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At the start of Moby Dick, Ishmael says that, whenever he gets so depressed that “it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” he goes to sea. As it happens, we, too, are depressed right now. What depresses us is contemplation of the charred, smoking ruin that is our 2016 Fantasy season, and the hats we want to knock off are those of the arsonists who populate our several pitching staffs.

When this happens to us, however, we don’t go to sea. Rather, we bury ourselves in stats that have nothing to do with the ones that are causing us heartache. Different strokes, we guess—a phrase, by the way, that assumes a whole new meaning when you get to be as old as we are.

Thus, we determined to investigate the effect, if any, of the raising of the fences at Coors Field. As you undoubtedly know, Coors is a notoriously hitter-friendly park, and as you probably know, before the start of this season, the Rockies raised the outfield fences in order, said their General Manager, to make the stadium “more fair to pitchers.” The fence down the line in left field is now five feet higher than it was, and the fence in right-center is nine feet higher. Read the rest of this entry »

Originally, I intended on identifying pitchers who are worth buying based on their SwStr% for this article. And then I got hung up on Kenta Maeda’s work this year and couldn’t pull myself away. Alas, as the title of this article suggests, you won’t be getting a piece about trade/free agent targets based on SwStr%, but you will get a full-blown endorsement of acquiring the services of Maeda. Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry I missed you all for most of this weekend, so I’ll make sure to catch you up on the long weekend. There were some mighty stumbles this weekend, but none that should rock the closer grid. Per usual, there were the fair share of saves and only one that so far has made movement in the grid since you last saw it. Let’s talk about the falls first.
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I had no idea how I was going to follow up my extremely well-received article from last week, but then I realized it is the last Wednesday of the month which means it is time for my AL Outfield Tiers! Hooray! As always, these are my rest of the season ranks for the position and you can check out my previous versions below as well as Alex Chamberlain’s NL versions. Read the rest of this entry »

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Head to the pitching waiver wire, and you might remember this classic line from Coleridge’s tale of the albatross and the sailor. Yes, there are many pitchers you can choose from. They all have their flaws.

One of the most common mistakes when facing this situation in a single-season league is to reach for the young guy. Yes, prospects have that fresh feeling, and their upside reaches to the top of any rotation. To dream upon a golden arm and maybe, just maybe, be rewarded with an Asgardian hero like Noah Syndergaard!

Of course, reality is much more sober. More than half of all prospect pitchers — and even half of the very best — don’t provide their teams with more value than a middle reliever. Baseball will chew up the biggest of arms.

So consider instead the veterans that have improved their performance this year, in the order in which I would rank them.

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Kendall Graveman (3% Yahoo, 1.6% ESPN, 11% CBS) – on its surface, Graveman’s 5.48 ERA is enough to scare off most casual fans. And his 5.91 FIP and 4.33 xFIP suggest there’s little to see here. Yawn. Move on, right? Well, maybe. But depending on your league size, Kendall Graveman could be a surprising source of productive innings moving forward.

First, the bad. I’ve already touched on his disappointing ERA and the indicators that support it. He’s also walking more batters than he did last year. In fact, his 3.59 BB/9 would be by far the worst of his career, including his time in the minor leagues. After his start on Thursday, his Zone% is sitting at 42%, a 4-point drop from his 2015 rate. And then there’s the home runs. His HR/FB% is a ghastly 25%. As you might suspect, this is where we start looking for upside.

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Power at catcher is always in demand, and the position should be getting an influx soon as a the result of a former catcher once again donning the tools of ignorance after leaving the position last year. The former top prospect in all of baseball was Wally Pipped over the last couple of seasons, but he’ll get an opportunity to strut his stuff in the majors over the next couple of weeks. Also, a pitcher whose play and velocity has been up and down this year is coming off of a strong start in which he regained the velo bump he showcased in his first few starts. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Bush’s story is a story of seconds and inches. A couple of seconds, a couple of inches different and it would have been a very different story.

On June 7th, 2004, Bush was drafted first overall in the MLB Draft by the San Diego Padres. He signed a contract with a $3.15 million signing bonus, the second largest bonus ever given by the Padres. The world was seemingly at his fingertips, but there was trouble in paradise. Matt Bush is an alcoholic.

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It was suggested that we should celebrate the day that stats stabilize. Today is Grounder Day! Eat a sloppy joe while sitting on a blanket. Drink one of these, or some of this, but I don’t know about having any of this. Grounder Day!

Well, we actually aren’t all the way there. Only about twenty players have officially reached the stabilization point for ground ball rate. But that’s fine. It actually serves as a reminder that stabilization is not something that magically happens at one point. Stabilization happens over a spectrum, and today we know a little more than we did yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll know a little more.

But! Relative to *other* stats on our leaderboards, we know a good deal about a player’s ground ball rate by now. And the beauty of that news is that just knowing a player’s change in ground ball rate can tell us a good deal about what sort of power we should expect from them going forward.

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I love young players. This week’s piece will allow me to indulge my love of young players. The first highlighted player is highly owned, but his ownership rate at one of the major fantasy baseball providers is insanely low. He’s joined by a pair of players in the Triple-A International League who should all reach the majors in the coming months. If recent performance is an indicator, they’ll be getting a look sooner rather than later. Read the rest of this entry »