weekly column has largely focused on various general aspects of DFS strategy for the first half of the post, and specific projections for the day in the second half. Today, I’d like to switch gears a bit and discuss my process for building lineups in small (2-5 game) slates, using today’s early 3-game slate as an example.

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It’s that time of year again, American League starting pitcher tier update time! I still pay no attention to ERA, as it’s not a metric I use for evaluation and ranking pitchers for rest of season performance. Player movement between tiers will only occur when there’s a change in underlying skill, pitch mix, or velocity. Injured pitchers with non-arm injuries expected back relatively soon will remain in the tier they had been. Pitchers with arm-related injuries with up-in-the-air return dates have been removed. I just can’t speculate on that kind of stuff.

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We’re the guys who spurned a late-April trade offer for Drew Smyly, he of the 7-plus ERA over his last ten starts. So of course you want to listen to us when we suggest selling high on a starting pitcher, especially one who’s leading the AL in ERA and Quality Starts. Nonetheless, that’s how we see things with Steven Wright.

You probably know Wright’s story. He was on the road to being a career minor leaguer when, 1n 2011, he had a Pauline conversion to the cult of the knuckleball, made it to the majors at 28 in 2013, found his way into the Red Sox starting rotation last season, and pitched pretty well until suffering a concussion after being hit in the head by a fly ball during the other team’s batting practice—a first, as far as we know. This season, he’s been channeling the 2012-model R.A. Dickey: 2.12 ERA, 8 wins, and 12 Quality Starts in 15 overall. Plus, because he’s a knuckleballer, he’s not doing those horrible things to his arm and shoulder that regular pitchers do, and can last deeper into games (almost 7 innings per start) than other guys. Read the rest of this entry »

When looking at Jake Arrieta’s season thus far, it’s really hard to complain. His 1.74 ERA and 0.98 WHIP are virtually indistinguishable from his 2015 combo of 1.77/0.86. Expanding out further, the 28% K rate, 0.3 HR/9, .244 BABIP, and 57% GB rate look virtually identical to the 27%, 0.4, .246, and 56% marks from last year. There has been one stark difference, though. Arrieta’s walk rate has climbed from 6% to 9% this year. To put a finer point on it, he walked 48 batters in all of 2015; he has 40 already this year.

So what’s going on and should we worry at all?

First place I usually look with walk issue is first-pitch strike rate. Is Arrieta falling behind early and losing more hitters? The answer to that is a flat “no”. His 60% rate is the same as it was last year and if you move the decimal out, he’s actually a tiny tick better at 60.4% compared to 60.2%. From there I go to the chase rate. Are batters spitting on more pitches outside of the zone? That is definitely the case so far this year. His O-Swing rate was 34% last year, good for 11th in baseball. He’s down to 29% this year, just 49th among the 96 qualified starters.

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Four straight disaster outings in which Aaron Nola hasn’t seen the fifth inning, and he’s suddenly available on waiver wires. With seven walks and 14 strikeouts in those 13 innings, we already have one clue — his stuff looks unchanged, but something is being lost in translation.

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In this week’s edition of Deep League Waiver Wire, we’re doin’ a little plumbin’. Got to plumb! Plumb the depths, the depths of hell 18 team leagues and deeper. If you’re in a 14, 15, or 16 team league, you might be wise to pass on these players or just add them to your watch list but for those in leagues with 18+ teams or extremely large benches, I hope these guys are available. If not, let me know and the next time I’ll plumb further.

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There are numerous ways to use Statcast data to estimate FIP, many involving various methods for estimating HR/FB ratios using average fly ball distances or launch angles. I address the issue using a more granular approach, evaluating each batted ball on a case by case basis.  I am calculating the probability of the batted ball going over the fence by comparing it to all similarly hit balls dating back to the beginning of the 2015 season. Next, I sum all of these probabilities, and call it the estimated number of home runs. In theory, this number should be park and environment (temperature, altitude, weather) neutral, similar to xFIP in some ways.  I call this scFIP.

The following table shows the top 10 pitchers by scFIP. These pitchers have a minimum of 40 IP.