I ranked all trade deadline-affected batters (Paul is doing the pitchers) by how much their 2023 redraft league fantasy value increased or decreased (NOT OVERALL VALUE). The list includes every traded hitter (back to July 21st) and those guys who saw changes in value but stayed with their team.

Value Up

Jeimer Candelario (WSN->CHC): Team and park upgrade along with him playing first base.

Jeimer Candelario will play 1b on a regular basis with the Cubs, per David Ross.

— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) August 1, 2023

Carlos Santana (PIT->MIL): Milwaukee’s first base job is his. Read the rest of this entry »

I tweeted out wanting to know who had shoulder surgeries similar to Fernando Tatis Jr. and it garnered many examples and opinions on the subject.

Hitters with a torn labrum in their shoulder (Tatis).

Jake Meyers ('21) – not back yet
Greg Bird ('16) – might have ended his career
Devin Mesoraco ('16)
Daric Barton ('11)
Posada ('08) – partial tear, back decent and then faded
Jesus Flores ('09) – career ender

Any others?

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) January 29, 2023

All I wanted was the names of those who had the same or similar operations but got a lot more. With those comps, I hoped to get a range of potential outcomes. Well, I got them and whole lot more.

I know most people will already be anchored to an opinion that is probably based on already drafting or passing on Tatis in drafts or rostering him or not in a keeper league. For those with an open mind, here is what I think is the best information people gave me. Read the rest of this entry »

Just to be clear, the following players are far from the worst players traded. I’m focusing on the guys moving down in value. Some might be having great seasons (e.g. Brandon Drury) but have the biggest down arrows attached to them.

1. Raisel Iglesias (ATL): Simply, Iglesias will back up Kenley Jansen. With Jansen not being able to go back-to-back games and his propensity to get injured, Iglesias (4.04 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 12.1 K/9), Iglesias should remain rostered in deeper formats. Read the rest of this entry »

Just to be clear, the following players are far from the best players involved. I’m focusing on the guys moving up in value. Some might not even be in play in most leagues (e.g. Reds outfield) but have the biggest up arrows attached to them.

1. Félix Bautista (BAL): Of the bullpen changes, Bautista seems the most likely to get the bulk of the Saves with Jorge López gone even though others releivers could be involved.

Félix Bautista, Cionel Pérez and Dillon Tate are candidates to close for the Orioles depending on matchups, Brandon Hyde said.

— Nathan Ruiz (@NathanSRuiz) August 2, 2022

I see the other being treated like Bautista was before the trade when he got three Saves.

On the season, Bautista has been great with a 1.66 ERA (2.77 xFIP), 11.6 K/9, and 0.88 WHIP. Looking across various shallow platforms (12-teams or fewer), he seems to be about 50% available. Read the rest of this entry »

Experiment alert! Prepare yourself to digest a very simple linear model that looks at plate discipline data. I’ll do some explaining of the model along the way, but here are a few points to cleanse your already superb palate before sampling the charcuterie:

1. I’ve limited to players with at least 60 PAs because it is a good point of stabilization for hitter K%.
2. I’m using 2017-2019 as a training set and then deploying my model on 2021 data to look for differences between model predictions and actuals.
3. My model only tells us what should be expected from a hitter who accumulates at least 60 plate appearances in a season based on what other players have done in the same situation from 2017-2019. 2020 is excluded. The predictions of this model should not be confused with expectations.
4. Hasn’t this been done before? Probably.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: During the All-Star break, at least Paul and I are going to break down pitcher results and they will all be in this article for easy reference. The article will grow throughout the week as more and reports get done. Please submit pitcher recommendations in the comments making sure it’s only actionable pitchers (no Cole’s or Giolito’s).

Background

For those coming back from a two-year submarine tour, here is some background on the current state of the sticky substance ban. Pitchers who use sticky stuff on baseballs create more spin and more spin can lead to more strikeouts for certain pitches. Someone(s) felt it was finally important to start enforcing the rule after decades of turning a blind eye. Here is the time timeline for the crackdown. Read the rest of this entry »

Eno Sarris said not to look at HR rate. He said it and I’m going to listen. However, FIP and xFIP are not HR rates, and I’m going to look at that. Too often we assume that others know, or we actually know, what a statistic represents. We hear it, we think it, we know it. But, take a moment with me to reinvigorate our understanding of these two very important statistics.

FIP gives us an idea of how a pitcher performs regardless of who is playing defense behind him. It accounts for strikeouts, walks, hit by pitches, and home runs allowed. FIP gives us a better understanding of how a pitcher is performing than ERA. xFIP tells us all the same but accounts for the volatility of the HR rate. Quoting from our very own FanGraphs glossary, xFIP is:

calculated in the same way as FIP, except it replaces a pitcher’s home run total with an estimate of how many home runs they should have allowed given the number of fly balls they surrendered while assuming a league average home run to fly ball percentage (between 9 and 10% depending on the year).

Read the rest of this entry »

Some previous research, including my own, has pointed to changes in Sprint Speed being a sign a player’s talent has changed. I decided to investigate changes from 2019 to 2020 to find who could be struggling and why. Many hitters are experiencing a drop and just a few are up.

In some way, the following information should be picked apart for a longer research article with some miraculous/groundbreaking/made-up claim that batters came to this season out of shape and that is why offensive production is down. I don’t care. All I want to know is who are the hitters who could be breaking out or down. Figuring out why is for the offseason. It’s now time to wins leagues.
Read the rest of this entry »

Note: If you read this on Saturday evening, I’m likely to add a few names as I do some more research and more news rolls in.

Projecting this season’s FAAB is going to be a nightmare. In past seasons, the process seemed fruitless at times but it’s going to be even more of a mess this season. Most leagues are giving teams the same amount of FAAB to cover a third of the season that will lead to some high dollar desperate bidding. Additionally, when a league was drafted matters. For instance, I have two leagues running FAAB tomorrow. The one from early March I need to clean up (e.g. one had Trey Mancini) and the other I drafted last so I may gamble on some different bullpen arms.

In this article, I’m going to at least cover the players in demand using CBS’s (40% or less ownership) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS used a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed.

Additionally, I’m going to add anyone else I fill is appropriate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fiddle Farts. I’ve been diving deep into my to-do list hoping for a study to verify nothing. This study was not a quick-and-easy one. I’m surprised how much can be gleaned from a small drop in a hitter’s intentional base-on-balls (IBB).

When examining intentional walks, it’s not like canoeing across a calm flat lake with no dangers. Instead, it’s more of a white water rafting with no rest or the end in sight.

Two types of hitters normally see a drop in intentional walks, great hitters on the decline and the eighth hitter in National League parks. Of the 776 intentional walks last season, 410 came from the third (104), fourth (123), and eighth (183) spots in the lineup. It’s a player pool of just the once best and now worst hitters in the league.
Read the rest of this entry »