After evaluating Zack Wheeler and Jacob deGrom in my previous post on the 2015 Mets Commanding Rotation, I was hoping to follow-up by looking at pitch release point consistency for a number of pitchers that prevented contact in the zone but didn’t have elite swinging-strike/contact rates. Initially, I found good results using root-mean-square deviations.
Power turns outs into hits, hits into RBIs, and fly balls into home runs. You have to draft for power, or you’ll find yourself behind in way too many categories. So hopefully you have some power on your squad and don’t necessarily need to stream for it now.
But lets say you find yourself up against a team with lots of speed. If you wanted to punt stolen bases, you might be able to drop a speedster or a bench piece for power in the late going. Let’s look at the end of the week and see if we can identify a few flawed (available) sluggers in nice parks with the platoon advantage.
Earlier this week, Jeff Zimmerman presented Early 2015 Hitter Projections using Steamer and/or ZIPS averaged ROS projections. The main contingency at this time: all values are set to 600 plate appearances. If I had all the time in the world, I would go through the list and manually adjust the PA based on lineup position, career PA/G, etc, but I’m not that much of a Mensch.
The next day, Mike Podhorzer highlighted some of the surprises ranked in the top 30. Again the 600 PA contingency is clear as Rajai Davis, Jarrod Dyson and Corey Dickerson make the list although if Dickerson doesn’t get platooned, I (and Mike) think he’ll surpass expectations. His splits page tells us there is no good reason to platoon him.
In Mike’s intro, he also referenced that there is no adjustment for position in Jeff’s SGP rankings. That’s where this post comes in.
Many of you are preparing for the head to head playoffs, which often involves looking at the worst couple of pitchers on your roster and thinking about what you want those spots to look like in two weeks. Even those of you in roto leagues are getting down to it and wondering how best to use the remaining innings you have available. In either case, a look at the schedule can be huge.
My method is to look at the free agents in my shallowest league, sort them by ownership, and move through the pitchers. It’s not the most rigorous method. I fail the people around me often.
We’re heading toward the end of August, which means there’s only about a month remaining in the regular season. Though I’m sure many of your league’s trade deadlines have already passed, I’m quite confident that a lot of yours have not, but are certainly coming up soon.
For the first two months or so of the season, I’m all about trading for value. That is, my preseason dollar values guide my trade offers and responses. It’s far too early to determine what my team’s strengths and weaknesses are at that point, so I just want to accumulate as much value as possible.
Agenda
FanDuel has unleashed the World Fantasy Baseball Championship; a week-long, $5,000,000 celebration of Fantasy Baseball in Las Vegas! The WFBC has something for everyone, from the $250,000 single-entry championship, to the live $3,000,000 DFBC Final in Las Vegas.
Remember to use promocode FANGRAPHS to get your huge 100% deposit bonus up to $200. Click here to win your seat ticket.
Agenda
FanDuel has unleashed the World Fantasy Baseball Championship; a week-long, $5,000,000 celebration of Fantasy Baseball in Las Vegas! The WFBC has something for everyone, from the $250,000 single-entry championship, to the live $3,000,000 DFBC Final in Las Vegas.
Remember to use promocode FANGRAPHS to get your huge 100% deposit bonus up to $200. Click here to win your seat ticket.
Agenda
FanDuel has unleashed the World Fantasy Baseball Championship; a week-long, $5,000,000 celebration of Fantasy Baseball in Las Vegas! The WFBC has something for everyone, from the $250,000 single-entry championship, to the live $3,000,000 DFBC Final in Las Vegas.
Remember to use promocode FANGRAPHS to get your huge 100% deposit bonus up to $200. Click here to win your seat ticket.
Over the past two seasons (2013 – 2014), only nineteen qualified starters have posted a FIP lower than Lance Lynn’s 3.29. He’s been better than Gio Gonzalez, Kris Medlen, Doug Fister, and Homer Bailey, using FIP. I feel like most, if not, all of those men were/are viewed as better fantasy options coming into 2014. Maybe they were; in Medlen’s case, we’ll never know. I definitely had all of them ranked in front of Lynn, and I’ve been proven wrong.
My main reason for dropping Lynn in my rankings was his struggles versus left handed batters. Those concerns haven’t been abated, although, he has been better versus lefties this year: .345 career wOBA allowed versus .326 wOBA this season. His lack of a change-up still hurts, but .19 points of wOBA is nothing to scoff at. Granted, his career number still holds more weight, considering the larger sample. Still, though, progress is progress; this is the second year in a row that number has dropped, after all (was .366 in 2012).
Lynn’s season has been odd in the sense that he’s striking out fewer batters, while walking more. Yet, thanks to little BABiP and HR/FB help – more sinkers help, I’m sure; as has the Cardinals defense – he’s finally beating his peripherals for once. This game’s weird.
Lynn draws the Rays today, who, despite their struggles, have been better than average versus right handed pitching. Read the rest of this entry »
So, last weekend we got our first taste of DraftKings. The results – mine, anyways – were kind of meh. Anthony Rizzo (Friday) and Paul Goldschmidt (Saturday) were easily my best picks of the weekend, combining to hit three home runs while reaching base in seven of their eleven plate appearances.
The pitchers I recommended struggled, especially Dallas Keuchel. I wasn’t able to watch his start, but he must not have been fooling anyone, considering he surrendered twelve hits in 5 innings; it’s a miracle he only gave up three earned runs. The night before, Bartolo Colon was rolling along (not a fat joke) nicely until the fifth inning, in which he surrendered four runs and any chance I had at placing highly in my contests.
All in all, it was a decent weekend. The DraftKings app came in handy, because I spent the majority of my weekend on an interstate. Read the rest of this entry »
