Archive for Alex Cobb

I’m a dweller in general. In slow drafts, I am the ultimate dweller. In the past, I would have ten+ tabs open at a given time when my draft slots were approaching: FanGraphs player profiles; RotoGraphs consensus rankings; Brooks Baseball Player Cards; BP’s PITCHf/x leaderboard; Rotoworld player news; the list goes on.

Then, prior to draft season, Jeff, Eno and I worked on these Arsenal Scores so that you can compare pitcher repertoires. You now have a go-to pitcher matrix if you’re dwelling on a cluster of pitchers.

Last week, Jeff Zimmerman furnished this glorious Hitter Analytics post, which provided us with a go-to hitter matrix when we’re dwelling on a cluster of hitters.

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Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

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Some fantasy baseball players here and there, sort of, in a way, kind of think that already. But they may not be eager to draft Alex Cobb like one, and they shouldn’t need to do so. In terms of performance, there haven’t been too many hurlers better in the last couple of years. He finished 34^th in Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings for the position. The right-hander has yet to pitch even 170 innings in a single campaign at any level, however. He likely doesn’t strike the populace as dependable.

There really isn’t a need to make the case that Cobb is good. Fantasy owners know that he’s good. But would they call him an ace? Probably not. For now, then, I’ll call him a pseudo ace.

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Last second I changed the title from “Having a Presence” to “Commanding Attention”. If I were to talk about the team as a whole, I would have had to go with “Having a Presence,” but I’m focusing on their rotation, and well…they command our attention…

It’s rough to be a Mets fan living in Minnesota. It’s rough being a Mets fan anywhere, but watching the Twins and their approach to 100 losses doesn’t help. Despite being only 6.5 games back from the 2nd Wild Card to date, I don’t think the Mets will have enough offense to sustain next year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun to watch. There will be quite the trio that commands attention – or even a quartet with the assumption that Noah Syndergaard makes an impact. And with a quartet…who knows?!

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Chris Cwik’s piece on Tyler Skaggs and the tough times the southpaw has endured while men are on base prompted me to wonder about that aspect of pitching. Which hurlers have performed differently, at least in terms of some typically advanced statistics, after hitters have reached base? What might we ascertain from what we discover?

Generally, when a pitcher pitches while men are on base, we assume that he works from the stretch. Therefore, if a starter is considerably less effective after a hitter has reached base against him, we may hypothesize that the hurler struggles while he pitches from the stretch. However, that isn’t necessarily true, because the pitcher may do things such as change his pitch mix in order to achieve a different type of result against a future hitter. Still, we can begin to make conjectures.

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If there’s less than two weeks to go and you’re noticing you have some catching up to do in innings pitched, you best get busy. I know in two of my high-payout standard roto leagues, there are four points separated by two wins, and at least a couple points to be had in strikeouts. As much as I hate the win category, I know I’m in win-chasing mode, and to that end, I’m looking at the most favorable matchups I can find.

There are a good number of decent options on the waiver wire as you head into the weekend, but I’m going to make a few recommendations based almost exclusively off of the fact that some starters are facing lineups that have been struggling to score runs. After all, if they don’t score, you’re in darn fine shape.

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