I hope you got your stolen bases in the draft this year. Like saves, stolen bases is often the category that a few teams will leave for in-season management. The ability for one player to make a substantial impact combined with the likely availability of new SB sources throughout the year allows you to allocate the draft day resources elsewhere and adjust via trades or the waiver wire. Sometimes 30-HR guys emerge out of nowhere like Lucas Duda and J.D. Martinez last year (and Martinez was actually just a 30-HR pace, hitting 23 in 123 games), but it’s very rare whereas the wire seems to deliver at least a couple of speed studs each year.

Not in 2015.

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Yesterday I offered up five potential September call-ups who could be substantial power boosts to your lineup if they are indeed called up and find a measure of playing time. Today I’m doing the same thing with some speedsters. While home runs are likely the most important category in fantasy baseball as they impact everything but speed, stolen bases often offer the best route to multiple points in a short timeframe.

This isn’t always the case as your league standings may have stratified in a way where you’re 10+ SBs from even the first point, but in many others that number of stolen bases could be worth three or four points. Expecting 10+ SBs from any one of these players is likely to result in disappointment as just eight players have had a 10+ SB September since 2012, but adding 6 or 7 to your count from an unexpected source can pay real dividends.

Here are five speedy players who might be ready to deliver just that in September:

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Ideas spring from odd places at times, and this particular idea I owe to a rather spirited Millennial with whom I shared an adult beverage in the not so distant past. It just so happens we watched Austin Jackson steal a base and I overheard him mutter something to the effect of “don’t get used to that” — which, considering the sprained ankle Jackson suffered just days after, perhaps Jackson’s spiritual adviser might be interested in a chat. But I digress.

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Let’s cut straight to the chase. Take a look at the statistical snapshots below:

Obviously, Player 1 is benefiting from a higher batting average on balls in play while Player 2 is getting burned a bit by his. Still, take away their triple-slash lines (but leave the isolated power) and you have two players with almost identical numbers, down to the six steals on eight attempts and the meager isolated powers (ISOs). Where they differ a bit is in plate discipline: Player 1 has a much healthier walk rate than Player 2 and a couple fewer strikeouts. So while Player 1 is benefiting from the a higher BABIP, he can also reasonably be expected to post a marginally higher batting average and noticeably higher on-base percentage. Most importantly, the two hitters are eligible at the same position and are, thus, substitutable.

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Last week, I identified potential stolen base streamers for daily fantasy leagues and weekly leagues with daily transactions and lineup changes. I used a pitcher’s career caught-stealing and pick-off rates as criteria to determine if a particular matchup was primed for streaming a speedster with the hope of him stealing a base (or two or four).

I like how it turned out, but it felt hastily constructed. A pitcher’s career rate seemed too broad a scope, especially considering the possibility that a pitcher can get better (or, perhaps, worse) at limiting steals and picking off runners over time.

With a little more time and care, I fleshed out everything a bit more and added an additional criterion: catcher effectiveness, which can be most obviously measured by caught-stealing rate. But I think there also is merit to calculating the frequency at which runners attempt to steal on a catcher. In a sense, it measure runners’ perception of a catcher’s skill, especially for those at the tails of the distribution.

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Dan Rozenheck recently published some interesting research via the Economist regarding the significance of spring training statistics. For the TL;DR crowd, there is some legitimacy to spring training breakouts and disappointments, although they correlate with only marginal improvements to in-season performance in terms of on-base plus slugging (OPS) and earned run average (ERA).

Our own Mike Podhorzer also conducted similar research of his own a couple of years ago. He found that a pitcher’s spring training strikeout and walk rates carry some significance in regard to in-season performance.
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It’s a tale as old as fantasy sports: pay attention to nine of the ten categories on draft day and you can dominate those categories and win. There are some accepted tenets to this strategy, called ‘punting,’ but as it is with all these things we hold for granted, it’s useful to look at what the numbers think of our Conventional Wisdom.

For one, which stats to punt?

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So many things happened. Everyone was traded. Everyone was released. And everyone was signed. It’ll fuel RotoGraphs pieces for weeks to come. You’ll see more in-depth pieces on these guys. But, with the dust settled, it seems like a good time to run all through some of the players that changed addresses, and talk a little bit about how they may have changed their fantasy outlooks for the coming season.

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I covered matchups a couple of weeks ago and last week for a few players who run often and aren’t full-timers but aren’t purely pinch runners. For fantasy baseball players who could use help that would in fact make a difference in their standings in the related category in short time we have left, these possibilities are of interest. The return on this kind of investment is probably not great, as mentioned, but the forecasts can be pretty simple. Again, the greater challenge for a batter is to reach base, not to steal one.

First, there might be some players in your league’s free-agent pool who are more appealing than the streaming plays, however. (Ownership percentages are in parentheses.)

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I covered matchups last week for some players who run often and aren’t full-timers but aren’t purely pinch runners. For fantasy baseball players who are lagging in the SB category but could gain substantial ground in it in the season’s final few weeks, such possibilities may be appealing. The return on this kind of investment is probably not great, as mentioned, but the forecasts can be pretty simple. Again, the greater challenge for a batter is to reach base, not to steal one.

First, there might be some players in your league’s free-agent pool who are more appealing than the streaming plays, however. (Ownership percentages are in parentheses.)

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