In 1996, Larry Labadini spent $251 of his $260 auction budget on hitting in the early years of LABR. That meant that his pitching staff was completely filled by $1 hurlers. Labadini finished fourth that year, but his strategy has forever been known as the Labadini Plan. I have been dying to try this in an auction, but never actually went through with it. It’s obviously high risk and there are always too many pitchers I want to own that cost more than a buck. One day though, it must happen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do I love Ubaldo Jimenez as a pitcher? No. He is wild, he is inconsistent, and very difficult to predict on a year-by-year and start-by-start basis. However, he is looking very undervalued of late and should be a guy most people are targeting late in drafts.
Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps it’s not who will win the position battle for the last starting pitcher slot for the Cleveland Indians that matters. Rather, from a fantasy baseball perspective — who do you want to start on day five for the Cleveland Indians? Because it’s most certainly not Aaron Harang, who seems to be the poster boy for noodle-at-the-ceiling throwing when it comes to a requisite starting pitcher to nom nom nom innings. The battle, it seems, is down to Carlos Carrasco, Josh Tomlin, and Mr. Harang. Yes, yes, I know those of you clutching to your pretty shiny Trevor Bauer cry foul, but the tea leaves are suggesting a need for “refining” in beautiful Columbus.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re in the midst of the preseason in which the vast majority of fantasy leagues will be hosting their fantasy drafts, and fantasy owners everywhere are looking for tips and tricks to give them a strategic edge over the competition. Luckily, not everyone in your league is smart enough to read RotoGraphs on a regular basis. While I’m not certain it’s the equivalent of fantasy baseball PEDs, it seems damn close.

Since we’ve now established the apparent correlation between RotoGraphs and fantasy steroids, here are a few thoughts to stuff in your back pocket on a pair of pitchers, one concerning a guy who should be drafted in every league and one who will be lucky to have a 5% ownership rate on Opening Day:

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most pleasant surprises of the spring, and a very welcome sight for the Yankees, is the impressive performance of Michael Pineda. Acquired before the 2012 season in exchange for Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi in a trade that has (so far) been incredibly disappointing for both teams, Pineda has yet to pitch an inning for the Yankees after tearing his shoulder labrum in spring training shortly after being traded.

Now, a full two-and-a-half years since he last pitched a major-league inning, the 25-year-old is opening plenty of eyes with his stellar spring performance. In his nine innings, he has allowed zero runs on eight hits, with a 14/1 strikeout-to-walk ratio that jumps off the page. It’s obviously a tiny sample, but his production so far has been very encouraging for a guy who hasn’t taken the mound in a major-league game since 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a commonly accepted rule in fantasy baseball circles – “don’t read too much into spring training stats.” I sure do love to break that rule. Every year, something special happens in spring training and with the right approach you can identify and build it into your fantasy draft plan. This year, Drew Hutchison looks like one of those special gems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I went beyond the obligatory 10 bold predictions and shared my bold hitter league leaders in each of the five standard fantasy categories. So today, I take on the pitchers. Although still difficult to hit on any, the pitchers are a bit easier to get right than the hitters for two reasons. One, there are two ratio categories, rather than one, so playing time expectations are less important. And two, there’s a larger luck component involved in pitching which makes the elite guys less of a lock to lead the league in any specific category.

In 2012, I hit on one of my 10 picks. Last year, I was demoted back to the minors after putting up an 0-fer. Let’s hope that lit a fire under my butt and results in a breakout predictions year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we looked at the elite pitches when it came to whiff rates. Today, we’ll look at things a bit differently. The following pitchers rated highly by swinging strike rate across multiple offspeed pitches. You might notice a certain deficiency in the group. Not a lot of great fastballs! As always, here are the benchmarks for each pitch type.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know I’m very interested in looking at peripherals by pitch type. Looking at the swinging strike and ground-ball rates against benchmarks for each pitch type can give us an idea of which arsenals are the most well-rounded, and which pitches are elite when set against the league benchmarks. Let’s use last year’s per-pitch numbers to see if we can identify some undervalued pitchers. Today, we’ll go with the elite single pitches by whiff rates. Tomorrow, we’ll look at balanced arsenals.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been working through a series of posts on how to prepare for leagues that use non-traditional categories. My concern is that people are going into drafts with materials that are geared toward 5×5 categories because almost any set of rankings or values from a major industry source services the traditional categories. Unless you’ve created your own rankings with projections for non-traditional categories or found rankings geared toward them, your draft materials are hurting you to some degree.

Read the rest of this entry »