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The leaderboards at FanGraphs is a fun place to poke around. Behold this list of pitchers:

What do they all have in common? Aside from having thrown at least 20 innings, these are the only hurlers in baseball who rank in the upper half of the stats I first look to when evaluating pitchers. Namely, they all boast better than average K-BB%, GB%, Z-Contact%, and swinging strike rates. There are some obviously great pitchers on this list but I’m not interested in talking about Clayton Kershaw, Jon Lester, or Carlos Martinez. Though if you’re a little frustrated with Lester or CarMar, I both empathize and suggest exercising a little patience. Rather, I’d like to dive deeper into some of the list’s lesser-owned and lesser-known players who won’t cost nearly as much to acquire.  Read the rest of this entry »

#3: May 3
#2: April 24
#1: April 13

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It’s episode No. 4 of my Small-Sample Normalization Services, which, in Star Wars terms, means this will be, like… the 3rd-best post of the series? Is that how that works? I know to nothing about what’s believed to be the consensus on the merits of each film. I already regret making this stupid comparison.

Allow me, then, to touch upon (and revisit) some players whose performances through six weeks are worth critiquing. Six weeks is still a considerably small sample when it takes hundreds of plate appearances (or, for ball-in-play metrics, batted balls) for certain standard and advanced metrics to become reliable (or, in common but sometimes misused parlance, “to stabilize”). Check previous posts for the rules, but know that a rating of 1 means Hype City and a rating of 5 means, uh, Alarm City. A 3, therefore, would be neutral.

All graphs pulled prior to yesterday’s games.

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Name: Masahiro Tanaka, NYY SP
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At the beginning of the 2017 season, I wrote pieces reviewing the potential impact rookie hitters in each league for 2017. Today, we begin a semi-regular review of how those players are actually performing. The American League East is the first up for review with my original projected ranking.

1. Andrew Benintendi, OF, Red Sox: Benintendi has been as good as advertised. He’s third on the club in OPS behind Mookie Betts and Christian Vazquez(!). After striking out 21.2% of the time in his brief 2016 debut, the rookie outfielder has trimmed that by almost 10% to 12.7%. He’s playing solid defence, running the bases well and hitting. You can’t ask for much more from a freshman hitter on a club with high expectations.

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In the run-up to the season, our sense of adventure shone brighter than our always-flickering common sense, and so here we are playing in not just one but several leagues that permit trading. When you trade, to state the obvious, you’re betting that the package of stats you’re giving up is less valuable to you than the package you’re getting. Sometimes, this is just a question of trading stats you don’t need for stats that you do. If you’ve got four closers but your hitters have no speed, you’re going to trade some saves for some stolen bases. And sometimes, of course, just like teams in Reality Baseball, you’re trading this year for next year.

But—as we used to say in Academe when we didn’t want to do any more work on a project—keepers are Beyond the Scope of this Article. The thing you’re most often trying to do when you contemplate trades is divine who on your team has produced stats that flatter his actual performance, and who on the other guy’s team has better things in store. And to assist ourselves, and now you, with this project, we’ve tried to identify hitters who, through the first one-fifth of the season, have been lucky or unlucky, and who figure (we hope) to produce numbers more typical of their projected performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Morton’s increased velocity in an injury-shortened 2016 coupled with him retaining the improved cheddar in the spring created a bit of buzz entering the year. I was bullish about his 2017 outlook, and thus far, he’s done nothing to diminish my optimistic outlook for the season. Digging into the numbers after a half-dozen starts reveals more good than bad. Read the rest of this entry »

It really pains me to do this but today I’m going to tell you about Justin Smoak. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. A former top prospect, Smoak is now 30 years old and playing in his third season in Toronto. He’s been the subject of dozens of articles over the years with largely the same outcome, disappointment. In over 2600 Major League plate appearances, Smoak owns a career wRC+ of 95. He’s been a serviceable major leaguer who’s never fully lived up to his tantalizing potential. So, it’s only in the context of a Deep League Waiver Wire piece that I’d continue beating this dead horse after so many years.  Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another season of the Prospect Stock Watch — a series I’ve been writing for six years now.

Anthony Alford, CF, Toronto Blue Jays
MLB ETA: 2018
Ceiling: Lead-off hitter/All-star center-fielder

Selected out of high school in 2012, Alford signed a unique deal with the Jays that allowed him to dabble in baseball during the summers while play college football. He appeared in just 25 games over the first three years of his pro career before turning to the sport full-time in 2015 after his college football career went sideways.

Alford showed a lot of potential that year and posted an .820 OPS while splitting the season between two A-ball levels and he looked poised for a huge breakout in 2016. Unfortunately, he hurt himself in the first game of the year and missed about a month. A concussion clouded the remainder of his season.

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It’s foolish to put much stock in spring training numbers, but one of the spring’s hottest hitters has carried over a revamped approach and spring training success to the regular season. Now, I believe he’s an ownable commodity in mixed leagues as shallow as 12 teams if they use a corner infielder and/or a utility spot. The second player I’m covering this week wasn’t who I initially had in mind in the same outfield. While checking in on slugger Jorge Soler, I found myself intrigued by his rookie teammate who was recently promoted to The Show.

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Non-closing relievers typically don’t get much fanfare outside of leagues that use holds or holds combined with saves. Occasionally handcuffs to shaky closers will get a slight uptick in ownership in anticipation of said shaky closer faltering and losing the gig, but otherwise, non-closing relievers are deemed a waste of a roster spot outside of extremely deep leagues. The following quartet of relievers stand out to me as being worthy of ownership in 12-team mixed leagues or larger that don’t feature shallow benches. Chris Devenski’s relief excellence has bumped his ownership up significantly, so he’s not included. However, another multi-inning reliever is off to his own strong start and owned in under 10% of CBS, ESPN and Yahoo! leagues. A couple former closers and a lefty relief ace join him in this week’s piece. Read the rest of this entry »

By clicking this link, you (“Reader”) have opted into an agreement (“Contract”) with FanGraphs, Inc. (“Handsome Author”). Handsome Author agrees to provide Small-Sample Normalization Services (SSNS) to Reader in the following post (“Post”). In return, Reader, presumably interested in Handsome Author’s analysis or merely intrigued by Handsome Author’s curious Post title, shall appreciate said services no matter what.

SSNS seeks to normalize good and bad performances witnessed in the first two weeks of the 2017 Major League Baseball (MLB) season. Handsome Author has noted previously, here and elsewhere, that small-sample booms and busts in March and April would go largely unnoticed in other months in which the sport of professional baseball is played, such as May, June, July, August, or even September.

Accordingly, SSNS looks at a player’s past performance as a benchmark for current performance using FanGraphs’ (and not Handsome Author’s) very nifty player graphs. It answers the question, “Has a player done this before?” Perhaps, Reader. Perhaps. But perhaps not. SSNS then assigns an Excitement-to-Panic Level (EPL) on a 5-point scale from 1 to 5 as well as an Adjusted Excitement-to-Panic Level (AEPL) once Handsome Author has properly assessed the historical significance of the player’s performance — within the context of the player’s self.

In this inaugural edition, Handsome Author will use SSNS to evaluate five hitters primarily in terms of their strikeouts (K%) and walks (BB%) through their first X number of games, with some other statistics incorporated as well. SSNS is not the be-all, end-all of player performance, but knowing we’ve seen a player “do this before,” as they say, is enough to calm one’s turbulent heart and mind.

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