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I find early season performances fascinating (or perhaps it’s our responses to these performances that’s fascinating.) With every owner competitive and paying attention in April – maybe for the only time all year – league wide perception of talent levels can be unrealistically altered. For example, Trevor Story hits 7 home runs in his first 8 games, then precedes to hit .200 over his next 60 plate appearances. That’s about as stark a difference as you can find in a player’s performances this early in the season. Given this, how do your league-mates value him? My wager is that they value him more as the 7 HR guy that the .200 hitter, but that’s just a guess. Would the view of Story be different if those 7 HR in 8 games occurred in July?

This is all hypothetical conjecture on my part, but it does help to show the crazy swings in performance that occur over small samples. If a player (especially a prospect) has a hot start, their trade value can be boosted by that helium all year. However, some hot starts still fall through the cracks, and many players who have performed well can still be bought relatively cheaply. Hopefully this will help you consider buying some of the players who’ve had great starts to 2016. Some of them appear to have made core improvements thus far.

One of the updates I run weekly is to look at the plate discipline and batted ball leaderboards here on Fangraphs. I look for players who are swinging less than last year, while also making more contact. Eno covered some of this in his post last week, but this early in the season it can be difficult to have enough data to make any concrete conclusions about player performances. A disclaimer – at the time I wrote this I didn’t realize how similar it was to Eno’s analysis. His piece goes into more detail and you should definitely read it.

The general premise: I want to find players who are being more patient than last year, but are also making contact at a higher rate. I also track changes in hard hit percentage, but admit that I don’t focus on this nearly as much. I plan to start incorporating exit velocity and launch angle, but have not been able to at this point. This is far from a full proof method or some statistical wizardry, but it’s a quick sniff test. Given that swing% becomes reliable around 50 PAs, and contact rate around 100 PAs, I would put a little more weight on those numbers at this time. I use this to help me bid in the early season Ottoneu FA auctions, or to help target players in trades. The last thing I want to do is waste precious dollars or trade assets on what is likely to be a mirage. (This is probably more important in Ottoneu than other formats where cap penalties can hamstring you if you aren’t careful). Anyways, here’s the list of all players swinging less, making more contact, and hitting the ball with a higher hard hit frequency in 2016. Read the rest of this entry »

• I added quite a few updates on players in the spreadsheet like Tyson Ross’s setback. It seemed like the MLB.com beat reporters were each required to write and injury related article over the past couple of days.

• Joe Kelly is on the DL with a shoulder impingement.

“That was all I got right there,” said Kelly. “It was as hard as I could throw the ball at that time. It didn’t feel that great, obviously. Hovering around that 89-90 [mph] range was what I had, and I tried to push through it and got the last pitch up to 94 luckily for the strikeout, obviously. It didn’t feel very good.”

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A few weeks ago, my wife had reached her breaking point. She had spent years living in not so silent frustration and had finally had enough. So one night, after we had put our daughter to bed, she sat me down and we had the talk I had been dreading for as long as I could remember. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re not even two full weeks into the 2016 season. I’d give the typical blanket small sample sizes warning, but instead I’d advise reading Mike Podhorzer’s piece from earlier in the week. I agree with the premise of doing nothing, but Mike discusses exceptions (injuries) and readers also brought up exceptions and reasons for making early-season moves in the comments. I routinely draft one to two players who are disabled-list eligible in my leagues so that that I can speculate on players who flash something intriguing in the season’s first few weeks. Chris Tillman is just the type of player I’m talking about. I’m writing this article in advance of his third start of the season Thursday night, so the PITCHf/x data and numbers are from his first two starts. As you’ve probably guessed, the PITCHf/x data is enticing.  Read the rest of this entry »

Intro

Towards the end of last season, FanGraphs partnered up with SaberSim, a site that provides daily baseball (and hockey) projections fueled by a game simulator. While the raw projections available on FanGraphs and the SaberSim site itself are helpful in their own right, digging into some of the player and game projections, both for the current day and next, can help illuminate players to target for your season-long and DFS lineups.

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This week fantasy owners and prospect hounds threw FAAB and caution to the wind as prospects Nomar Mazara, Mallex Smith, and Max Kepler arrived to the Show much earlier than expected. Mazara, who is widely considered to be the one of the best prospects in baseball, has wasted no time impressing those who took a late flyer on him near the end of draft or were able to snag him off waiver wires. On the other hand, Smith has not yet delivered much in terms of fantasy production, but it has only been eight plate appearances. However, the quietest arrival so far has been Max Kepler. Read the rest of this entry »

My twitter feed is blowing up with questions about pitching. I can’t get to all of them in crazy detail without cloning myself, so what I’ll do instead is something that’s a little more like what we do on The Sleeper & The Bust, the podcast Paul Sporer and I run — I’ll try to put together a few quick facts and an opinion that should help you make your decisions.

So let’s all take a ride, take a ride on the omnibus.

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It is the first full weekend of baseball! Watch out for rain delays and managers pulling pitchers during a no-hitter. Read the rest of this entry »

We are one week (mostly!) through the baseball season. In Ottoneu, this specific period of time feels more gut-wrenching than in other fantasy sports formats. I have no facts to support this – maybe it’s the negative points players can score? – other than noting that when multiple -4 scores come in from Russell Martin, or you see Greinke put up a -30 line, it is easy to feel like the most desirable outcome is to lay at the bottom of a large body of water. Ottoneu can be a difficult game, and (especially) if you have any idea of the points thresholds it takes to win, it can feel even more daunting to see your squad trudging along. However, it is important to remember that the season is VERY long, and that every team will have several bad weeks. During this period of the season, it is easy to overreact and make a rash move to counteract a poor start. Everyone wants  to own Trevor Story when everything he hits is a home run. Meanwhile, a Michael Pineda owner might be a little more fearful about how this coming season will go after his -14pt start against Houston.

In the midst of this, you may start to see some trades in your leagues that could give you pause. Ottoneu has many variables which play into trades that are often ignored in standard fantasy leagues (salaries, loans, dynasty, etc.) so sometimes you can see a deal pass through your league that looks a little strange (even if not on the basis of talent being exchanged). Today I want to highlight some of these trades and also take a little time to echo patience if you are considering selling off – especially if you are in a brand new league, it’s far too early. Let’s look at some interesting trades from the past week! Read the rest of this entry »

It’s easy to be tempted to overreact to the small sample size of strong performances very early in the season. Like many fantasy pundits before me, I’ll continue the tradition of preaching patience with your best players and your preseason evaluations. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should be sitting on your hands. Three things I keep tabs on especially closely in the first few weeks of the season are PITCHf/x data, lineup constructions and playing time distribution. Colleague Scott Spratt tackled fastball leaders in the bullpen and Jeff Sullivan discussed velocity in depth relating to King Felix’s first start. I wont’ tackle PITCHf/x data in this piece — as others have done so already — but I will look at a few playing time situations that might be sorting themselves out as well as a few players whose stock is on the rise as a result of their lineup spot.

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