Rawlings announced the finalists for the Gold Glove Awards on Thursday, and some teams who collectively scored well on defensive metrics were rewarded with several nominations. Conversely, several teams who scored poorly on those metrics were either shut out or left with a single nominee.

Six Cardinals have been nominated for Gold Gloves. As a team, they compiled the third-highest defensive runs above average, and their pitching staff registered the majors’ fifth-lowest BABIP (.283). The Athletics were one of five teams to have four Gold Glove nominees, and no team finished with a higher total of defensive runs above average. Correspondingly, only two pitching staffs had a lower BABIP than their .278.
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Today, I review my ERA upside guys, which included 13 names I was projecting for an ERA significantly better than Steamer. Let’s find out how these pitchers performed and which projection was closer.

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A couple of weeks back, I examined why the industry might have missed on some breakout hitters. It was tough to find anything actionable with the hitting breakouts. It’s now time to see any useful information that can be extracted from the pitching side.

I collected the information on any pitcher who finished the season with positive production in a 15-team league and saw more than a $10 jump in value from their draft-day price. I didn’t want to just use the difference in ranks because the gap from #1 to #15 could be over $10 but the difference between #250 to #300 might just be $1. In all, 46 pitchers made the cut

There were several more categories than hitters butseveral are actionable. One item I ran into was an issue with where to draw a line with the change. Bradley Newman pointed out the mechanical changes Giolito went through to see his production drastically improve.

https://twitter.com/PhillyStars27/status/1187056648877154305

The changes were the root cause but if his plate discipline stayed the same, the adjustments wouldn’t have mattered. Also, it’s tough for the average fan to find out about these adjustments in real-time. The linked article was taken from late-May after Giolito was already universally owned. It was useless for any fantasy owner.
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There’s somewhat of a tradition to interview the annual winner of the Ottoneu Champions league.  This year I have the honor of picking the brain of the first ever repeat winner, Josh Jessar, who also happens to be the first back to back champion of the league.  You can see a full breakdown of his winning roster here.

Q: How long have you been playing fantasy baseball? Ottoneu?

I’ve been playing fantasy sports since the late 80’s, starting with football teams based on Christian Okoye and Barry Word.  I became the only east coast Chiefs fan I knew. Baseball followed shortly after. My collection of friends have played on and off ever since across a variety of platforms.  I started playing Ottoneu in 2013. Longtime readers of your work may remember an interview with previous Champs winner Keith Smith…I recruited him to join the Ottoneu movement.  It was a natural extension of our after school sessions from back in the day.

Q: How did you stumble upon Ottoneu?

Another longtime friend from back in those early leagues brought me to it.  We’d actually kicked around the idea of starting our own fantasy site complete with termed-contract players in the early 2000s.  When he told me of this great site he’d discovered with a lot of the same concepts, we decided to try it out and were both hooked immediately.  He’s a great player who was in Champs B for a while, but after his fourth kid arrived he went into retirement. I’m hopeful he’ll one day make a triumphant return.

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10/13/19

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
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
• @pitcherlist – Co-Host
• @GoJPG – Huge thanks to producer James Gale

NEWS

• The playoff ball

2020 DISCUSSION

• Two Key Takeaways from 2019 
• Stephen Strasburg (44 Too Early ADP) v. Jack Flaherty (43)
• Frankie Montas (165) v. José Berríos (81)

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Let’s review the first Pod Projection I posted for the 2019 season, Yusei Kikuchi, who was to make his MLB debut from Japan. It’s difficult enough to project players with no Major League experience, such as rookies coming up from the minor leagues. It’s even more challenging to try the forecast game when that player with no MLB experience is actually coming from a foreign league. Translating their foreign league performance is more art than science. Luckily, the DELTA website helped by supplying some of the season metrics, which I did my best to translate to a Major League equivalent to use as a guide. Let’s see how he performed versus my projections and the rest of the systems.

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As I have at the end of the first half since 2013, I grouped two sets of pitchers together and aggregated their results through the half based on the degree of SIERA outperformance and underperformance. I then asked you which group of pitchers would perform better from an ERA perspective over the second half, and which range each group’s ERA would fall into. This year’s poll and voting results are here.

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I’ve screwed up. A lot. A few years back, I created a pitching metric called pERA which took each individual pitch’s results (swinging-strike and groundball rate) and combined them into one metric. The problem was that I wrote the article in 2016 and used a formula I created back in 2015 with 2002-2015 data. The juiced ball arrived and I never adjusted the formula for the change. Oopsy.

I felt a little sick when it finally dawned on me that the formula needed updating and ma initial findings are available in this Twitter thread.

I've invested too much time this morning looking into GB%, ERA, and ERA estimators. Two conclusions:

1. Happy Fun Ball has everything messed up. Don't assume any previous assumptions are true.
2. Groundball pitchers are ruling the day.

1/6

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) August 16, 2019

It finally dawned on me that the formula I was using to evaluate pitchers was off. With strikeouts and walks being equal, groundball pitchers outperform flyball pitchers. With a deadened ball, a high flyball rate meant most flyballs would go for easy outs. Not any more. Now those flyballs go for home runs. It’s time for a little math to show the change.
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9/27/19

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
• @pitcherlist – Co-Host/Producer

STUDS SINCE AUGUST 1ST:

• Sean Manaea
• Mike Foltynewicz
• Dakota Hudson

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Down the stretch, we’ll be covering the probable starters and highlighting our favorites to stream as you chase down your fantasy titles. The pitcher in question must be available in 50% or more of leagues according to FantasyPros.com which combines ESPN and Yahoo! roster rates (sometimes exceptions just over 50% will be mentioned if they are really good and should have a much higher roster rate).

Note: The starters are listed in order of value

Hell Yea

None

Multiple Category Contribution

Joe Musgrove (46%) at CHC: Musgrove was the closest to making the Hell Yea group but I’m not sold on the Win and afraid the Cubs will hit him around. He’s the best option, but just not a slam dunk.

Aaron Civale (46%) at CWS: He’s good but not 1.82 ERA good. Somehow he’s maintained a 0.3 HR/9 with a mediocre 40% GB%. With regression coming now or next season in the ERA department, he doesn’t walk anyone (2.2 BB/9) and should get a Win against the White Sox.

Chase Anderson (16%) at CIN: Chase the Win and get a few strikeouts (8.2 K/9) along the way without completely destroying a team’s ERA (4.30) and WHIP (1.26).

Devin Smeltzer (3%) at DET: He’s in the Civale camp with a decent chance for a Win and his 2.5 BB/9 helps keep his WHIP (1.18) low.
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