Archive for Jeff Baker

While I can’t speak for the rest of the writing staff, I must say that I enjoy doing these Depth Chart Discussions. Our fearless leader, Eno Sarris tells us what division we’re looking at for the week and we sign up for the depth charts we want to cover. More often than not, we end up choosing one that we either really like to discuss or one that we want to actually learn more about, but every so often, one comes along where someone has to take one for the team. Valuing my ability to be a team player, the Miami Marlins infield is my sacrifice. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time when I’m picking a daily lineup, I make a custom leaderboard of the starting pitchers for the day to see which starters are most homer-prone. But this can be a tedious task to do day after day. So I’ve created the chart you see below which shows the most homer prone starting pitchers. I had a post a few months ago where I had charts showing hitters with reverse splits and the splits of switch hitters that I still reference often. Hopefully this post will be a similar bookmark worthy tool.

There are three columns. One for starters that are currently in a major league rotation with at least 1320 career batters faced (which is the point at which HR stabilizes) against batters of any handedness . The players listed have a HR rate against all batters that is two or more standard deviations above the mean. And then there is a chart for starters with 1320+ BF against lefties and against righties. The players listed in those charts have a HR rate against batters of that particular handedness that is one or more standard deviations above the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I took a look at Paul Goldschmidt’s strange home/road splits. Despite a basic park factor of 105 in Arizona in addition to a 105 factor for home runs for right-handers, Goldschmidt has been noticeably better on the road. And as I was trolling around looking at numbers this week, I came across Joey Votto who has also been quite a bit better on the road despite a very favorable home ballpark.

So I decided to see what other players were seeing some backwards home/road splits. I took all players with 600+ PA both at home and on the road since the beginning of 2011. And I only included players that called the same ballpark home for that entire span. Below is a list of the players whose home wOBA is lower than their road wOBA despite their home park having an above average basic park factor. Read the rest of this entry »

When picking hitters, the quality and handedness of the opposing pitcher are probably the most important considerations aside from whether the hitter himself is any good and likely to be in the lineup. And it makes sense to be very mindful of the opposing pitcher; the hitter will probably face the starter for most of his plate appearances that day. But starting pitchers are averaging 5.89 innings per start this year, which means that a full third of most games is handled by other pitchers to which we give no consideration. When you consider the fact that most pitchers you choose to start hitters against are below average, the bullpen probably factors into closer to four innings of each game as opposed to just three.

I decided to figure out which bullpens are the most hitter friendly in Draftstreet contests. To do this I had to figure out how many points each reliever has allowed to this point in Draftstreet contests. I pulled all of their batting against statistics, added up all the positive scoring events for hitters and then subtracted all the negative scoring events for hitters. The formula was this: (1B + (2B x 2) + (3B x 3) + (HR x 4) + (HBP x 0.75) + (BB x 0.75) + (R x 1.5) + (RBI x 1.5) + (SB x 2) + (SAC x .75)) – ((K x 0.75) + (GDP x 0.75) + CS). Read the rest of this entry »