Seriously, Jake Arrieta – fresh off the DL – struck out seven Cardinals over five and a third shutout innings. Yesterday’s stack of Matt Adams, Matt Carpenter, and Allen Craig were supposed to face off against a rusty, not very good Arrieta. They weren’t supposed to run into a buzzsaw.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, it’s Saturday again. Saturdays are awesome because: A) most of us are off from work, and B) there’s baseball for the majority of the afternoon and night. Unfortunately, Saturdays can also be a pain – although, usually less so than Sundays – because rosters lock a little earlier. So if a player or two ends up having the day off, your chances of winning any money dip a great deal. Baseball giveth, and it taketh away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Usually in April and early May we spend a lot of time wondering if certain fast starter’s are for real. Or we wonder aloud if player A is really in decline, or if his struggles are the by product of a small sample. Hell, maybe it’s both? Either way we have a lot of fun speculating. And speaking of speculating, many people thought Ben Zobrist was in for a rough year – rough by his standards – thanks to declines in his peripherals and age. All he’s done in 2014 is hit. Oh, and play good defense, like usual. As of this writing, he’s sixth on our leaderboard – as of this writing – in position player WAR with 1.4. That number is buoyed by his .302/.390/.434 slash line, which includes three homers and two steals already.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be filling in for Blake this week, so you’ll have a little more of my sometimes good, mostly mediocre advice instead of his informative breakdowns of scoring.

The past few days have been a mess. Rain has wreaked havoc on a number of schedules, and on my charts I use for probable pitchers. Fortunately, forecasts look better today. Unfortunately, the solid forecasts are accompanied by a rather lax schedule. Thursdays are the worst, sometimes. They’re good for your work week, but they usually leave a little to be desired as far as baseball in concerned.

Read the rest of this entry »

If I were to tell you yesterday – when I originally looked at the leaderboard – that Jayson Werth has been the fourth best hitter in the major leagues over the past calendar year would you have believed me? I wouldn’t have believed me.  Despite watching Freddie Freeman on basically a nightly basis, I wouldn’t have pegged him sixth either. On the pitching side of things, it’s pretty cool to see that Scott Kazmir has been a top 20 pitcher over the past year.

I always enjoy looking back using the leaderboards, because no matter how much ball I watch I always miss something/under-appreciate someone. Onto to our task of the day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s be honest, if you’re watching baseball tonight, you’re watching Jose Fernandez and Alex Wood square off again. If that wasn’t your plan, you should immediately make it your plan. Last week – when the two first met – it was magical, as Jeff Sullivan wrote. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of either team, tune in for the fact that the two men above are two of the quickest working staring pitchers in the game, which is always a plus.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’ll hear us talk about statistical stabilization here, and link to pieces like Russell Carleton’s or Derek Carty’s. The basic idea is that there are thresholds at which a stat moves into a decent sample and becomes more meaningful.

Maybe you’ll come away thinking that we’ve said that ‘x stat is stable so that’s what you’ll get the rest of the way,’ and if so, that’s on us. That’s not what stabilization means in this context.

What it means is that the r-squared number that correlates a player’s past stats with his future stats in that category has passed .50. That’s a mouthful, here’s another try: if you were to try and predict future work in a category, you’d regress their current work against the league average. At the stabilization point, you can use half their own number plus half the league average in your calculations.

One more try, in the most colloquial language possible: Stabilization is the point at which a number in a category tells us more about their future work than the league average.

Read the rest of this entry »

Much has been written about how well pitchers have performed the past few seasons. Or put another way, much has been written about how hitters are faring worse than they have in a long time, especially in regards to walking back to the dugout after striking out. I’m not smart enough to give you a fantastic answer in regards to why this trend is continuing. However, I am going to tell you my favorite aspect of it, at least as far as one team in concerned. Velocity.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure how your roto teams are doing, but I’ve had a rough start so far. I own multiple shares of: Miguel Cabrera, Edwin Encarnacion, Brad Miller, Jason Heyward, Danny Salazar, and Aaron Hill. I also recently lost Chris Sale from two teams. So, thankfully Edwin and Miggy have began to come around otherwise this week would have given me a whole lot of sadness. It can’t all be bad though, right? Andrew Cashner has been very good. Kluber was lights out yesterday. Lance Lynn has quietly been very good. So it appears better days are on the horizon. Hopefully better days are on their way for you too, if your squads have limped out of the gate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Or…Where Does the 70/30 Split Go?

You’ve heard fantasy analysts refer to the 70/30 Hitter-Pitcher split during draft season. In most league formats, it’s common to allocate 70 percent of your auction budget to hitters. They’re more stable as assets and harder to replace in-season. Two months from now, a top 25 RoS starting pitcher will be on your waiver wire (identifying who is the larger challenge). You probably won’t find a top 10 third baseman. There are other reasons to allocate more budget to hitters than pitchers. For the purposes of today’s discussion, let’s just agree that the 70/30 split is a). a thing and b). a valid process.

Read the rest of this entry »