After talking a bit with Eno Sarris about his pitch type benchmarks, we decided to change up the process a bit. Instead of taking the full average of all of the pitches thrown in a category, we limited the pool to only pitchers who had thrown 20 innings from 2011 to 2013. And we limited the number of pitches we counted to ones that had been thrown 50 times. Hopefully this takes out gimmick pitches and small sample anomalies, for the most part. We’re focusing now on regularly-thrown pitches from somewhat-established pitchers.

We also decided to take the median value within each pitch type. This is a better representation of what’s out there — the old way could have allowed the very excellent pitches to pull the benchmarks north of what could actually be considered an average pitch. We also decided to show you where the 40% benchmark was — the ‘good’ but not ‘above average’ pitches. There are a lot of pitches thrown here that are neither ‘show-me’ pitches nor are they ‘strong’ — think ‘useful.’

Eno will take a look at Matt Cain to bring this all into focus after the new table of benchmarks.

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As a rather big fan of Carlos Martinez, it was disappointing to see him relegated to bullpen duty to start the season. Fortunately, that created a bit of leeway to get him on the cheap once he became a starter. I grabbed him right when the Cardinals opted to go with him over Tim Cooney, who I also own in dynasty and think will be a good starter if he gets his triple-A homer issues under control, and I have enjoyed a solid couple of weeks out of Martinez.
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I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about Mike Foltynewicz for awhile now, seeing as he’s an absolute flamethrower and everybody likes a prospect who can light up the radar gun. Unfortunately, that excuse has yet to surface, as Foltynewicz is having one of those seasons that is neither good nor bad enough to warrant a full-length write-up.

On the other hand, I didn’t come into the season with any plans to write about Foltynewicz’s Triple-A teammate Nick Tropeano. After occupying the No. 10 spot on Houston’s Top 15 Prospects list last year, Tropeano failed to make this year’s list. I suspect this has little to do with Tropeano’s own development and more to do with the addition of guys like Mark Appel and Josh Hader to the system, along with Vincent Velasquez’s return from Tommy John surgery, etc.

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The Cubs have new pitchers, yes, but do we care? They opted for the better prospect bat as they traded away their two best pitchers, and it doesn’t even look like the best arm they got back — Dan Straily — is going to be promoted to the big leagues right away. So what’s going on in the Cubbie rotation, and should mixed leaguers care?

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At the end of a long weekend that went by much too fast, as another absurd week of paper-pushing, traffic, and tension quickly closes in, I re-read The Stranger. In closing, Albert Camus writes, “I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a ‘fiance,’ why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again.”

Reading that, I was suddenly able to burst through my Sunday night anxiety. So here we are for another edition of Fantasy Baseball Existentialism. Last week, I read Joshua Ferris’ novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. The novel relates here because there are elements of existentialism and baseball. The main character is a Red Sox fan who is struggling to stay in love with the team after they’ve disappointed him by winning two championships, which creates nostalgia for a lifetime of the club’s familiar letdowns.

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We’re back at it again, checking in on the American League starting pitchers.

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After undergoing uretha surgery and then injuring his shoulder as he tried to ramp up for spring training, Mike Minor has been uninspiring in his first 11 starts this season. It is difficult for those that drafted him and stuck with him during his extended stay on the disabled list, but when should we start worrying and even start considering dropping Minor?
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Earlier this week, I suggested some names to buy and sell at third base and today I’ll turn my attention to the bump. There are actually a lot of pitchers who occupy my “sell” list, but a couple names jump out as prime candidates that you might want to jettison before they turn into pumpkins.

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They rank back-to-back in SIERA in the American League over the last 30 days, ranking 13th and 14th, back-to-back in full-season ground ball rate at third and fourth, could afford to throw more strikes and also make batters swing and miss more frequently. Jarred Cosart and Kyle Gibson have quite a bit in common, at least in terms of their results. But of course, they take a different path to actually getting to those results.

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Last week I took a look at the best fantasy hitters over the past calendar year by running the results of that split through Zach Sanders’ z-score method for calculating fantasy value. The motivation for that post was to make an argument that when voting for All-Stars the second half of the previous season should be considered. I understand that the “Past 1 Calendar Years” split on the leaderboards includes stats that were pre-All-Star break 2013, but…close enough. And I also realize fantasy value doesn’t necessarily equal All-Star, but, again, close enough. I quickly want to highlight the starting pitchers I’d vote into the All-Star game (ten per league) based on their performance over the last 365 in the image below. After that I want to discuss a few guys whose ownership percentage is out of whack with their performance in the past calendar year. Read the rest of this entry »