This week, we’ll be giving away one FG+ membership per day by playing the FG+ Over/Under Game. The wrinkle on this game is that it’s subjective: we’ll provide a player and a number, and you use the comments section to make your best argument for the over or the under. The RotoGraphs staff will pick a winner every day, and that person will get a free subscription to FG+, which includes 11 full-length fantasy strategy articles, 1100 player caps on the player pages, and ongoing access to the FG+ blog, which features the writing the FanGraphs team provides to ESPN Insider on a weekly basis all year.

For our first over/under game, let’s take a look at Madison Bumgarner.

The over/under number for Bumgarner is 20%. As in, will he strike out more or less than 20% of the batters he faces in 2012?

The 6′ 5″ lanky lefty suddenly upped his swinging strike rate in 2012 despite using the same slate of offerings at about the same velocities. If you had access to FG+ this year, you would be able to read about how best to use his Pitch F/x information to answer this question — thanks to Josh Weinstock. And — thanks to Michael Barr — you’d also have an equation for expected K% that would be derived from his 2011 peripherals.

But since you don’t — and yes, I’m suggesting that current subscribers take a back seat and allow those without your knowledge to compete for this — you’ll have to do the best you can. Please use anything other than the xK% equation for your argument, and make it as long or as short as you like otherwise.

Have at it!

The RotoGraphs reader mock draft analysis never ends. See what happens when you participate in a draft we help facilitate? You get articles written about you all week! Today I will look at all the American League starting pitchers drafted and compare each with their current average draft position (ADP).

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The Orioles and Rockies pulled off a mildly surprising trade yesterday, with Jeremy Guthrie heading to Colorado in exchange for Matt Lindstrom and Jason Hammel. The money is essentially a wash, so each club just rearranged the furniture a little bit. Guthrie’s fantasy outlook does change with the trade, but just how much? Let’s figure it out.

First and foremost, we have to understand that Guthrie is one of those rare guys that defies DIPS theory. He’s logged over 1,000 innings in the big leagues, and his career ERA (4.19) is roughly half-a-run lower than his FIP (4.68) and xFIP (4.61). As with Matt Cain, the guy has thrown so many innings that we’re at the point were we have to start thinking about him differently than other pitchers because he possesses some kind of skill that allows him to outperform his peripherals. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. Read the rest of this entry »

Once Yu Darvish agreed to his fat new contract with the Rangers a few weeks ago, we crowdsourced his traditional 5×5 stats to determine his fantasy worth. The results came back, and the 560 responses indicated that most of RotoGraphs’ readership expects him to approximate the 2011 version of Madison Bumgarner next season, meaning he’s a top 15-20 starting pitcher. This week we’re going to take it a step further and crowdsource Darvish’s ottoneu points stats.

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Today I continue on with the Pod pitcher projections, this time with AL Rookie of the Year winner, Jeremy Hellickson. I have written a lot about Hellickson over the off-season, all with similar analysis. As FanGraphs readers, you are all likely well aware of the huge disparity between Hellickson’s ERA and SIERA last year. I have speculated that he would improve his peripherals enough this upcoming season that his ERA would not balloon to a level close to his SIERA, and would instead settle into the high-3.00 range. Let’s see if my prediction from just eyeing the skills is right.

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When Scott Boras and company decided they didn’t like the smell of the longer term offers Edwin Jackson was receiving and started kicking the tires on a one-year deal, it was almost tailor made for a team like the Washington Nationals.

They project well back of the Atlanta Braves, but after failing to acquire an impact bat, there were still a few wins to squeak out of a rotation spot at the expense of trotting John Lannan out there every fifth day. Three wins (which might be optimistic) might keep them hanging around long enough to keep their fan base excited throughout the summer and if the ball bounces their way more often than not, perhaps even flirt with a wild card birth.

And heck, even if the wheels fall off, Jackson should be pretty easy to unload at the trade deadline for some toolsy kind of kid few have heard of in Portland.

But Jackson has been rather sneaky-valuable in fantasy circles and according to Mock Draft Central, he’s being selected right around the 19th round in standard 12 team drafts, so he doesn’t come at a high price. Does this move to Washington help or hurt his fantasy value (assuming he passes the physical, of course)?

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It’s time for the first pitcher to experience the Pod projection process. Aside from Yu Darvish, Michael Pineda has probably been the most newsworthy pitcher of the off-season after the recent trade to New York. FanGraphs covered every angle of the trade, including speculation on how he might perform moving away from the pitcher’s haven in Seattle to the home-run happy Yankee Stadium. As such, I figured it would be appropriate to actually try to figure this out by mixing all the numbers together and spitting out a projection. But before you go any further, make sure you read my pitcher projection introduction.

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Dead arm used to be one of the more common terms heard during spring training. A pitcher would get railed during a March or early April start and the manager would explain it away by saying he just has dead arm — a term which is virtually useless, but which more or less prevents more in-depth questioning. Thanks in no small part to the growth and proliferation of diagnostic tools and techniques, we’re getting more actual diagnoses and fewer euphemisms. While the term still gets some play, just one pitcher actually went on the DL with dead arm — the Yankees called it tired arm, but that’s six of one, half a dozen of the other — and it was actually a pretty apt diagnosis. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s Prince Fielder signing changed the fantasy landscape in many ways, most notably by making Miguel Cabrera the favorite to go first overall in drafts giving his impending third base eligibility. No one expects the Cabrera-at-third experiment to work — he was a -11 defender (by DRS) at the hot corner the last time he played the position regularly, which was five years and about 50 lbs. ago — but all he has to do is get those five starts in to gain eligibility and make fantasy owners happy. Some of his pitchers can’t be all that enthused, on the other hand.

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Although I am only about a third of the way through my hitter projections, I am already bored and have been itching to start up on pitchers. So after getting a taste of the methodology and process I employ in coming up with projections on the offensive side of the ledger, it’s time to look under the hood of my pitcher projections. The exciting part for you is that these projections will differ from the forecasting systems much more so than the hitter projections. So there is much more room for debate and of course having the fun of being right. Without further ado, it’s time to dive into how I project pitchers.

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