09/22/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

2021 OUTLOOK OF LATE ROUND PITCHING GEMS

• Corbin Burnes
• Dylan Bundy
• Marco Gonzales
• Zach Davies
• Aaron Civale

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Let’s continue our look at potentially streaming starting pitchers owned in 30% or fewer leagues on CBS. Today we’ll look at Wednesday’s slate as indicated by CBS. Below, I’ll discuss each stream candidate and conclude with a STREAM or NOT decision.

Read the rest of this entry »

This season, this short, crazy, and insane season has seen a lot of rookie pitchers. With all of these call ups this has been one of the more compelling MLB seasons we have seen in a long time. It seems like every week new pitchers are being called up to grab a spot start. Pitchers who haven’t even reached the AAA level are getting called up! This is the second and final part of analyzing some of these rookie pitchers, how they are performing, and what their future holds.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we enter the final full week of the season, streaming starting pitchers to try to maximize your wins and strikeouts might either become a viable strategy for you now or has been a strategy you have been executing for some time already. So let’s review the probable starters for Tuesday’s games that are owned on 30% or fewer teams in CBS leagues and conclude with a STREAM or NOT decision, assuming a 12-team mixed league.

Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

This is the fourth article in my wPDI vs. CSW series. You can catch up by reading the first three articles – on called strikes, whiffs and residuals.

Here is a quick summary of some of the basics of wPDI & CSW from this series:

Last year, I developed the Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) framework, whereby all pitches can be classified into six different outcomes as follows:

Each outcome is then assigned a weight, or an index. A% through F% are the percent of pitches thrown in each outcome. The general formula for wPDI, the Weighted Plate Discipline Index is given as:

wPDI = Index_A * A% + Index_B * B% + Index_C * C% + Index_D * D% + Index_E * E% + Index_F * F%

wPDI can generate an all-in-one sortable metric used to evaluate pitchers. The plate discipline framework may be tailored to mimic (or to correlate to) various measures of deception or effectiveness.

In the first three articles of this series, we developed indices for wPDI to approximate the PitcherList metric, CSW. The Called Strikes + Whiffs (CSW) statistic was featured in last year’s FSWA Research Article of the Year by Alex Fast, and is defined as:

Called Strikes + Whiffs
Total Pitches

We separately tacked the called strikes and whiffs components, and landed on the following wPDI equation to represent CSW: Read the rest of this entry »

This season, this short, crazy, and insane season has seen a lot of rookie pitchers. With all of the call ups, this has been one of the more compelling MLB seasons we have seen in a long time. It seems like every week there are new pitchers being called up to grab a spot start. Pitchers who haven’t even reached the AAA level. Most importantly pitchers that we have been waiting a long time to see. There will be two parts to this article as we will analyze some of these rookie pitchers, how they are performing, and what their future holds.

Read the rest of this entry »

09/10/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Dealing studs & their 2021 outlook: Yu Darvish, Trevor Bauer, Corbin Burnes, Dinelson Lamet, Jesús Luzardo, Sixto Sanchez, Tyler Mahle, Dane Dunning, Deivi Garcia, Seth Lugo
• Matthew Boyd pulled the rug out from under everyone
• Adam Duvall goes triple yak AGAIN
• Ryan Mountcastle has been electric since call-up

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The 2021 draft season will be interesting, to say the least. There has been an abundance of surprises when it comes to starting pitchers. For instance, Zach Davies, Corbin Burnes, Dallas Keuchel, Framber Valdez, and Adam Wainwright all have a sub-three ERA.  What’s going to be strenuous for 2021 is figuring out who is “real” and who isn’t. How do we do that? Well, there are several factors such as a pitch mix change, movement changes on pitches, and velocity. With all that said there’s (at least) one pitcher performing well who seems to be legit. That pitcher is Pablo Lopez.

Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

This is the third article in my series – wPDI & CSW. You can catch up by reading the first two articles – on called strikes and whiffs – found here and here.

Here is a quick recap of what we have covered so far:

In this series, we are looking at the PitcherList metric, CSW and how it relates to my plate discipline framework, wPDI. Last year’s FSWA Research Article of the Year by Alex Fast featured CSW, which is defined as:

Called Strikes + Whiffs
Total Pitches

With the Weighted Plate Discipline Index (wPDI) framework, all pitches are classified into six different outcomes as follows:

Each outcome is then assigned a weight, or an index. A% through F% are the percent of pitches thrown in each outcome. The general formula for wPDI, the Weighted Plate Discipline Index is given as:

wPDI = Index_A * A% + Index_B * B% + Index_C * C% + Index_D * D% + Index_E * E% + Index_F * F%

Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres are trying to set the trade deadline record for most players traded and have acquired perhaps the most valuable one available in Mike Clevinger. In the past, like as recent as last season, a move for a starting pitcher to the National League would be a boon, as he would no longer have to face the DH most of the time, except for when playing an interleague game in an AL park. The introduction of the universal DH this year removes that performance boost, so now we can easily compare apples to apples. So let’s take a look at the 2019 park factors and compare the Indians and Padres home parks to find out if Clevinger’s value changes at all solely based on his new home park.

Read the rest of this entry »