Episode 170
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix on, among other topics:
Mark Buehrle’s impressive run of 14 straight 200-inning seasons; Justin Verlander; the Tampa Bay Rays’ bullpen for 2015; a request about certain keep-10 keepers for a listener’s squad in his 12-team mixed league; and, in efforts to squeeze value from the season’s final few days, streamers who interest us, beginning on Friday.
As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.
You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.
In case you didn't read all that, here's the short version. Membership includes:
✓Ad-free browsing
✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
✓Historical & platoon projections
✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps
✓One-click data exports
✓Customizable player-page dashboards
✓Dark & Classic site modes
✓Weekly Members-only mailbag
✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review
✓Optional homepage photo removal
✓Gift articles to non-members
Thanks to Ian Miller, aka Teen Archer, for the intro/outro music. Approximately 67 minutes of joyous analysis.
Thx for a great season. Wish I had done better, but its not ur fault
1994, only 1 guy with 200 innings = Players Strike. Haven’t finished listening yet, so maybe you get there, but yeah, that’s why only 1 guy did it.
lol, ok, you got there.
An idea for modifying the playoff format: More games while retain the value of being the best over long season.
Divisional winners seeded into 5 game quarterfinals.
Next two teams in each division (or 6 best records of non-divisional winners) enter 1 game wild card. Winners move into quarterfinals, losers drop into the Cinderella bracket.
Create a ‘Cinderella bracket’ which is a sudden elimination playoff that produces 1 Cinderella team per league that seeds into the 7 game semifinals with the 3 winners of quarterfinals.
Semifinal winners play in the League Championship whose winner moves on to the World Series.
The Cinderella bracket would be simplest if it was 4 or 8 teams, but with 6 teams making quarterfinals, you have a remainder of 9 in each league. 4 teams would make the Cinderella bracket too easy to get through compared to a 1st round. 8 teams would mean you have to win 3 straight games to reach round 2 (which is a harder route than teams in quarterfinals who are afforded the ability to lose 2 games and still advance) but leaves 1 in team in each league out of any playoff action (maybe that keeps everyone engaged down the stretch?).
Play off baseball is awesome. So awesome that it would be great if more team’s fans got to experience it every year. Would adding more games and letting almost every team into post season action of some kind dilute it and ruin the very thing you’re trying to share? Maybe. Which is why I am not sure this is a good idea, because the way it is now great and has led to some very dramatic final weeks of seasons in past years if not this year. But sudden elimination formats are very popular and dramatic and the increased number of high leverage games would probably be quite lucrative.
Hey, that’s my team! Thanks for the keeper advice. You guys are the best in the biz. With FG as my primary source of advice, I’m finishing no worse than 3rd in my four leagues and I may finish 1st in three of them. Looking forward to next season!