Saturday! The All-Star break took the game away from us for four days this year, but thankfully we’re on a full slate today. Honestly, why was there no baseball on Thursday? This was such a boring week for sports. What the hell am I supposed to do at work if there isn’t any breaking news to read? Anyways, I’m using hotel wifi (which sucks), so let’s do this.

Probables Chart

Hector Noesi and his terrible ratios are on the bump today. His match-up isn’t terrible, but Houston does have some power hitters. Travis Wood is better than Noesi, but he’s gotten crushed by right handed batters this season, making Paul Goldschmidt juicy; perhaps Aaron Hill, too. Hell, I don’t mind Martin Prado ($4,000) either.

Last night, David Phelps held the Reds’ lineup in check pretty well. Brandon McCarthy will have to do so tonight. Personally, I root for McCarthy. It’s difficult to ignore his home run struggles, though, considering his new home.

Lastly, I’m all for targeting the following pitchers, on top of the ones mentioned above: Colby Lewis (Toronto is depleted, but Lewis has been wretched lately), Brett Anderson (righties only; huge fan of him as well, but his results this season haven’t been swell), and Wei-Yin Chen (RHB).

There is some iffy weather today, but as usual, that’s more of a worry for pitchers than hitters. I still recommended one pitcher below, despite questionable weather, because I like his match-up so much.

The Daily Five

Todd Frazier – $4,500

Frazier’s power has seemingly blossomed this season. He’ll have Yankee Stadium’s short porch tonight. Devin Mesoraco ($4,200) is also very, very appealing. Choosing catchers on Saturdays can sometime be iffy, but considering the break everyone just had, he should definitely be in the lineup.

Alex Wood – $7,400

The Phillies’ offense is mediocre versus left handed pitching: they’re 19th in wOBA. Wood’s ability to mix strikeouts with groundballs is ideal. Hopefully he’s doing a little of both tonight. (weather pending; hopefully they’re able to get the game in)

Corey Dickerson – $4,400

Charlie Morton has pitched pretty well this season, but Dickerson’s upside is rather large. He’s been quite a boon for many teams, and considering his power/speed potential, he’s nicely priced.

Paul Goldschmidt – $5,700

He’s pricey, but I absolutely love his match-up.

Dallas Keuchel – $6,500

I usually don’t recommend two pitchers, but I couldn’t resist today. The White Sox, as a team, have a .296 wOBA versus left handed pitching. *crosses fingers that Jose Abreu doesn’t hit a bunch of dingers*

This post, covering one of the leading sites for daily fantasy, is sponsored and made possible by the generous support of DraftKings. FanGraphs maintains complete editorial control of the postings, and brings you these posts in a continued desire to provide the best analytical information on the latest in baseball.

In case you haven’t heard, Draftstreet was purchased by Draft Kings. Therefore, all things formerly Draftstreet are now Draft Kings; you can transfer your account easily using this link.

It goes without saying that this column will change now; it’ll be used to recommendations for Draft Kings now. If you’ve never played on Draft Kings, it’ll be a learning experience for a little bit. And I’ll be learning with you. I’ve dabbled with the site before, especially during hockey and basketball season, but used Draftstreet mostly for baseball considering I was writing about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we’ll gather around the TV and watch the All-Star game. Well, most of us will; some don’t care about the event very much. Either way, we’re without baseball for a few days after tonight’s ultimately meaningless home field deciding contest. So let’s take a look back at the Draftstreet All-Stars of the first half. I use wOBA more than anything else when choosing my daily lineup, mostly due to seeing people much better at daily than myself using it. Blake has long used it as a proxy for good daily production. In theory, it should work well. And as you’ll below, it works well in practice, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Here for Blake today. Instead of talking about a specific player let’s talk about fandom, mine in particular.

I haven’t watched my favorite team [the Atlanta Braves] play a game in over two months. I’ve watched maybe five or six innings total of Braves’ baseball. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It just happened. Sure, I joked about not watching until B.J. Upton no longer hit leadoff, but I kinda just stopped watching because I wasn’t enjoying it any longer.

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Wade Miley was atrocious to begin the season, posting a 4.79 FIP in April. He turned it around in May, posting a 3.66 FIP. Then, the wheels fell off again, as he pitched his way to a 4.77 FIP in June. So far, he’s been very good in two July starts, seeing his FIP slot in at 0.77. Let’s go back to June, though; perhaps the wheels didn’t actually fall off completely.

Miley’s poor April and June numbers have one main driver: home runs. He allowed seven in each month. Considering Miley’s never been a strikeout artist, his HR/FB rate has kind of always told the story. In 2012, he didn’t allow many. He did in 2013 (along with more walks), and his numbers suffered. This year, he’s allowed homers at an even higher rate, and his numbers have fallen further, but something else has changed: his strikeout rate has shot up.

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And, I’m back. After a small vacation, in which I recharged my batteries, hiked, and didn’t play any fantasy, it’s back to normal life. Thankfully, Blake and Brett held the fort down for me, otherwise I guess it wouldn’t have completely been a “vacation.”

