Time now for our ever-popular annual effort to identify players—pitchers this week, hitters next—upon whom Fortune smiled or rained pigs last season. Our theory is that this season, as is her wont, Fortune will aim her slings and arrows at other players than last year’s star-crossed guys, whereas last year’s lucky guys will need industrial-strength umbrellas. We further theorize that the Fantasy Baseball draft market fails to accord luck the respect it demands in this, as in all other, human affairs, and undervalues the unfortunate and overestimates…you get the idea.

And how do we ascertain who was lucky and unlucky? Quite simply, in fact. For lucky pitchers, we try to find guys who had high BABIPs and high HR/FB Ratios but low Hard-Hit Percentages. Then we flip that over to find the unlucky guys. Uncomplicated as this approach is, it steers you in the right direction more often than you might expect. Thus, last year it steered you towards Stephen Strasburg (we know you already knew he was good, but we were suggesting he’d be even better, and he was) and away from Jose Alvarado (who quickly blew up as Tampa Bay’s closer). Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then, I need to refresh my memory on what the baseline stats are for various pitch types, and that brings me back to this piece on pitch type performance from fellow RotoGrapher Alex Chamberlain. I am not only reminded of how inferior sinkers generally are at inducing whiffs and preventing hits on balls in play, but of Alex’s advice to pitchers: “Seriously, don’t throw a sinker.”

But, of course, lots of big league pitchers do, and 33 of them threw at least 500 sinkers in 2019. Given that pitchers stand to give up fewer hits if they switched from their sinker to another offering — assuming their version of that alternative pitch was at least decent — it seems like pitchers who ditch or de-emphasize their sinker should get more attention for doing just that. It also would seem that more pitchers would make that change. In every year of the 2010s, there were no more than 10 pitchers in a given season who decreased their sinker usage by 10 percentage points or more (and also threw at least 100 innings both the current and previous seasons).
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02/26/20

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.

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• @sporer – Host
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Luis Severino TJ surgery (1:57)
  • Jordan Montgomery/Jonathan Loaisiga

STARTING PITCHERS Pt. 3 (#46-65)

• NFBC Average Draft Data (set to Online leagues and start date of 2/01/20)

46-50 (9:30)

• Sean Manaea
• David Price
• Kenta Maeda
• Lance McCullers Jr.
• German Marquez

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The Pod Projection process sharing continues! The 2020 forecasts are now available and include over 500 player lines. As usual, I’ll dive into my projection methodology (detailed in Projecting X 2.0) by sharing my process on several hitters and pitchers.

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It is time for an update to my starting pitcher ranks for 2020. I will be discussing some of these with Paul Sporer and Nick Pollack on tomorrow’s Sleeper and the Bust Podcast, so definitely listen to that.

All ranks are based on 15-team standard leagues. ADP is from ADP and reflects Online Championship’s data since 1/1/2020. For more ranks of mine for 2020, you can click the links below: Read the rest of this entry »

02/24/20

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.

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

SPs Pt. 2 (31-45)

31-35 (2:55)

• Zack Wheeler
• Jesus Luzardo
• Frankie Montas
• Lance Lynn
• Madison Bumgarner

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02/20/20

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.

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

SPs Pt. 1 (1-30)

The Top 4

• Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer

Can I hang out with you guys?

• Walker Buehler

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Yesterday, I used my pitcher xK% equation to highlight four starting pitchers whose underlying skills suggested a dramatically higher strikeout rate than actually posted, hinting at upside this year if the pitcher could maintain those skills. Today, let’s talk about the starting pitchers who most outperformed their xK% marks, heightening the risk of a decline this season, absent an improvement in underlying skills.

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Three years ago, I shared an updated version of my pitcher xK% metric, which correlated strongly with actual strikeout rate, given its 0.931 R-squared. While some of my other xMetrics I calculate and then use them to serve as a historical guide to assist in my Pod Projection forecasts, I actually project the underlying components of xK% myself and the vast majority of the time, keep the projected strikeout rate those components spit out. There are instances where I do change the forecast though, as some pitchers have a history of outperforming or underperforming their xK% marks, for whatever reason. Anyhow, let’s discuss four starting pitchers who posted xK% marks above their actual marks, hinting at some upside this year.

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02/09/20

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.

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• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer
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Notable transactions 

• Tampa trades Emilo Pagan to San Diego for Manuel Margot 4:45

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