A couple weeks ago, Jeff Zimmerman wrote about how speed affects ISO for The Hardball Times. The takeaway was that for each additional point in speed score (a stat we carry here on FanGraphs), a player’s ISO on doubles and triples will increase five points (.005). Incidentally, running quickly can’t effect home run ISO, unless we’re talking about those super rate inside the park types. Here’s the article and here’s a table from the article.

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Do any of you use fielding in your fantasy leagues? No. If by some fluke that’s incorrect, the stat being used is something asinine like errors. So it’s not surprising that we utterly ignore fielding when it comes to fantasy baseball analysis.

Major league teams are not ignoring fielding. When it comes to building a competitive roster, they’re relying on fielding more and more – especially teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics. Those teams are using fielding values to set playing time, and while fielding is meaningless to fantasy owners, playing time is potentially the most important stat (even though it’s not directly counted). Out there, lurking in your player universe, are guys with solid hitting stats and terrible fielding numbers. In some cases, real world teams will catch on and use a defensive replacement or more-than-occasionally sit the bat-first player.

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Yesterday, we looked at the elite pitches when it came to whiff rates. Today, we’ll look at things a bit differently. The following pitchers rated highly by swinging strike rate across multiple offspeed pitches. You might notice a certain deficiency in the group. Not a lot of great fastballs! As always, here are the benchmarks for each pitch type.

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Last week, Howard Bender wrote about trade bullies, which kicked up some good discussion in the comments. Whereas Bender was categorically against trade bullying, I’m all for manipulating your rivals. After all, they’re “rivals.” They exist solely to be defeated through any means necessary. They’re also probably your friends, family, and co-workers, so try not to get carried away.

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If it feels like you have spent every moment of Spring Training 2014 hoping that the next article you read is not about a pitcher you own (or one who plays for your favorite MLB team), you are not alone. The Braves have been hard hit, but they are not the only ones, and the latest pitcher to go down hit close to home for me.

Patrick Corbin has been a personal favorite for about a year now. It was just over two months ago that I implored you all to buy on Corbin and since I only give advice that I intend to take myself, the Diamondback hurler has found his way onto the majority of my teams. This seemed like a great thing until the last 24 hours or so, and suddenly I am left trying to figure out what to do with him.

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If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’ve conducted a few odd drafts in recent weeks. In one league, I have a big surplus of outfielders, big enough that some teams have been forced to roster part time players while I sit on nine regulars and a top prospect. In another league, which I wrote about yesterday, I have a glut of corner infielders in a format where it’s almost impossible to create true scarcity.

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I previously wrote about the lessons I learned from a mock draft and a funky Yahoo draft. I let Chad Young cover the lessons from an Ottoneu draft that we shared. Today I’ll walk through a shallow, linear weights, points league draft that I conducted last night.

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This is not a fun article to write. Although writing it may be better than how I got here. For the last few weeks, I have been telling you how I lay out my plans for auctions, and for the last few years, executing those plans has resulted in some terrific fantasy seasons. And then Sunday, March 9 happened.

It was set to be a busy day, with back-to-back three hour auctions scheduled, but was made even worse when I woke up with some sort of terrible stomach virus. Instead of hanging out with friends and auctioning, I was doing my best to grab the players I wanted between (and sometimes during) mad dashes for the bathroom. The resulting rosters were not what I had planned on, which is unfortunate for my fantasy seasons, but convenient for writing an article on how to recover from a failed auction.

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An extraordinarily polarizing player in drafts this year is Cincinnati Reds speedster Billy Hamilton. Especially so in 5×5 and traditional leagues, where one could make the argument where Hamilton is almost a Babe Ruth-like talent.

Wait, what?

Well, it’s true. Sort of. Hamilton stole 88 bases between Triple-A and the majors last year. He swiped an ungodly 155 between three levels the year before that. In 2011, 103.

Last year, 12 teams stole over 100 bases, with just four over 120. Hamilton alone — in a best-case scenario, that is — could find himself on that list if the Reds let him run wild.

So while calling him a Ruthian talent is certainly hyperbolic, he’s the kind of talent that alone would easily win a category outright in those traditional style leagues.

Maybe *could* is a better word that would, though. Read the rest of this entry »

Regular readers probably know by now that my favorite part of fantasy baseball is the meta-game. That’s also the biggest reason why I enjoy auction drafts more than snake drafts. Generally speaking, the more strategic options that are available, the more I like a league. Nomination strategy can swing a draft for or against you, and it’s rarely analyzed from a theoretical or data-centric perspective – probably because it’s difficult to control in a predictable manner. Nevertheless, this post will discuss some theoretical nomination techniques and when/why/how to use them.

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