How do you mark the beginning of autumn? You have your choice: Labor Day has come and gone, football season is upon us and the Jewish calendar has already ushered in a new year. And the air is already starting to feel a bit chillier here in the northeast.

But we know the real indicator: it’s fantasy playoff time. Forget the sleepers, the stashers, the upside plays, the aching bodies recuperating on the injured reserve; all we care about now is who is available in deep leagues who can help the cause. Good thing we have two candidates available in a plethora of formats who fit that job description.

As usual, the players listed in this space are typically better suited for mono leagues, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.
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Heading into the 2015 season, Marcus Stroman was a very popular sleeper/breakout pick. You know, one of those players everyone hypes so much as sleeper material that he no longer actually goes for sleeper prices. In fact, a Google search for “marcus stroman sleeper” yields many articles, some of which include the following quotes:

Stroman is on the verge of breaking out into one of the American League’s best starting pitchers…Stroman’s combination of nasty stuff, good command, and superb FIP has me pinpointing 2015 as a breakout for him.

When the dust settles, the diminutive Stroman could be a top-20 starter in 2015.

There is a real chance that we start associating the word “ace” with Stroman this year.

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It’s September, so innings limits, pitch limits, etc. tend to be a topic of discussion. Some teams are going the way of a six man rotation a la the Mets (well, until Matt Harvey gets shut down for the regular season) or moving starters to the bullpen such as the Nationals and Joe Ross. Regardless of the route teams decide to opt for, here are a few relievers who I suspect will get at least one or two starts in the final weeks.

Tyler Lyons, Cardinals — This is the first name that jumps to my mind when I think of RP/SP guys. He’s already made seven big league starts, and while the Cards aren’t set on a hard limit for Carlos Martinez, both he and Jaime Garcia would probably benefit from an occasional extra day or two of rest, or even a skipped start. Lyons is largely unowned, and is available in over 98 percent of CBS, ESPN and Yahoo! leagues. For someone who owns a 8.07 K/9 (20.2 percent) and a 4.39 FIP/3.91 xFIP in 100 1/3 innings career as a starter, he has uses in deep leagues where you’re looking for a win.
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A couple of weeks ago, I investigated Justin Verlander’s resurgence. I found reasons to validate his hot streak but turned up additional question marks along the way.

One of them was his zone contact rate (Z-Contact%). At 79.7 percent, it would have been the second-lowest of his career by several percentage points (despite not performing “at peak”). However, I realize now, unfortunately, that I must have encountered a glitch in the leaderboards — his Z-Contact% as of August 21 (because the post, despite running the same day as his Aug. 26 start, was published prior to it) was 85.7 percent.

Regardless, it got me thinking what affects a pitcher’s zone contact rate because it correlates very strongly with strikeout rate (R-squared = .594). User DoubleJ speculated about the metric via comment on one of last week’s posts:

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You know it’s late in the season when a Fantasy Baseball blogger can’t think of anything more constructive to do than recommend a Rockies pitcher. But stay with us for a moment, because we think we’re on to something.

More precisely, we think Mike Petriello, late of Fangraphs and dweller in stat Valhalla, was on to something six months ago. In early March of this year, a Denver Post article about Rockies’ starting pitcher Jorge de la Rosa caught his eye. As you no doubt know, Coors Field is a real tough place to pitch. And so it was for De La Rosa from 2008, when he joined the Rockies, through 2012. His home/road splits were big, though not really different from anyone else’s. Then, in 2013 and 2014, a very strange thing happened: De La Rosa was lights-out in Coors, but sub-mediocre everywhere else. Merge his 2013-2014 Coors stats and you have a Cy Young candidate: 29 starts, 20 Wins, 3 Losses, 2.92 ERA, 1.24 WHIP. Merge his two-year stats on the road and you’re in Jeremy Guthrieland: 33 starts, 10 Wins, 14 Losses, 4.66 ERA, 1.38 WHIP. Read the rest of this entry »

After three months, my kids are back to school and I finally have some additional time to restart my Quick Looks column. Today, I am going to start with a couple pitchers I saw at a while back but didn’t have time to type up. Hopefully each week, I will get a look at three to five pitchers and give you my take.

I will continue to implement player grading on the scouting scales of 20-80. I will use Kiley McDaniels scale he discussed in this article.

