Archive for fantasy baseball

When we size up our weekly or daily pitching matchups, most of us probably get a nervous feeling when thinking about starting our hurlers against the Yankees, Red Sox, Twins or Dodgers. Lately, the Indians have become one of those feared teams, too. But it’s been occurring to me that it’s not much fun owning pitchers who ply their craft in the American League West.

Of course, there are the always-tough Astros, but they are not alone as difficult matchups. Going back to June 1, the Angels and Mariners have the two lowest O-Swing rates in the majors, and the Athletics and Astros rank sixth and seventh. The Astros and Angels have the lowest SwStr%, and the Mariners have the 10th-lowest. The A’s, Angels and Astros are in the top 10 for ISO. While the Rangers lag behind their division-mates in these categories, they — along with the A’s and Astros — rank among the eight teams with the highest hard contact rates.
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The first full week of the second half is just about in the books. Let’s see which NL teams have lineups with different looks.

Arizona

The continued absence of David Peralta (shoulder) has meant there has been room for both Jake Lamb and Christian Walker in the lineup, even though the Diamondbacks have faced 11 consecutive right-handed starters. Peralta started swinging a bat this week, but he is not on the verge of returning. When Peralta comes back, assuming he is not traded shortly thereafter, Torey Lovullo will have a dilemma on his hands. Lamb has posted a .958 OPS in July, while Walker has an 1.133 OPS with four home runs in 35 plate appearances this month.
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Thursday night’s schedule wasn’t so much of a slate as a pebble. The Rangers’ 5-0 win over the Astros was the only game on the first night of the second half, and it was a closer-free affair featuring five low-leverage relief appearances.

The only reliever worthy of mention was the Astros’ Cy Sneed, who did the bulk of the mopping up after Framber Valdez, who retired only two of the nine batters he faced. Sneed gave up just one run in five innings while striking out seven batters.
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Now that the All-Star break is behind us, it’s time to check in once again on lineup trends in the National League. The Dodgers have made a bevy of lineup moves over the break, and the Cubs may have a position battle on their hands. The details on these and other situations are just below.

Arizona

It appears that Christian Walker will lose the most playing time as a result of Jake Lamb’s activation, being relegated to the lesser side of a first base platoon. Jarrod Dyson sat when Walker made starts against a pair of lefties (Drew Pomeranz and Madison Bumgarner) on June 29 and 30, but that’s been fairly close to the status quo. Even prior to Lamb’s activation, Dyson would frequently sit against left-handed starters in order to accommodate Ildemaro Vargas (with Ketel Marte playing center field) or Tim Locastro.
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Just about every league has a Mike Soroka owner. Then again, the Braves’ All-Star rookie landed at the break as a top 20 starting pitcher in Roto value. He has the fifth-lowest ERA (2.42) and 13th-lowest WHIP (1.05) among all pitchers with at least 80 innings, and 6.0 runs of support per nine innings has left him with a dazzling 9-1 record.

Soroka also ranks seventh in sinker usage with a 47.4 percent rate. His primary offering is, in general, a notoriously bad pitch for swings-and-misses and not especially good for limiting extra-base hits. As one would expect from a pitcher who uses a sinker nearly half the time, Soroka has been below average at getting strikeouts. While the major league average K% is 22.8 percent, Soroka has registered a 20.1 percent rate in the first half. When you consider that many of the below-average strikeout pitchers are left unowned in many leagues, Soroka has been something of a liability for strikeouts for fantasy owners.
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Pitchers who are adept at getting swinging strikes but not strikeouts are one of fantasy baseball’s mild annoyances. Many of us have used SwStr% as a shorthand for strikeout potential, but a few pitchers with high whiff rates fail to meet our expectations, usually because they get called strikes at a low rate. Prior to this season, Jake Odorizzi was one of those pitchers. Joe Musgrove (11.3 percent SwStr%, 19.3 percent K% in 2019) still is.

Eduardo Rodriguez does not fit this category exactly, but in the context of his past performances, he seems to be a strikeout underachiever this year. The Red Sox’s lefty entered this season with back-to-years of a SwStr% above 11 percent, outpacing the major league average for starters by more than a percentage point in both campaigns. His strikeout rates were far above average: 25.8 percent in 2017 and 26.4 percent in 2018. Yet Rodriguez achieved these rates with below-average called strike rates, with a 16.7 percent mark in 2017 and a 15.3 percent rate last season.
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How will the Rockies make do with two of their infielders hurt? How are the Marlins using the newest member of their outfield? These questions and many others are answered in this week’s set of National League lineup analyses!

Arizona

Jarrod Dyson sat on Thursday against Jeff Hoffman and the Rockies, and that was only the third time in the last 16 games against a right-handed starter that he was left out of the starting lineup. He has started twice in place of Adam Jones in right field, with all of the other starts coming in center field. That bodes well for Dyson to start all three games against the Giants this weekend, as they are scheduled to go with an all-righty contingent of Jeff Samardzija, Tyler Beede and Shaun Anderson.
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There is no getting around the fact that Blake Snell had a miserable, short outing against the Yankees on Wednesday afternoon. He had little control and wasn’t fooling any of the hitters he faced. I do give Gary Sanchez credit for hitting an outside changeup for an opposite-field home run, and the weak grounder DJ LeMahieu hit for a leadoff single had just a 23 percent chance of becoming a hit (per Baseball Savant). Still, Snell owns the four walks he issued, which is a true feat considering he faced only five other batters besides Sanchez and LeMahieu.

For those who have Snell on their fantasy rosters, the month of June has been a difficult one. He did have a strong outing on June 9 against the Red Sox in Boston (one run allowed in six innings with seven strikeouts), but across his other three starts, the lefty gave up 16 runs (15 earned) in only eight innings.
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I had some trouble figuring out whether to start Zack Greinke in my Ottoneu league tonight. By the merits of his fantasy stats, it should be an easy call. Greinke is the 10th-ranked starting pitcher in the format, and while his strikeout rate (24.4 percent) is merely decent, he racks up enough innings to compensate for that. With a .309 team wOBA against righties, the Nationals don’t rank as a particularly fearsome matchup, but with Greinke qualifying as a fantasy ace, the Diamondbacks’ opponent probably doesn’t factor into many owners’ decisions.

Yet in a game where the frequency of swinging strikes is critical to a player’s value — whether it’s a pitcher or hitter — it’s hard to ignore Greinke’s downward-trending SwStr%. It fell from 12.4 percent in 2017 to 10.8 percent in 2018, and while he has rebounded from similar drops before, this year it stands at just 9.3 percent. Digging a little deeper, the increase in contact is happening mostly on his pitches outside of the strike zone. Greinke’s 84.7 percent Z-Contact% is 1.3 percentage points above last season’s mark and o.1 percentage point below the major league median. While that’s not especially encouraging, it’s Greinke’s 73.7 percent O-Contact% that is truly concerning. It’s far worse than the median O-Contact% of 62.2 percent and six points higher than his rate from 2018.
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Blake Treinen captured his 15th save of the season on Tuesday night against the Rays, but he was fortunate to have had a two-run cushion entering the bottom of the ninth inning. In starting off with a four-pitch walk to Brandon Lowe, Treinen followed in his recent trend of not throwing enough strikes. Over his six innings pitched in the month of June, he has issued seven walks while locating in the strike zone at an anemic 31.9 percent rate and throwing first-pitch strikes just 41.4 percent of the time.

The walk came back to hurt Treinen, as Lowe scored on a two-out Willy Adames single to cut the Athletics’ lead to one run. However, he stranded Adames by getting Kevin Kiermaier to ground out for the final out.
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