While I didn’t play any fantasy, I did manage to get to the ballpark in Denver for one game. Jair Jurrjens pitched in it. Predictably, he was hit very hard. Considering I live in Atlanta, it was nice to see an old friend. Not much has changed for him. Breaking: The Earth keeps spinning and 88 mph over the middle keeps leaving the yard :(.

Probables Chart

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After talking a bit with Eno Sarris about his pitch type benchmarks, we decided to change up the process a bit. Instead of taking the full average of all of the pitches thrown in a category, we limited the pool to only pitchers who had thrown 20 innings from 2011 to 2013. And we limited the number of pitches we counted to ones that had been thrown 50 times. Hopefully this takes out gimmick pitches and small sample anomalies, for the most part. We’re focusing now on regularly-thrown pitches from somewhat-established pitchers.

We also decided to take the median value within each pitch type. This is a better representation of what’s out there — the old way could have allowed the very excellent pitches to pull the benchmarks north of what could actually be considered an average pitch. We also decided to show you where the 40% benchmark was — the ‘good’ but not ‘above average’ pitches. There are a lot of pitches thrown here that are neither ‘show-me’ pitches nor are they ‘strong’ — think ‘useful.’

Eno will take a look at Matt Cain to bring this all into focus after the new table of benchmarks.

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Much has been written about Justin Verlander’s struggles this season. He’s undoubtedly hurt – if not outright killed – fantasy title hopes for a ton of people. Glass half full, though. Over his last two starts, he’s looked a little more like the Verlander we all know and love. In those 13 innings – a measly sample, but we’re being positive! – he’s struck out sixteen batters while walking two.

The small sample size caveat applies, a ton, but perhaps Verlander is closer to being back. He thinks he is:

After giving up seven runs to Kansas City on June 16, Verlander sat down with manager Brad Ausmus and pitching coach Jeff Jones to pour over film, new and old. They saw that the right-hander was moving laterally in a way that needed to be changed. They wanted him to move more toward home plate. Verlander said it was the biggest midseason change he’s undergone.

Ausmus said pitcher’s often make changes of this nature during the offseason. Verlander is no common pitcher, however.

“I felt like this was something we have to do to get him back to where he was,” Ausmus said. “As pitchers get older and more mature, they have to make adjustments because, physically, they’re going to change.”
So between starts, Verlander has been throwing 25-30 pitches in an extra bullpen session. The more he does it in practice, the less he has to think about doing it during a game.

“It’s probably more strenuous than I would like it to be,” Verlander said. “I’m the kind of person that wants to get out there and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it until the muscle memory kicks in.”

We’ll see if his good work continues tonight versus a very potent Oakland lineup.

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Nothing Mike Leake does is overly exciting, excluding his 12 strikeout performance versus the Giants last week. Over his last 47 starts(a little over 300 innings), Leake has posted a 3.38 ERA. His FIP during that time is 3.90. Throughout his career, he’s beaten his peripherals, so we keep waiting for him to fall back a little. So far, he hasn’t. In fact, he’s even taken a few steps forward this year.

Leake’s striking out more hitter than he ever has, even if you remove his impeccable effort last week, his K% this season sits at 17.4%; a career high. His walk rate, which has always been good, is also at a career low. And he’s posting the best groundball rate. All of that, plus a little more, is leading to the best year of his career.

Perhaps Mike Leake is a little underwhelming. It’s not hard to overlook him considering how many flamethrowers populate the game today, but he’s still pretty darn good. He’s facing the Padres tonight, who, as Blake noted on Sunday, are perhaps the best team in the majors to bet on pitching against; they do have a team wide wOBA of .270, after all.

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For the most part, I’m a positive person. At least I try to be. That’s why I usually focus on guys who are performing well. It just feels better to highlight someone’s success. Today, though, let’s talk about how bad Eric Stults has been this season.

He was decent in 2012; pretty good in 2013; and he’s been atrocious, so far, in 2014. His strikeouts are down some, but his walks are basically where they were last season. He’s never missed bats, so when he’s pitching well, he’s getting by off of weak contact, especially considering he’s a flyball pitcher. Well, he hasn’t been able to outrun a .323 babip this season after being fortunate enough to squeak past a .302 number last season. He’s stranding the same amount of runners, so what gives? Dingers. Lots of them.

Stults has allowed 15 home runs so far. He allowed 18 total last season. And we can’t exactly blame luck, because the majority of them can be blamed solely on poor location. Nine of the fifteen home runs Stults has given up have came off of fastballs. Eight of those fastballs have been at least belt high. When your fastball averages 87 mph, you can’t really miss up in the zone, unless you’re Chris Young (maybe?).

After roughly 290 innings in San Diego with a HR/FB rate around 7%, Stults’ rate is currently 14.6%. Will it stay that high? Maybe not, but I still like the Diamondbacks tonight. Paul Goldschmidt, anyone?

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