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So often, the first take takes. In other words, whatever prognostication came first, it’ll stick long after the data has taken a new turn. In most respects, when it comes to the games on the field, Addison Russell, Masahiro Tanaka, and Homer Bailey all started on the wrong foot this year. The trick is finding out — quickly — if there’s a chance that first look is obscuring the true value of these guys.

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Brian Schlitter entered in the seventh and proceeded to strike out Wil Myers on three pitches, culminating with a beautiful two-seamer diving at the knees to freeze Myers and end the inning. Unfortunately for the Cubs, Sam Holbrook didn’t share the assessment of the 32,138 people who had way worse seats than him, and he called the salvo a ball. After fist pumps from Welington Castillo and a belated one from Schlitter, they realized they had one more pitch to throw. It was a thigh-high offering that Myers deposited over the ivy in center field, giving the Padres a lead that Dale Thayer, Joaquin Benoit, and Craig Kimbrel weren’t going to relinquish.

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Last week, Jeff Sullivan presented Ryan Zimmerman’s Miguel Cabrera-esque success against inside pitches. Ryan Zimmerman doesn’t mind fastballs in general. According to his Brooks Player Card, he is a career .295 and .310 hitter against Fourseams and Sinkers/Two-seamers respectively. BABIP, .ISO, HR/FB+LD, Whiff/Swings — any way you look at it — Ryan Zimmerman is at his best versus fastballs.

So on April 8th, Ryan Zimmerman did this:

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No one in either the American or National League has seen 50 plate appearances this season. At this point you’re probably all tired of the “small sample size” caveats but it is worth repeating. With that out of the way, these are two players, one mostly owned but struggling and one widely available I like.
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Every year, pitchers add wrinkles in the spring. Most years, they forget them once they have to get batters out and the results count. In the case of today’s pitchers, though, we have three guys that found a new thing and stuck with it when the calendar switched to April. The results weren’t uniformly amazing for each of them, but a third pitch might mean wonders for misters Jimmy Nelson, Nathan Eovaldi, and Brad Boxberger.

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Despite the small sample, the pitching trend continues (as of 4/11):

Strikeouts are up. Offense is down. The MLB ERA as it stands is 3.39! You can read why in the The Hardball Time’s Baseball Annual 2015: Jeff Sullivan looks at whether or not sabermetrics have tipped the balance of power toward pitching and defense — it has. PITCHf/x evaluation is one major reason.

More and more, pitchers know what works within their own repertoires, and we can then tell some “reperstories” based on their pitch characteristics (movement and velocity) and outcomes (swinging-strike and groundball induction).

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Everyone loves a sleeper. I’d say this is an indisputable fact — or close to it. Not all sleepers are the same, though, and I find the post-hype sleeper to be the most rewarding type to peg correctly. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for tools being actualized and promising prospects figuring it out after struggling initially. While the season isn’t even a week old yet, let’s check in on a few post-hype sleepers who are off to a good start. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 214

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss the injury news with Ryan Braun, John Jaso, Jenrry Mejia, and Alex Cobb.

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It’s been a bit more than a month, so it’s time to update my rankings, maybe in time for your last draft. Mostly injuries have moved the needle, but a few spring training strikeout rates and pitch changes may have factored into the moves. I gave you the new NFBC ADP and my old rankings so you could see the movements in the rankings.

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I can’t really remember the first fantasy baseball league I was in. One of the first ones I was in was hand-scored. I remember, after I had been playing for a few years, I was hosting a draft at my mom’s house and, in the eighth round, someone asked if Pedro Martinez was still available. Nothing more hilarious had ever been asked.

I can’t really remember at which point fantasy baseball developed into an obsession, either. I guess it was a slow growth, slow enough that I didn’t feel it until I woke up one morning earlier this spring and realized I was in ten leagues. (Is that a lot? You tell me. To me, it feels like a lot. Too many, but not too much.) I lay in bed and literally counted them on my fingers; getting to that last pinky, I kinda felt a little gross. And then I got up and started preparing for my next draft.

I don’t think I would be in so many leagues if they were didn’t comprise wondrous variety. I’m now in three ottoneu leagues that have the same scoring system (FanGraphs points), but other than that, each league is different—so, eight different formats.

Also, I don’t think I’d be in so many leagues—or in any leagues at all for that matter—if I didn’t feel like fantasy baseball enhanced my enjoyment of the game. The different scoring settings help me to evaluate players in new ways; the deeper leagues cause me to broaden my knowledge of the player pool; dynasty leagues lead me to learn about minor leaguers and teams’ future outlooks. Being in so many leagues assures that that I can have all my favorite players in at least one league; it increases my chances of winning at least one league (it could also cause me to lose focus and do a half-assed in all of them, I suppose); it keeps me sharp and organized. So, despite the time suck, it has its benefits.

I’m sure many of you know the glory that is ottoneu, so I won’t talk about those leagues here (though the league that started from scratch this year has progressed in a very interesting way so far). But I wanted to highlight the specs of some of more unique leagues that I am in.

I invite you all to share the same in the comments. What are your favorite leagues? What have you learned from them or done differently to exploit their idiosyncrasies?

League Name: sneeze
Platform: Yahoo
# of Teams: 20
Scoring Type: Points
Draft Type: Slow Draft (no snaking)
Keepers: Can keep any players 26 or younger for free; keep up to ten “old” players at the cost of a draft pick
Positions: 2xC, 3B, 2xSS, 2xMI, 2xCF, 2xOF, 3xUtil, 5xSP, 5xP

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