Despite the small sample, the pitching trend continues (as of 4/11):

Strikeouts are up. Offense is down. The MLB ERA as it stands is 3.39! You can read why in the The Hardball Time’s Baseball Annual 2015: Jeff Sullivan looks at whether or not sabermetrics have tipped the balance of power toward pitching and defense — it has. PITCHf/x evaluation is one major reason.

More and more, pitchers know what works within their own repertoires, and we can then tell some “reperstories” based on their pitch characteristics (movement and velocity) and outcomes (swinging-strike and groundball induction).

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Fastball velocity has seemingly received increasingly greater attention over the past couple of years. Perhaps it’s because it just keeps rising. A quick Google search yielded this interesting article detailing recent trends and confirming that average fastball velocity has risen every year since 2008. For us fantasy owners, velocity is important because a spike is often the precursor to a breakout. So let’s talk about a couple of pitchers and what we have seen from their velocity in the early going. These guys have all started just one game, which is as small a sample size as ever. But, velocity stabilizes very quickly, so it’s still worthwhile to discuss.

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Kendall Graveman just had a very bad major league debut. If you were like me and bought into the sleeper hype—which with Graveman started as soon as the A’s acquired him from him Blue Jays in the trade that sent Josh Donaldson to the land of Molson and denim—you might be feeling a little sheepish right now. I went so far as to start him in a DFS, though as Chad Johnson pointed out, it was somewhat slim pickings yesterday.

Given the lack of any track record, this bad start was probably enough reason for many fantasy owners to jump the Graveman ship. While I can’t say that I blame such owners, I can say that I am refraining from dropping Graveman in the leagues in which I own him.

Why? A deeper look at his line for the day (.357 BABIP; 43.8% GB%; two homers on six fly balls?) made me want to take a closer look at the start, so I watched the condensed game on MLB.com. What I saw was enough to convince me to give Graveman a couple more chances.

Here’s what I saw:
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I’m really not privy to the whole daily fantasy baseball thing, as proctored by FanDuel or DraftKings. It’s probably good that I’m not because I’m 98 percent certain I would immediately fall in love with it.

Still, I’m intrigued, mostly because it takes streaming to the extreme. And I love streaming. It’s a tedious, somewhat painstaking process, what with combing through splits, looking for the juiciest matchups that are also cost-effective.
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Last week, I posted the first iteration of the American League starting pitcher tiers. Naturally, I couldn’t possibly include every starting pitcher, even if they conceivably have the upside to push their way into the rankings at some point. So let’s discuss a couple of names that could quickly make a debut appearance.

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Did you draft Dustin Pedroia, who is on pace for almost 300 home runs? Mookie Betts? In a fit of extreme homerism, the entire Red Sox lineup, which will surely score 1,296 runs? That must feel pretty good. Good for you, Pete. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Or, wait — you were the one who drafted Kyle Lohse, weren’t you? Threw a mid-round pick at Mat Latos? Wrote “stream Nate Karns” on your list of good Tuesday decisions? Do you regret it?

Man, there have been some truly brutal starts to kick off the season. It’s really easy to make a knee-jerk decision in reaction to such preposterous, ego-damaging, season-dooming starts, but you have to remember — and I think it goes without saying — that these guys will (probably) never be worse this year than they were today.

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Baseball in 2015 has finally begun! Well, the version that actually counts has. So it’s time to dig deep and uncover those hidden gems that could lead you to victory. As usual, the deep league wire will include names owned in 10% and less of CBS leagues and usually be players whose value is confined to deep mixed or mono leagues, unless otherwise noted.

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With rosters set we now know the 25 men populating each National League club and that means we have a firm handle on how each rotation is set up. Throughout spring, there were several battles in the backend of rotations that are now sorted so let’s take a look at some of the fourth and fifth starters who might be ready to deliver more than their rotation spot would suggest.

Backend rotation starters aren’t usually loaded with all-format, all-situation starters, but we know that some will emerge as such. With these three, I think we have no worse than some stream options, but each also carry the upside of becoming full use guys. Well, full use outside of the normal spots where you’d consider sitting any non-ace (i.e. Coors).

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The return of another baseball season marks the return of another tradition: the search for talent in the far reaches of fantasy leagues. In this space, we’ll root through the dumpster bins as we try to locate the players who were either forsaken on draft day or who have stumbled on to playing time opportunities. Some guys will work out, some others — heh, perhaps more than some — won’t, but whether you’re looking for spare parts or trying to keep your head above water in a deep format, this column is for you.

Two quick notes: Most of the players discussed are best suited for mono leagues, although there is the occasional customer whose value extends to mixed formats. Finally, I use CBS for the ownership percentages.
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So, it’s been a busy preseason and I had a list of all the articles I wanted to publish before the season officially began. Unfortunately, I failed. And as a result, Eno beat me to the punch. But I’m going to do it anyway. A whole three years ago, with help from math wizard Matt Swartz, we discovered that spring pitcher strikeout and walk rates actually do hold value and using them could improve projections, even if just marginally. This was validated recently by another math wizard, Dan Rosenheck. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at which pitchers enjoyed a strikeout rate surge during spring training.

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