Pitchers tend to induce different types of batted balls. Some are fly ball pitchers. Others induce ground balls. While there are always pitchers at the extremes, a few pitchers go beyond the norms on a yearly basis. Today, I am looking at pitchers whose 2011 batted ball data was outside the normal range of values.

To get the extreme baselines, I took the the top and bottom values for a pitcher with over 400 IP total over the past 3 years. Here is a look at some pitchers that may be in store for some batted ball corrections in 2012

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Baseball is a grind. It’s 162 games played nearly every day over a six-month period. By extension, then, the fantasy version of this unending onslaught of a sport can be — and often is — just as overwhelming.

Look, it happens: Late-summer hits and the portion of your brain that was tending to your fantasy baseball team on a regular basis instead shifts its focus to other things, like vacation, fantasy football or the hot chick named Tiffany who spent the summer as a lifeguard at the local beach and hung out all the time at your favorite bar.

That’s why, unless your team was good enough to be in contention all the way down to the stretch run, chances are, you missed out on a few things as the season wore on, particularly into August and September. That’s when the non-contenders tend to check out (if they haven’t done so weeks before), but it’s also about the time that even those chasing after that elusive championship start suffering from tunnel vision as their eyes become focused solely on the prize.

Now that we’re a couple weeks removed from the crush and rush of the final days of the fantasy season, allow me to point out a batch of American League outfielders who performed better than you might have realized, thanks to end-of-season surges or new opportunities. There just might be a nugget or two in here that you didn’t notice the first time around. You know, while you were too busy ogling Tiffany.

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In my first two parts of this series, I looked at the stats to be examined when evaluating hitters and projecting Runs and RBIs. Today, I am going to take a look at projecting plate appearanes (PAs) and stolen bases (SBs).

Plate Appearances

With projections, I find the most error and room for improvement is with playing time. An owner needs to have a hitter playing and accumulating as many PAs as possible. The more PAs, the more counting stats they can hope to generate.

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Last week, I tried to provide insight on strategies for arbitration voting in ottoneu, but with almost four weeks left until votes are due, I thought I would add some color to that lecture with a couple examples. I’ve identified a couple teams from the original ottoneu league that I think include some pretty interesting arbitration cases.

We’ll start with this year’s champion: Last Years Leftovers.

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Prior to the All-Star break, four RotoGraphs writers — Eno Sarris, Jeff Zimmerman, Howard Bender and me — engaged in the just-for-fun activity of drafting Pick Six-style teams, with the pool of players limited to those available in 10% or less in ESPN leagues (at the time of the draft).

Given those parameters, the exercise proved to be challenging, but if you paid attention to our picks, you may have managed to snag a useful fantasy player or three off the waiver wire — no matter what kind of league you play in.

I took the temperature of our picks back in August, but now that the season is finished, let’s tally up the scoring to get the final results. And while we’re at it, we’ll rank the players based on their fantasy impact in 2012.

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There’s a pretty good schedule of games tonight, let’s take a look at some of the better value plays for your daily Pick Six

Kelly Shoppach ($0.50)

Much of the ire Rays fans have toward Kelly Shoppach was greatly diminished in game one of the ALDS when the pudgy backstop hit two home runs and drove in five against C.J. Wilson. To the astute viewer it shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise, however. Despite his poor overall numbers – .176/.268/.339 – he hit well against left handed pitching, something he’s done over his whole career. His .788 OPS and .349 wOBA against southpaws this season were the lowest figures of his career, and they’re still above average. Today he’ll face Matt Harrison, another lefty. Harrison has a pretty pronounced platoon split for his career (4.56 FIP vs RHB, 3.98 vs LHB) but the number against right handed batters have improved dramatically this season (3.57 FIP). With a K/9 under 7 and a GB% of 47 he doesn’t have overpowering stuff. He’ll work low in the zone to try and induce weak contact and Shoppach will try to take advantage of any mistakes Harrison happens to make. For the low, low cost of $0.50 the reward outweighs the risk.

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Batters have different hitting styles that allow unique batted ball profiles. Most hitters aren’t able to maintain extreme batted ball values over a few seasons. Here is a look at some regular hitters that should expect their 2010 batted ball data to regress some in 2011.

For hitters (pitchers soon), I looked at BABIP, LD%, and HR/FB for those with a min of 400 PA. To set the baseline, I took the league leading value from the past 3 seasons (min 1200 PA). Then, I selected any player that beat that bench mark. There are not a ton of players that exceed the values because most hitters had a long enough season to get to their true batted ball talent level.

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There aren’t many players who have bigger gaps in talent from one side of the plate to the other than Sean Rodriguez. The Rays shortstop has shown impressive talent against the Ned Flanderses of the world over his career. This season he’s been 43 percent better than league average against southpaws and 38 percent worse than average against right handers. The differences in OBP and wOBA this season are staggering as well.

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With the season at an end, it is time for those in keeper leagues to turn to the off-season, and for ottoneu players, this starts with one of the most unique parts of the ottoneu format – the arbitration process.

The process itself is actually quite simple:

• Every owner votes for one player on every other team
• The player on each team who receives the most votes becomes a free agent
• At the preseason auction, each owner gets a $5 discount on the player voted off his team

See? Simple.

But if you haven’t been through it before, the strategy can be a bit confusing. Having played five previous seasons of ottoneu fantasy baseball, I wanted to give you my take on the most common voting strategies.
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I torture myself every year by looking back at what could have been.

I have a league that has been going on for the better part of two decades – it used to be housed on the old “Sandbox” but migrated to Yahoo many years ago and it has had anywhere from ten to twelve owners year to year. It’s your proverbial bragging rights league, although as we’ve gotten older, more money has been wagered but I’m convinced we’d play for a thimble just to say we beat the next guy. This season, it was set up as a pretty simple standard, ten team non-keeper points league with a snake draft.

With the draft well behind in the rear view mirror and the next one six long months away, I decided to take a look at the results just to see if there was anything to take away from it.

In doing so, I marveled at the bargains that people pulled during the draft, and it rather got me salivating thinking about what hidden gems there will be in 2012. What follows are the highlights from this past March, and a cool reminder that I ought not over-imbibe on draft day until at least the 20th round.

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