The Pitcher Preview Strategy Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Pitcher Preview
  • Tools to look at matchups
  • Analytics for deep dives
    • Walk and Stirkeout rates
    • ERA estimators
    • Luck checks
    • Statcast measures
    • Game logs
    • Upcoming matchups

Pitcher Preview

Waiver Wire

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

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4/10/22

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

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• @justinmasonfwfb – Host/Producer
• @JasonCollette – Co Host

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The Streaming Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Michael Simione

Joes vs. Pros Congratulations

Strategy Section

• Streaming Players
  • Definition of streaming
  • Long-term holding of players streamed
  • Streaming hitters
  • Should you stream players in-season from the very beggining?
    • Should you set aside roster spots in your draft for streaming?
• Streaming Starting Pitchers
  • Advice for first-time players
  • How to determine which starting pitchers to stream
    • What stats to consider?
    • Can you avoid getting “Gombered?”
  • Budgeting FAAB for Streaming
    • How much should you pay per week in FAAB on starting pitcher streamers?
  • How to manage your bench in-season for streamers?
    • How many slots should you allocate?

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I recently took over an Ottoneu team for the upcoming 2022 season. If you are unfamiliar with Ottoneu, it’s keeper league where you get to make trades from mid-November to January 31st. Any players left on your roster after that you keep, using the auction draft to fill in the missing pieces. Taking over someone else’s team kind of feels like moving into an empty office. There are a few cobwebs in the corner, the previous owner left a really cool pen in the desk drawer and there’s a very stinky sandwich in the staff refrigerator that you somehow feel like is your new responsibility.

The fun part is taking stock of what you have and trying to decide what you want to keep (cool pen) and what you want to cut (stinky sandwich). In this series of posts, I’ll write about the decisions I have to make, how I go about analyzing the data before making my decision, and then what decision I plan to make. You too could be doing this kind of thing, all you have to do is take over someone’s abandoned team and search through the desk drawers when you move in.

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In most weekly leagues, the ability to add and drop players is gone for this season. Since there are no more moves, I’m going to analyze the most added and dropped players in NFBC’s Main Event and Online Championship with the main goal to create a composite replacement-level player.

For reference, the Online Championship (OC) leagues have 12 teams while the Main Event (ME) has 15. Both of the leagues require 23 starters each week with 7 bench spots (no IL spots). At all times, 360 players will be rostered in an Online league and 450 in a Main Event league. The reason I decided on the two NFBC formats were:

• The data is freely available.
• The information is from several leagues (43 Main Events, 199 Online Championships) with the same ruleset.
• The leagues remain competitive longer since there is decent money on the line.
• With two formats (12-team and 15-team), a comparison can be done on the different player pools.

I know at times we may seem a little NFBC centric here at Rotographs. Now, if some other platform had the ability to select a league type and make available all the adds and drops, I’d use them. The NFBC is the only platform that offers this service. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know why this didn’t post on Friday and I realize it’s useless now going up on the weekend. For some reason, WordPress didn’t post it at the Friday afternoon scheduled time. My sincere apologies to those who wanted weekend streamers -Paul 

9/17/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

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• @sporer – Host
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PATREON

• Join our Patreon

IN FOCUS: SATURDAY STREAMERS

• Aaron Civale at NYY
• Edward Cabrera v. PIT
• Yu Darvish at STL
• Luis Gil v. CLE
• A.J. Alexy as Primary P v. CWS
• Steven Matz v. MIN
• Tarik Skubal at TB
• Nick Pivetta v. BAL

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Note: During the All-Star break, at least Paul and I are going to break down pitcher results and they will all be in this article for easy reference. The article will grow throughout the week as more and reports get done. Please submit pitcher recommendations in the comments making sure it’s only actionable pitchers (no Cole’s or Giolito’s).

Background

For those coming back from a two-year submarine tour, here is some background on the current state of the sticky substance ban. Pitchers who use sticky stuff on baseballs create more spin and more spin can lead to more strikeouts for certain pitches. Someone(s) felt it was finally important to start enforcing the rule after decades of turning a blind eye. Here is the time timeline for the crackdown. Read the rest of this entry »

Streaming pitchers is an art form in the fantasy baseball community. Analysts making streamer picks are daring and brave when it comes to putting their picks out there for the world to see. It’s not an easy game. Streaming a pitcher who blows up my ratios is one of the most frustrating aspects of fantasy baseball in my humble opinion, but it happens (don’t act like it doesn’t). But, taking the time to deep dive on a pitcher before streaming can limit the likelihood of having your ratios inflated like a grocery store helium balloon. Here’s how you can take some time with our pitch-type linear weights.

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A starting pitcher going three times through the order has been one of those analytically driven game tactics that have had an effect on the game-by-game innings accumulation of starting pitchers. Fantasy managers playing in standard 5×5 roto-leagues know that the only way to decrease a ratio statistic like WHIP ((BB + H) / IP), is to add more numbers into the denominator (IP) while keeping the numerator (BB + H) the same. A pitcher who goes three times through the order is also likely to accumulate a lot of innings. The more quality innings accumulated, the better off your ratios will be. If a starting pitcher faces the lineup a third time and it’s only the fourth inning, chances are they are not going back out for the fifth. So, if we find pitchers who consistently face the order in its entirety a third time, we can generally assume it’s because they are pitching well.

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Today’s post is brought to you by Vince Velasquez who is schedule to face the Marlins. When I decide which pitchers to target, I look for who is facing some of the weaker offenses and Velasquez popped for being interesting (3.68 ERA, 11.4 K/9) and available. I noticed his 15% K% (5.8 BB/9) and moved on. He broke my simple rule of not rostering a player with a walk rate over 10% BB%. But is 10% the right value? After diving into the numbers, it’s not a bad rule, but I’ll try to shrink that number down.

I use 10% because it’s simple to remember. The equivalent is 3.9 BB/9 which could be rounded up to an even 4.0 BB/9. The deal is that while simple rules help, I’d like to have every advantage. For example, I used to use a 50% GB% to show an advantage. The deal is that between 50% and 55% GB, the pitcher doesn’t gain any advantage in double plays and additional high flyballs (i.e. outs).

The other reason I picked 10% is that only a few pitchers reach this total. Of the 68 qualified starters this season, nine have a walk rate of 10% or higher.
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