I will give a value for where I think the pitcher could currently fit in on the average team (CV=current value) and where they could end up (FV=future value). I am sure I will disagree with some grades from others, but I am only looking at one game.

Note: If I say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

Taylor Jungmann (CV: 50/FV: 55)
7/19/15 vs Pirates

Game Thoughts
• The 25-year-old righty really liked to pitch downhill keeping the ball low in the zone. Additionally, is fastball has some natural sink at times, so he should get a decent number of groundballs (46% on the season).
• His fastball was possibly two different pitches and Pitchf/x had problems labeling them. When the fastball was in the 93-95 mph range, it really straightened out and had little sink. When he kept it around 91 mph, it would get a nice amount of sink.
• His curveball was 75-76 and was a nice pitch. He used it as a swing-and-miss pitch and also for called strikes if needed.
• His change was between 84-86 mph with some release-side run. In this start, it was not consistent at all. Sometimes it broke, other times not. It seemed to improve a bit as the game went on.
• He would really pound the bottom of the zone and if he gets an ump with a higher zone, he may have walk issues.
• He could have some bad games were he gets BABIP to death with the ground balls.

Final thoughts: None of his pitches stood out as plus, but the combination really worked good together. It would be nice to see his walk rate drop a bit more. I see him being a 4th to 5th starter in 12-team leagues next year

Cody Anderson (CV: 40/FV: 40)
7/4/15 vs Pirates

Game Thoughts
• The 24-year-old righty had a nice start to the season, but as regressed quite a bit since then.
• His fastball was at 92-95 mph and can get some nice sink at the lower velocities.
• He had an 86-90 mph cutter/slider with some sinker/downward action. If that description sounds confusion is because the pitch was all over the place.
• His 83-85 mph change was straight as an arrow.
• He threw a curve at 81 mph with 12-6 break.
• None of the pitches had any swing and miss. His results are going to be determined by the quality of sacrifices he makes to the BABIP gods.
• He throws from a 3/4 release point and keeps the ball down. He lives on the edge of the strike zone with the change being the only pitch he throws into the heart of the zone.

Final thoughts: There is nothing here to be excited about. He is nothing more than a long reliever who will get a spot start now and then. There is no reason to own him. He needs to get his strikeouts in the 6 K/9 for me to be interested

Continuing from yesterday, here are updates on key young arms facing potential innings limits in September.

It is no secret that the Red Sox defense has been brutal at turning balls in play into outs this year. As a team, the pitching staff has allowed a .307 BABIP, second highest in the American League and fifth in baseball. But things are bound to improve as we have recently learned that Hanley Ramirez, currently sidelined with a sore shoulder, will never again (hopefully) play left field. Instead, he will take over first base duties when he’s healthy enough to return. While we have no idea how he will perform defensively at first, he can’t possibly cost the team as many runs there as he had done in the outfield!

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The biggest question in fantasy this September isn’t “who are the must-get call ups”, but rather “how many more IP does Pitcher X have left?” This is because many of the potentially high-impact call ups are already up and producing so barring substantial injuries, there just isn’t a lot of room for September additions to make a massive impact. Meanwhile several of those aforementioned high-impact prospects who might’ve been call ups a couple years back are now several months into their MLB careers after getting the call this summer and sticking.

Let’s take a look at where the youngsters of note are at this point in the season and try to get a read on how much they might have left in the tank. The general rule of thumb that Eno and I adhere to is 20% over your workload from the previous season. There is no set ideal for all pitchers, but 20% is usually what teams will give a young arm and then take it beyond that in a case-by-case basis.

We will start with the guys who won’t come close to the +20% threshold and thus shouldn’t be in grave danger for an innings limit cutting their season short:

(Dave Andersen published a similar post for hitters in our Community section last week. Check it out here.)

I want to say something inspiring such as “it’s never too late to make a move,” but that’s patently untrue. In two of my leagues, it’s too late. Very, very too late. That kind of statement only applies to contenders.

Interpret it in a different context, however, and it carries some weight. If you play in a dynasty league, you can, and should, always make moves.

Major League Baseball has a bounty of young, electric pitching talent. A lot of that talent remains largely unowned, too, while other pitchers retain lofty ownership numbers because of their name recognition.

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