Most pitchers have four or five starts under their belt now that we’re a month into the season, and while that’s enough to start seeing some trends, it’s also few enough that there is still some…fuzziness. I don’t expect Madison Bumgarner and Roy Halladay to finish the season with strikeout rates below 7, for example, and on the other end of the spectrum, I’m not quite buying R.A. Dickey has generating the strikeouts at the same rate as Clayton Kershaw over the course of a full season. That all said, not all is smoke and mirrors, and finding those players now instead of a month from now could be the difference between surviving a midseason swoon and languishing at the bottom of the league. Read the rest of this entry »

Jake Peavy is back. After scuffling for nearly three season with the Chicago White Sox, it looks like Peavy may have finally returned to form. His performance has been so impressive that Peavy currently leads all pitchers in WAR. Because of his recent struggles, Peavy was likely a late-round pick in most fantasy leagues this season. Now that he’s completely outperformed his draft slot, Peavy could be a popular trade block candidate in many leagues. While Peavy comes with some uncertainty, his early season performance has been encouraging.

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Batted ball distribution rates stabilizes more quickly than most of the other offensive and pitching statistics. We have found that ground ball percentage becomes reliable at about 200 plate appearances. Though no pitcher has quite reached that level yet, we are fairly close. It is therefore worth checking in on those pitchers whose ground ball rates have surged since last season and see if we can figure out if any are sustainable. All else equal, a high ground ball rate should result in fewer home runs, and ultimately a lower ERA.

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Over the last week, I took an early look at those pitchers whose fastball velocity has increased most since last season, and those whose velocity has declined. In the comments, several wondered how velocity trended during the season. Intuitively, we would expect that velocity would gradually rise into the summer months as pitchers build their arm strength throughout April and battle through the cooler months. If this is the case, then we would become more optimistic and less panicky about the early season velocity dippers. Let’s see if this happens.

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With my many fantasy baseball squads, sometimes I feel like I’m in complete control, and sometimes I feel like I’m flying down a snowy mountainside on a bike at near 60 miles per hour, surely destined for an epic crash (click on the link, it’s must-watch stuff). Owning Josh Johnson on a couple squads, I’ve felt a little of both.

Coming off of a serious shoulder injury in 2011, Johnson,28, had a strong enough Spring with 24 strikeouts over 22.1 innings pitched that indicated he ought to be healthy, and when Josh Johnson has been healthy, he’s typically been a guy you want in your fantasy rotation. As soon as the stats counted though, the results were sorely lacking. That is, until his start on Tuesday where he looked much more like the guy we either loved or coveted throughout all of 2010. So is it time to trust Josh Johnson going forward?

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Mike Minor being owned in just 58% of Yahoo! leagues is near criminal. While he is far from an ace, he should probably be owned in at least as many leagues as Lance Lynn (77%) or Brandon Morrow (85%). Not that those pitchers are bad, but Minor seems to be at least their equals. The fact that he is available in this leagues means there’s at least a decent chance he is available in your league, and probably an even better chance that an opponent in your league would be willing to trade him for less value than he should be worth.

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So we’re now three to four starts in as our sample size gradually increases. Of course, it’s still way too small to have that much meaning. However, we could still dive as deeply as possible and look at underlying skills like F-Strike% and SwStk% because those stabilize more quickly than the surface stats. I still advise completely ignoring ERA and focusing on the peripherals. Anyway, here are some notes on some of the mid tier and bottom tier guys.

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Edwin Jackson

It’s way too early for “I told you so” except, of course, in situations that have already come to their conclusion. Three starts aren’t enough to make concrete judgments from, but after talking him up this offseason, I do like what I’ve seen of Edwin Jackson so far. Last Thursday’s outing against the Astros was abnormally rocky — I somehow doubt that giving up multiple triples in one inning is going to become a habit for Jackson — but even amidst a tough outing, there were some good signs. Read the rest of this entry »

In early February, I wrote a post for “FG+” that endeavored to sniff out starting pitchers who either over-performed or underperformed their inherent strikeout ability. Inspired by Zack Greinke, Tommy Hanson, and Anibal Sanchez, among others – there were many starters that saw pretty massive fluctuations in their strikeout performance between 2010 and 2011. Being the curious human I am, I wanted answers. Or at least a direction on the path of finding an answer.

Specifically, this little study sought out to create an “expected” strikeout rate by controlling for their prior year K%, current year (2011) K%, SwStr%, and fastball velocity (definitions of correlations and the r-squared of the model at the bottom of this post). The results were pretty interesting, should you happen to have access to the full piece.

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Welcome to an all Padres, all the time edition of the deep league waiver wire. As you all know, Padres pitchers are the ones you want. And given how starters are dropping like flies recently, it is likely some of you are hunting for someone with a pulse, with the hope that this someone may not actually kill your ratios.

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