It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

It isn’t that the Baltimore Orioles lack a front end starter, they just lack one until Dylan Bundy makes his comeback. He is already set to hit the ground running in spring training, and given the rest of the rotation, Bundy is by far the most intriguing and highest upside stater in Baltimore. That he may or may not even pitch in the majors this season doesn’t speak well for their rotation. Looking at Fantasy Pros ADP — which utilizes info from Yahoo!, NFBC, Fantrax and RealTime Sports — the highest drafted Baltimore starter is Chris Tillman around pick 228 as the 62nd starter off the board. Before we beat up on the rotation too much, lets take a closer look at each hurler.

Front Five
Chris Tillman
Wei-Yin Chen
Kevin Gausman
Bud Norris
Miguel Gonzalez

Other Options
Dylan Bundy
Ubaldo Jimenez

On the Farm
Tim Berry
Mike Wright
Zach Davies

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According to ERA, the Cardinals had the sixth best starting staff in 2014. But according to both WAR and xFIP, they were only the 17th best staff in the league. Every starter who threw at least 100 innings for the Cardinals had an ERA that was much lower than their xFIP/SIERA. Combined, the gap between the staff’s ERA and xFIP was -0.36, the third largest negative gap in the league. And our depth charts/projections don’t have any have any Cardinal starter significantly outperforming his peripherals again. Read the rest of this entry »

This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

In an offseason defined by a bevy of moves, the White Sox biggest acquisition may have come in the rotation. Adding Jeff Samardzija not only announced the team’s plans to compete this season, but it also gave them three fantastic starters at the top of the rotation. The secondary effect of adding a strong top-of-the-rotation pitcher is that the other players in the rotation get moved down a peg. For the White Sox, this was a significant development. While the club should by strong at the top, the bottom of the rotation contains some big questions for fantasy owners.

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If you bought FG+ — and you should have, because all those player caps and all that research would help you dominate your leagues this year — you might have sallied over to the player page for Nicholas Tropeano. And if you did that, you probably would have noticed that the player cap and the grades from Kiley McDaniel don’t quite agree.

You can probably just ignore the player cap. Some idiot probably wrote it.

But suppose there’s opportunity there? Suppose that disagreement really means that Tropeano is a guy that should be on your radar?

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

We all know how valuable a pitcher in Petco Park can be, even if they aren’t on the high end of the talent spectrum. Thankfully for us in 2015, the Padres staff will have some of that upper-end talent paired with a far more capable offense to support it. It is incredible how much one addition can make a difference for a club as the rotation looks so much more formidable now with their latest signing. Here is how the top four stack up:

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

It’s a rebuilding period for the Phillies, who fielded one of the oldest teams in baseball last year and felt the pinch in their starting rotation, as Cliff Lee’s 2014 was ruined by an elbow injury and A.J. Burnett had the worst full season of his career. Since then, Burnett and longtime right-hander Kyle Kendrick have left town, with an array of newcomers — well, new to the Phillies, anyway — looking to bring order to the back end of the staff. But behind the two lefties, who have both been the subject of trade talk all winter, it’s not a very pretty picture.
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Yesterday, I discussed four pitchers whose xBB% marks were well below their actual BB% marks. Given their penchant for throwing strikes, they look like good bets to improve their control this season. Today, I’ll check in on five starting pitchers who posted walk rates below their xBB% marks. A jump in walk rate could be in their futures, which would result in a higher ERA and WHIP, all else being equal.

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Injuries decimated the 2014 Texas Rangers. Injuries to Prince Fielder, Shin-Soo Choo and Jurickson Profar played a big part in Texas hitters amassing the fifth lowest WAR total in the league. Injuries to Yu Darvish, Derek Holland, Martin Perez and Matt Harrison led to the Rangers using 15 different starting pitchers. As a group, those starters amassed the ninth lowest WAR total of any rotation.

The good news is that Darvish and Holland, their two starters who were above league average according to xFIP when healthy last year, are expected to enter the season healthy. The bad news is that Perez and Harrison won’t be back until at least summer and potentially might not be back at all this year. That’s especially true for Harrison who has had three back surgeries in two years and considered retirement after his last surgery. But they’ve added a few new arms that will hopefully limit the number of Nick Tepesch and Nick Martinez starts that Rangers fans have to watch this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Along with the xK% formula I devised and updated last year, I also developed an xBB% equation. Unfortunately, it isn’t as good as the expected strikeout rate formula, as our community has really struggled to determine how the various underlying skill metrics should interact to result in an expected walk rate. That said, my version is still the best I’ve seen, so it’s better than nothing. But there are seemingly consistent underperformers and overperformers, so don’t take a pitcher’s xBB% as gospel.

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Note: I usually try to pick the most recent game the player pitched. Sometimes the MLB video has issues and other games are picked. Also, if a say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

Marco Gonzales

Why I watched: The top ranked Cardinals prospect according to Baseball America deserved a look.

Game(s) Watched:9/14/14 vs Rockies

Game Thoughts

• The 22-year-old lefty had small amounts of movement on every pitch. Just enough to generate some weak contact.

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