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.

After a breakout 2014 performance, Jeff Samardzija followed up with a stinker of a season. His ERA spiked by nearly two full runs, his SIERA jumped by more than a run, and his strikeout rate plummeted, as did his ground ball rate. It’s no surprise then that the RotoGraphs ranking crew don’t exactly agree on his 2016 value. His individual ranking ranged from a bullish 25 to a bearish 69, but a “split” (difference between high and low ranking) of 44, the highest mark among the top 45 consensus pitchers.

Despite his poor 2015 results, the Giants gave him a five-year contract. Let’s find out if a return to the National League and calling the most pitcher friendly park in baseball home can spark a rebound.

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Everyone loves value, and paying down at pitcher is quite popular — even in writer/expert leagues. Waiting on pitchers puts some extra pressure on hitting on value plays to offset the lack of a “true” ace. That’s not to say the following pitchers will perform like fantasy aces, but they do appear poised to outperform their draft positions — some by a significant amount, in my opinion. Each of the five pitchers highlighted below is being selected outside of the top-50 starting pitchers in NFBC drafts, just one is being selected inside the top-200 picks on average, and three of the five are being selected, on average, outside of the top-250 players.

*NFBC ADP data current as of March 10th. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time to move on to the starting pitching side of the ledger for our next set of Steamer and I entries. For the pitchers, I’ll be comparing my ERA Pod Projection to that of Steamer to identify who I am significantly more bullish and bearish on.

First, we’ll start with one of the pitchers I am far more optimistic on than Steamer is. But before we dive in, I wanted to note some of the pitchers I skipped over. Chris Young, Royals version, topped the list, for obvious reasons. He breaks all computer models and is a perfect example of why it is often better to rely on human forecasts than computer ones. After Young was the man that came back from the dead last year, Rich Hill. Obviously, a computer system is going to struggle with his projection and is also unaware of the work he did on his mechanics last season that may have been behind his improved control. He’s a total crapshoot though and a complete shot in the dark, so he’s not really worth discussing.

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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.

After subjecting three straight hitters to the Pod Projection process, it’s time to move on to starting pitchers. I have decided to begin with everyone’s favorite sleeper, Reds sophomore Raisel Iglesias. After coming over from Cuba, Iglesias has pitched just 36 minor league innings and 95.1 Major League innings. And despite a lackluster 4.15 ERA during his debut, the hype machine has been running all offseason.

Such a limited track record and unimpressive ERA doesn’t typically result in an NFBC ADP that equates to the 40th starting pitcher selected. So what we have here is our classic so-called sleeper, who isn’t going for sleeper prices. As a result, he’s no sleeper, as everyone is on the bandwagon. Are fantasy owners justified in their optimism?

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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

Fresh off of the Hank controversy, the Milwaukee Brewers find themselves starting down another tough story to spin: A second consecutive season under .500. The Brew Crew haven’t gone back-to-back on the losing side of the ledger since 2009-2010, and even those teams flirted with an even record. To find the last time the Brewers won 68 games and had little reason for optimism, you’d have to go back to a Ben Sheets-led 2004 squad, and that team had Sheets, who was awesome. That might not seem like an eternity ago, but this is a team that’s grown accustomed to being decent, if not good.

Projections don’t like their chances for a rebound in 2016, and the pitching staff is a big reason why. A year after landing in the middle of the pack for wins above replacement from pitchers despite their rotation ERA jumping more than a run, nobody seems to think the Brewers will be able to prevent opponents from scoring. Out a Mike Fiers and a Kyle Lohse without a big acquisition or marquee prospect banging at the door, that’s understandable.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t a few fantasy arms worth keeping an eye on throughout the spring. It just means Hank II might not be the only one having an accident or two at Miller Park.
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The notion of a Holy Trinity, as it applies to theology, derives, depending on which language you’re looking at, from either Theophilus of Antioch or Tertullian of Carthage. The notion of a Holy Trinity, as it applies to starting pitchers, derives from Bret Sayre of Baseball Prospectus. He posited that “the three skills that are most important to the art of pitching [are] getting strikeouts, reducing walks, and keeping the ball on the ground,” and that pitchers who can do all three of those things, as betokened by their above-average stats in those categories, are or can be something special.

