Archive for pitching

For those who don’t know, I started in this industry with a focus on streaming pitchers. By using various statistics for both pitchers and their opponents I have been providing advice to followers on who to stream in their leagues. What does streaming pitchers mean? Simply put it means grabbing a pitcher off your waiver wire for one start. You choose that pitcher based on matchup and skill hoping they provide you with decent ratios and then dump them back into the free-agent pool.

With that said it is important to know which pitchers are worth streaming in certain matchups. These pitchers typically aren’t good enough to keep on your team but could prove useful in the right matchup. This is important to know because this is a key factor in streaming successfully. For instance, no matter who Wade LeBlanc’s opponent is, you never want to take a chance on him. There is no strikeout potential, no ratio potential, and in his last three starts he has a 10.13 ERA. 

For this piece I wanted to keep it under 10% in terms of rostered percentage. This way it ensures most if not all of the names below are available in your league. 

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Hey everyone! Before we get started on pitch mix changes I figured I would introduce myself since this is my first article on Fangraphs. When I learned I would be writing for Fangraphs it felt like I had just won the lotto. As people would say these days, my mind was blown. For those who don’t know me, you can mainly see my work on my own blog and I am extremely active on twitter. I have an obsession with pitching, am a Mets fan (unfortunately), and my favorite pitcher in today’s game is, of course, Jacob deGrom. The baseball community is the best in the world and I couldn’t be more excited for this new adventure!

In this shortened season we sadly won’t be able to rely on a ton of metrics when analyzing pitchers. The sample size just won’t be big enough, but one factor that could be telling is pitch mix. We have seen numerous pitchers suddenly lean on different pitches, creating a significant difference in their performance (looking at you Patrick Corbin). Below are four pitchers who appear to be changing things up for the 2020 season. The question is, what does this mean for their future?

Danny Duffy

Danny Duffy came into 2020 with the mindset of keeping a pitch mix change he made towards the end of last season. In July and September (hurt in August) of 2019, Duffy started to get comfortable with his changeup. Most notably in September, he threw his changeup over 20% of the time, the first time he did that all season. In that month he threw for 30.1 innings while producing an impressive 2.37 ERA and 3.61 FIP.

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It seems as though each year, fantasy baseball analysts, “professional” and amateur alike, hone in on a new — or, if not new, then relatively untouched — metric or data set for their endlessly eager consumption. In 2015, FanGraphs introduced batted ball data to its leaderboards. In 2016, Statcast data was unveiled, although it arguably didn’t become popular until 2017, and before the 2017 season FanGraphs changed the game with its splits leaderboard. Baseball Prospectus has introduced myriad new metrics, too — DRA in 2015, DRC+ last year, etc. — and we began to lean into pitch-specific performance analysis last year. (The latter-most topic is relevant to what follows here.)

I recently joined Christopher Welsh and Scott Bogman of In This League on their podcast. I thought one of the evening’s questions was particularly topical and prescient (and I paraphrase): What will 2019’s it metric be? The question was asked with pitch values, something I’ve seen garner increasing attention on Twitter, in mind.

You can acquaint yourself with pitch values directly from the man who created them:

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Episode 107

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Eno Sarris discuss batters and pitchers with zeroes still in their stat line, some injuries, and a look at Jesse Chavez and Homer Bailey.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music Approximately 53 min of joyous analysis.

Episode 103

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Eno Sarris discuss the fifth starter jobs around the league and which guys you should target and avoid.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music Approximately 65 min of joyous analysis.

Episode 101

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Eno Sarris focus on pitching, discussing new pitches as well as pitchers with balanced approaches and elite pitches.

We’re trying to work out a recording time around travel schedules on Thursday, so this may be the only podcast this week.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music Approximately 42 min of joyous analysis.