Research-Based Sleepers, And Eno’s Guys

April 2, 2013

This probably should have been posted before the season, but the idea just came to me. We see research here all the time, and that research often produces fantasy baseball sleepers, so let’s gather them in one place.

xHR/FB
Chad Young and Mike Podhorzer developed an xHR/FB metric based on batted ball data. Young then wrote about a few guys in part five, and I summed it up some more too. Here are some power sleepers for the year:

Justin Ruggiano
Chris Carter
Pedro Alvarez
Michael Saunders
Aaron Hill
Alex Rios
Ian Desmond
Andrew McCutchen
Ryan Zimmerman
Chase Headley
Mike Moustakas

Oppo Power
In my interview with Joey Votto, he talked about batting average on balls in play being a product of using the whole field with power. So I went and looked for players with oppo power. Here are some guys that might be safe in the batting average department.

Bryce Harper
Ryan Zimmerman
Chris Nelson
Michael Morse
Chris Johnson
Nick Markakis
Matt Carpenter
Carlos Ruiz
Alex Gordon
Paul Goldschmidt
Andy Dirks

The Edge
Bill Petti and Jeff Zimmerman found a metric that quantified a pitcher’s ability to hit the edge of the strikezone — Edge%. We don’t yet know how exactly to use it, but let’s try to use the metric to find some fantasy sleepers anyway.

David Phelps
Kyle Lohse
Mark Buehrle
Mike Leake
Brandon McCarthy
Jason Vargas
Tommy Milone
Henderson Alvarez
Hiroki Kuroda
Jordan Zimmermann
Clay Buchholz
Colby Lewis
Dan Haren
Vance Worley

The Infield Fly Ball
It looks like inducing pop-ups IS actually a skill. If you define them as infield flies divided by balls in play instead of infield flies divided by fly balls, the year-to-year r-squared jumps to .6+ and is on par with walk rate. So, if that’s the case, let’s find some above-average PU% guys.

Bruce Chen
Phil Hughes
Colby Lewis
Shaun Marcum
Jeremy Hellickson
Chris Capuano
Dan Haren
Ian Kennedy
Josh Beckett
Bartolo Colon
Jon Lester

Strikeouts Minus Walks
The best in-season metric is K%-BB% or kwERA. It’s the truth! Too bad it’s not in-season yet, but we can still look back at last year and see if there are any undervalued starters.

Max Scherzer
Jeff Samardzija
Madison Bumgarner
Joe Blanton

My Guys
And, since my drafts are done, I can count up who’s on my teams the most. I cut down to 12 leagues this year, I made diversification a goal this year, and these leagues are all of different shapes and sizes, but I’ve started to see some familiar names pop up anyway. Remember that I’m in a ton of keeper leagues and don’t sell low, typically, or else you’ll scratch your head at some of these.

Josh Rutledge 5
Domonic Brown 5
Nolan Reimold 5
Troy Tulowitzki 4
Jed Lowrie 4
Alejandro De Aza 4
Leonys Martin 4
Mike Napoli 4
Mike Moustakas 3
Albert Pujols 3
Josh Willingham 3
Brett Gardner 3
Matt Carpenter 3
Nick Franklin 3