Mock draft season is starting to draw to a close and real drafts are starting to fill our calendars, but we here at Fangraphs — with the help of a few friends — put together another staff mock for reference’s sake. It was a 12-team, 23-round mixed mock with 2 SP, 2 RP, and 5 P slots, with the vast majority of those general pitching slots filled by starters.

My personal NL SP ranks will be up next week, but in the meantime, here’s how they fell in our latest mock. As always, the parenthetical note is listed as (round.pick). Read the rest of this entry »

Well, since the last installment received so much attention — both positive and negative — I figured we should have another go-around here.  Only this time, in an effort to create more dialogue and draw even more of your ire, I took the advice from some of you and looked more towards the upper rounds of the draft.  Personally, I think telling you not to waste your time with a particular player in the lower rounds is a bit more helpful than this — sure, there’s less risk in the 19th round and you don’t care if you eventually drop the guy, but why waste the pick in the first place?  But alas, this is what you asked for my dear RotoGraphs readers and this is what you get… Read the rest of this entry »

Calling Mark Buehrle a sleeper feels somehow wrong. He absolutely fits the criteria; he’s being drafted late in drafts with potential for a strong year, but he isn’t exactly under-the-radar the way someone like Bryan LaHair is. He’s less undiscovered and more unfairly unloved.

No matter how you parse the data, there is no way around the fact that Buehrle is an absolute workhorse. Since he came into the league in 2000, no one has more 200 IP seasons than Buehrle, who has never failed to throw 200 innings in a season where he started more than three games. Durability is one of those traits that benefit real teams more than fantasy ones, and while it’s certainly his most heralded trait, it isn’t the only thing he brings to the table. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I posted my 2012 starting pitcher DL projections. In the projections, I used games started, age, and injury history to predict the percentage chance a pitcher will end up on the DL. Today, I am going to give an initial stab at how throwing a large number of curveballs and sliders affects a pitcher’s DL chances.

I started by looking at the season after the season in which a pitcher threw over 120 innings. Normally, 39% of these pitchers will end up on the DL. The percentage increases even more if the pitcher threw a large number of sliders or curveballs.

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Matt Garza’s first four seasons in the Major Leagues were all very comparable. His ERA fluctuated between 3.69 and 3.81 while his FIP was between 4.18 and 4.42 in each season. Garza’s performance was becoming easily predictable, until he altered his pitching style last season.

Last year, Garza got away from the fastball and sinker heavy approach that he utilized in Tampa Bay. It seems as though Tampa instills a primary pitch philosophy, in which they utilize their four seam fastball, two seam fastball, or sinker more frequently than most teams. During Garza’s time in Tampa Bay, from 2008-2010, the Rays finished eighth in combined four seam, two seam, and sinker rate at 60.7%.
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Last week, I determine who the most overvalued pitchers were based on my projections and dollar values in comparison to their average draft positions on Mock Draft Central. Today I check in on the other side of the coin. Pitcher projections and rankings always have the most disagreement, so it is always interesting to see where my opinion diverges from the mock drafters and the various projection systems. I decided to include the 5 most undervalued pitchers that are still worth drafting (expected to generate a positive value) in a standard 12-team mixed league and projected to be worth more than just a couple of bucks. I also excluded the reliever turned starter group since I’ve talked enough about them and they aren’t 100% locks for a spot anyway.

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Back in November I discussed bargain shopping in Houston and how there are still a few hidden gems that would make for strong selections at the tail end of your draft.  Well, today, we’re going to look at another perennial cellar-dwelling team and see what kind of fantasy gold can be found.  Funny thing, though, is that these Royals — these, more often than not, punching bags of the AL — are looking pretty darn good lately and there’s going to be quite the battle to obtain a number of their players’ services in fantasy drafts this year.

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A pitcher’s fantasy value is more than ERA, WHIP or K/9. Even if they have great values in rate stats, they are useless if they aren’t pitching. Today I am going to give the chances for certain starting pitchers to end up on the disabled list in 2012.

Last year, I determined a formula to get the percentage chance a pitcher will end up on the DL. Historically, any starter that pitched 120 innings in the previous season has a 41% chance of ending up on the DL. So of a team’s 5 starters, 2 will spend time on the DL on average.

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He is not going to strikeout many batters, he relies heavily on a sinkerball while the Tigers have assembled one of the worst infield defenses in recent memory, and Steamer projections have him at a 4.42 ERA this year. Even so, I still see reasons to believe that Doug Fister may duplicate last year’s performance.

The main reason for my support of Fister is how different his repertoire was last year compared to the previous year and a half of his Major League career.
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The results are in. After crowdsourcing Yu Darvish’s expected 5×5 stats and ottoneu points production, last week we asked you about his draft round and auction value in three formats…

1. 12-team mixed league, 5×5 scoring
2. $260 budget, 5×5 scoring
3. $400 budget, ottoneu points

We received 248 total responses, with the results as follows…

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