Our problem, as seekers after buried Fantasy treasure, is that the guys who qualify for the Trinity are usually special according to any metric you’d care to name. For example, members of the Trinity according to 2015 stats include Clayton Kershaw, Jake Arrieta, Carlos Carrasco, and Dallas Keuchel. Sometimes, though, interesting names pop up. This year’s Trinity also includes Hisashi Iwakuma and Kyle Hendricks, about whom more in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

We started our positional rankings updates yesterday with outfield and today we’re hitting the mound.

• Outfielders

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
• Zach Sanders
• Mike Podhorzer
• Dan Schwartz
• Paul Kastava
• Justin Mason

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.

Brad didn’t get a chance to update his rankings so they’re removed & the Yovani Gallardo ranking for Dan is fixed. 

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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

Things did not go well for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2015, but it would be difficult to pin too much of that on their pitching staff. With a 3.74 ERA and 3.91 FIP, the Rays’ pitchers weren’t exactly world-beaters, but they weren’t the team’s biggest problem, either. They ranked in the middle third of the league in pitcher wins above replacement, walk rate, ERA, and FIP-. They just kind of were.

The issue, in some cases, was timing. The Rays ranked sixth in strikeout percentage as a whole, but their rotation was much better (fourth) in that regard than a bullpen lighter on gas. That bullpen posted 87 meltdowns, sixth-highest in baseball, which served to squander a bit of what a fringe-top-10 rotation was able to manage, and that bullpen lost lefty Jake McGee, to boot. That could be an iffy area again in 2016, one the .500-bound Rays didn’t see fit to invest a ton in.

The rotation, by the way, only had to go nine-deep a year ago. If it can stay relatively healthy once again, even getting a late-season reinforcement back from the disabled list, the Rays could have one of the better cost-effective rotations in baseball.
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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

The always-stingy Colorado Rockies ranked 21st in the majors in salary by the end of the season, cracking the $100-million for the first time in franchise history. Their biggest expenditure, though, may have been the outlay for physical therapists specializing in neck injuries, as their pitching staff likely suffered from a great deal of whiplash in 2015.

The Rockies employed the second-worst pitching in baseball by wins above replacement, with the staff as a whole owning a 5.04 ERA, 4.56 FIP, and 4.33 xFIP. And sure, that xFIP-ERA gap is enormous thanks to a 13.2-percent home run per-fly ball rate, but that’s almost always going to be the case for a team that plays half its games at Coors Field – as a team, they haven’t outperformed their FIP or xFIP since 2007, the lone time they’ve done so in franchise history.

To combat this, the Rockies have eschewed strikeouts in favor of ground-ball pitchers, owning the fourth-highest ground-ball rate and the No. 28 strikeout rate a season ago. Whether or not that’s a sound strategy – limiting balls in play with high-whiff arms might better counter the Coors effect – is almost beside the point, because the Rockies haven’t made significant changes to the rotation for 2016.
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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

Well, would you look at that. Another season down, another season where the St. Louis Cardinals cycle through an embarrassment of riches on their way to one of the best records in baseball, and earn another playoff spot in the process. Yawn.

The Cardinals rode a 2.94 staff ERA, by far the best in baseball, in 2015, and while their peripherals – a 3.48 FIP and 3.71 xFIP – didn’t quite back up that dominance, their pitchers still produced the sixth-highest wins above replacement in either league. That’s not necessarily some Cardinals-specific magic, as it’s only the second time in five seasons their ERA has beaten their FIP. Still, thanks to a pitcher-friendly home park and a great bullpen to help strand runners, the Cardinals as a rotation outperformed their xFIP for a fourth consecutive year.

That bullpen was even a shade better than their rotation, a ludicrously high bar considering their entire rotation together had a sub-3.00 ERA. Trevor Rosenthal and company have just got it like that.

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