First things first, you can check out all of my 10 Bold Predictions here, though, I’ll be providing them with a review of how they are fairing below. Predictably, some have a chance — a good chance, even — to hit. Others, however, are toast already. Let’s jump into the predictions. Read the rest of this entry »
With the All-Star break upon us, I wanted to take some time to notice several players who are putting up seasons worth your attention across Ottoneu. I guess we should probably consider what we mean by “worth attention.” Certainly many players are having great seasons. Chris Sale is pitching at career bests, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger have combined for 53 HRs, Justin Turner is walking more than he strikes out, and Jose Ramirez has picked up 2B eligibility when producing a career high ISO. None of these players will be included… Wait, what? I thought you said this was an All-Star team?
A couple key points that drive the Ottoneu format. First, it is an economic game with a defined budget. Second, players get kept year to year. For this reason, and because others can/have spilled virtual ink over the players listed above, I will exclude them. A couple additional stipulations in filling out this roster Read the rest of this entry »
Over the last several weeks, I’ve scoured Baseball Prospectus’ PitchF/x leaderboards for the league’s underthrown pitches. We’ve covered two different pitch types each week starting with four-seam fastballs and sinkers in the first installment, cutters and curves in the second, and sliders and changeups last week. This week, we put it all together. Now that we’ve identified the most underthrown pitches, who should consider overhauling his entire pitch mix to make the most of his electric stuff?
Last week I suggested nabbing and stashing one of Cincinnati’s starting pitchers who’s nearing a return, and this week I do the same with a different arm of theirs. A pair of outfielders owned in under 25% of leagues across the industry also stand out as worthy of the attention of gamers. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to the third and penultimate installment of Underthrown Pitches and the Pitchers Who Underthrow Them. Over the last several weeks, we’ve identified high performing four-seamers, sinkers, cutters, and curves and the pitchers who should consider throwing them more often. We’ve defined “high performing” based on a Pitch Score that factors an offering’s proclivity towards inducing whiffs, ground balls, and pop-ups. We’ve also defined the degree that a pitch is “underthrown” using a simple measure of pitch score to frequency.
For a more detailed recap of the results and methodology to-date, check out the previous installments linked below.
The pitching landscape isn’t what it has been in recent years, as Paul Sporer noted here and here when touting some widely available starting pitchers who can help fantasy gamers. Quality pitching is in demand for fantasy gamers, so I’m going to offer some more widely available arms to turn to for help. Read the rest of this entry »
Two weeks ago, I went searching for some of the league’s underthrown pitches. Which offerings by virtue of their paucity, despite excelling at inducing whiffs and weak contact, should be thrown more often? We’ve seen it so many times in the past, when a pitcher of whom we think a known quantity, suddenly leans on one pitch just a little more heavily and reinvents himself. Last week, we looked at the league’s underthrown four-seam fastballs and sinkers. This week, we turn to cutters and curves.
Last month, I went through pitchers who had improved their projections the most since the start of the season. It was May 5th, so we were looking at close to a months worth of games. To revisit the methodology, I wanted to look at pitchers who had improved their projections the most from the start of the season, while also examining their underlying skills. What I specifically was considering was pitchers who were inducing less contact in the zone – the area where batters are more likely to make contact – while also seeing if they were throwing in the zone more or less than they had previously. I was using zone contact rate in conjunction with frequency of pitches in the zone as a proxy for improved stuff. Of these two variables, improvement zone-contact rate being the more important.
Over the first month, this list would have been small: Chris Sale, Danny Salazar, Jeff Samardzija, Gerrit Cole, Lance McCullers, Michael Pineda, and Ivan Nova were the only starters who improved in both capacities. If we expanded the bounds on zone frequency, we would add Jacob deGrom, James Paxton, Zack Greinke, Taijuan Walker, and Carlos Martinez to the list. Not a bad list of pitchers if you’re trying to look for SP who are on everyone’s radar, but also could be showing real improvements in 2017.
Today, I want to revisit this exercise. However, I will only be looking at improvements over the last month. Over the last month, here are all SP who have improved their Ottoneu FGpts projections by more than .05 points per inning. (If you don’t play Ottoneu, this should be generalize enough to help you in standard leagues). Read the rest of this entry »
Over the past few days something very odd has happened in baseball. Somehow, some way, Zack Cozart has become the active fWAR leader. Okay, this may not be as big a surprise this afternoon as it may have been when you first heard about this, but it is still pretty crazy, right? Or maybe you saw him sneaking up the leaderboards over the past few days or weeks. Either way, it has happened. He’s now number one amongst the active players, and perhaps he’ll soon overtake Trout for first amongst all players.
In terms of fantasy, WAR doesn’t carry much weight, of course. Especially for a guy like Cozart who generates a solid chunk of his value through defensive excellence. Even still, Cozart is posting numbers at a rate that far exceeds his career numbers. He currently stands with a .351 batting average and a 1.059 OPS, up from his career .254 average and .704 OPS.
Zack Cozart has below average exit velocity, only 84 mph. We’re not talking a touch below average, either, he’s more than a full standard deviation below with a z-score of -1.37. All this made me curious about where exactly he sat on the exit velocity spectrum, whether there are other similar outliers, and if there is anything we can learn from them. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I examined a list of hitters who were near the top of the league in exit velocity, while also lagging behind their peers in terms of expected results on their batted balls. For reference, I showed the following chart to explain how batters have performed during 2017 (updated for current games over the past week):
| z-score | Avg xOBA | Avg EV |
|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 0.346 | 89.32 |
| 1.00 | 0.374 | 91.68 |
| 1.50 | 0.391 | 93.01 |
| 2.00 | 0.406 | 93.96 |
| All | 0.326 | 87.28 |
I didn’t do well at explaining this chart, last week. To reiterate, at the footer of the table you can see see that there are currently 395 players with over 30 balls in play in 2017. The numbers shown in each z-score row, display the average metrics for all players with exit velocities in excess of that performance level. For example, those with an exit velocity z-score in excess of 2 have average an exit velocity of 93.96, with an expected OBA of .406 (on same scale as wOBA). Please let me know if any confusion surrounds this chart.