Last week I outlined how I plan for the trade deadline and earlier this week I walked through a points league example. Today, I walk through a roto league example.

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Last week, I wrote about Ottoneu trade deadline preparation and promised I would come back with case studies this week: One about a points league and one about a roto league. Today, I’ll take a look at my team in 90% Mental, league 670, which is a SABR Points league.

My team, Fisher Bunnies, is currently in third place and has some serious ground to make up if I am going to win. Determining how likely I am to make that up and what path I can take to do it will help me set my strategy for the trade deadline.

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Eno Sarris said not to look at HR rate. He said it and I’m going to listen. However, FIP and xFIP are not HR rates, and I’m going to look at that. Too often we assume that others know, or we actually know, what a statistic represents. We hear it, we think it, we know it. But, take a moment with me to reinvigorate our understanding of these two very important statistics.

FIP gives us an idea of how a pitcher performs regardless of who is playing defense behind him. It accounts for strikeouts, walks, hit by pitches, and home runs allowed. FIP gives us a better understanding of how a pitcher is performing than ERA. xFIP tells us all the same but accounts for the volatility of the HR rate. Quoting from our very own FanGraphs glossary, xFIP is:

calculated in the same way as FIP, except it replaces a pitcher’s home run total with an estimate of how many home runs they should have allowed given the number of fly balls they surrendered while assuming a league average home run to fly ball percentage (between 9 and 10% depending on the year).

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2/7/21

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

Follow us on Twitter

• @justinmasonfwfb – Host/Producer
• @jasoncollette – Co-host
• @deadpullhitter – Guest

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Trevor Bauer to LAD
• Marcell Ozuna resigns in ATL
• Jonathan Villar signs in Cincy
• Jonathan Schoop resigns in DET
• Mike Foltynewicz signs in Texas
• Elvis Andrus traded to Oakland for Khris Davis

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12/29/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer
• @jasoncollette – Jason Collette

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• José Ureña to DET (1:55)
• Kohei Arihara to TEX (6:18)
• Josh Bell to WAS (11:14)
  • Joe Musgrove next out of PIT?
  • Gregory Polanco broken wrist

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Let’s take a look at the fantasy implications for all the major trades this deadline.

To OAK: Tommy La Stella

To LAA: Franklin Barreto

Up: La Stella joins a much better lineup and should slot into the #2 hole in between Marcus Semien and Stephen Piscotty. He could lose some starts against lefties, but that might be a net positive given his .185/.303/.259 line against them this year. That said, he was at .265/.315/.398 a year ago and has a career .262/.340/.373 line v. southpaws. Either way, this is still a win.

Down: none

Neutral: Barreto goes from not playing in one part of California to not playing in a further south part of California as David Fletcher just slots into the 2B role with Andrelton Simmons and Anthony Rendon back in the lineup.

—

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09/01/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Mike Clevinger to SDP
• Austin Nola & Co. to SDP
• Mitch Moreland to SDP
• Archie Bradley & Brian Goodwin to CIN
• Jonathan Villar, Ross Stripling, & Robbie Ray to TOR
• Starling Marte to MIA; Caleb Smith to ARI
• Mike Minor to OAK
• Kevin Pillar to COL

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The MLB Trade Deadline is here!

let's check in on how baseball is doing tonight!!! pic.twitter.com/rHryUzlrvr

— whitneymcintosh.bsky.social (@WhitneyM02) August 31, 2020

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The Seattle Mariners traded Taijuan Walker to the Toronto Blue Jays for a PTBNL

With the Mariners, Walker (49% owned in CBS leagues) was riding a .225 BABIP (.282 for his career) to a lower than expected ERA (4.00) and WHIP (1.07). So even before the trade, some regression was expected with his rate stats. Now, he’s going to go pitch in a tougher home park and division. The results could be straight up ugly.

On Toronto, his projected rest-of-season ERA is at 4.85 and WHIP at 1.40. Not good. He was able to suppress his ERA because of his flyball nature (37% GB%) while pitching in Seattle. That advantage is gone but there is hope. His sinker has a better swinging-strike rate than his four-seamer (8% vs 5%) and a better groundball rate (46% vs 30%). He’s going to have to improve in several small ways to maintain anything close to his production so far this season.
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The trade deadline is Monday so let’s try to identify some of the guys who could be on the move. It will be an interesting deadline as we don’t know if teams will be willing to pony up for high impact players for a month of work. Meanwhile, the new playoff format has a lot of teams in spitting distance of a spot so they may be less inclined to deal even their impending free agents as the returns will likely be scant so why not just go for it? I wanted to get this out earlier in the week, but time prevented that so my sweet call on Taijuan Walker getting dealt and including TOR as one of the potential spots goes by the wayside.

Jeff and I will be writing up the deals over the weekend and on Monday starting with a piece from him tomorrow covering the Walker and Brandon Workman deals. 

BALTIMORE ORIOLES

They are 2 games under .500, but their playoff odds have them at just 11% due in large part to the overall difficulty of the American League so they should consider moving some players.

Tommy Milone – 3.99 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 21% K-BB in 29.3 IP – The 33-year old lefty will definitely draw some interest as he’s shown himself to be a useful 4th-5th starter type who can play up a bit in short samples as we’ve seen so far this year. Potentially interested teams: ATL, CHW, HOU, (back to) OAK, TOR

Alex Cobb – 3.73 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 9% K-BB in 31.3 IP – He’s still owed $15 million for 2021 and 31.3 innings of solid work might not be enough for a team to take a chance on that, but perhaps the O’s can pay some of that down to get a better return. He’s probably somehow amp his K rate to 29% and post 170 IP of a sub-3.00 ERA if he went to Houston. Potentially interested teams: ATL, CHW, HOU

Pat Valaika – 89 wRC+, 5 HR in 78 PA – The 27-year old utilityman has a bit of pop and could be a fill-in or bench piece for some clubs. Potentially interested teams: NYY, MIN, CHC, MIA

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