Archive for Shelby Miller

I’m going to say something that hasn’t been said enough this off-season.

There is a lot of starting pitcher depth this year.

That may be a bit of a surprise given the constant emphasis on getting aces early or leaving the first seven or eight rounds with three starters, but with every mock and real draft I’ve done, I’ve found myself with quality arms left on my queue in the final rounds.

You’re targeting most of these names already, maybe even all of them. At the very least, these ten arms should serve as a reminder that you do not need to chase elite arms early as there are plenty fewer impact bats left in the late rounds than quality arms.

I’ll be using Fantasy Pros’ aggregate ADP to gather the names past pick #400 and despite their price of “free” in standard leagues, these pitchers deserve heavy consideration in the final rounds.

Merrill Kelly (Arizona Diamondbacks, ADP #409) – This cheap price for Kelly is expecting his floor, while not embracing the possibility of his ceiling – a sub 3.70 ERA with a decent WHIP and a 20%+ strikeout rate. The Diamondbacks are going to let Kelly fly for as many innings as they can, especially when he has a lock on a rotation spot. It’s hard to find an arm with strikeout upside and a strong volume of frames without toxic ratios and I wouldn’t be surprised if the first person who owns Kelly retains him through the full year.

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Each week I look at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 30% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy pros) with a few extra sub 10% discount options at the end, pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.

Let’s highlight my ten favorite starting pitcher options that may be available on your waiver wires, roughly ordered from top to bottom:

Under 30% Owned

Zack Wheeler (New York Mets) – Wheeler is finally getting proper time in the Mets rotation and he’s developing into a dependable arm, featuring a 2.73 ERA with a 27% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate across his last four starts. A 13.2% over whiff rate and a double-digit mark in each of these starts is a product of both increased velocity (97.1mph average four-seamer!) and an increased reliance on his slider. Get on board before your entire league catches on.

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Each week through the season, I’ll be looking at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 15% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy pros) and pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.

It’s been another week of Fantasy Baseball, and the waiver wire has shifted. Let’s highlight my ten favorites, roughly ordered from top to bottom:

Jaime Barria (Los Angeles Angels) – Barria is owned right at the 15% threshold and I’m making an exception this week as I need to push the idea of owning Barria to those even in twelve teamers. Across his last four starts, Barria has returned a 1.93 ERA with a 26.4% K rate, 3.3% BB rate, and 0.94 WHIP, all while facing the Astros, Yankees, Rangers, and Rockies in Coors. His impetus for success is a slider that has seen its usage grow from 26% to 36% in those four outings while returning a 20% whiff rate and 45% marks in both zone and O-swing. That’s the makings of a money pitch and with an elite tool in his arsenal that he’s throwing over 35% of the time, Barria should able to provide value in plenty of leagues.

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Shelby Miller Considering Tommy John After Diagnosis Of Flexor Strain, Torn UCL https://t.co/0ZNwyt5CMO pic.twitter.com/9iCdR2ZnBc

— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) April 27, 2017

Poor Shelby Miller. After last year’s disastrous debut with the Diamondbacks, Miller was looking forward to getting back to his previous Cardinals and Braves form. The season started well enough – his spring training was filled with reports about his increased velocity, and how well he was pitching.

Shelby Miller is throwing ? in Spring Training this year. Saw him vs. SEA and he was 95-97. Crazy. pic.twitter.com/gVAPZNN7QM

— Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) March 25, 2017

In my initial calculations of STUFF for the 2017 season – Miller was up from 0.56 in 2017, to 0.84 in 2017. That is a huge increase that shows great promise for turning a career around. But now – the dreaded third opinion from Dr. James Andrews, and the discovery of a strained flexor muscle, and a torn UCL, which could lead to Tommy John Surgery, or at minimum, a year off with rehabilitation.

What risk factors were present that could have lead to Shelby Miller’s UCL tear? Let’s look at the research.

Table 1. Known risk factors for UCL reconstruction from research.

The interesting thing about this analysis – is that the 2016 iteration of Shelby Miller has no risk factors that particularly jump out at you. He’s right in the moderate area for everything, save for pitches per game – but that value is quite comparable to every other starting pitcher, if not lower. At the same time, this is a case of the sum of all parts – a compounding situation where it’s death by 1000 paper cuts.

Miller broke into the league in 2012, and his Stuff has remained relatively stable since. The biggest change in his Stuff has been this season – and, I’ve tried to take into account the change in data by re-normalizing Stuff to only 2017 data, and subtracting 0.4 mph from the fastball velocity.

Figure 2. Shelby Miller fastball velocity and Stuff, 2012 to 2017.

2017 is clearly a change here – the velocity is up significantly, and that’s not really something that happens when someone gets older. There are a lot of variables in play that we can’t quantify – how quickly did Miller gain this velocity in the off season? What did his training regime look like?

Interestingly, it has been noted that Miller suffered a flexor muscle strain, as well as the UCL tear. Given the urgency that Miller and the Diamondbacks had in accelerating Miller’s return to good-ness, there is a chance signs of discomfort were ignored along the way. When a flexor-pronator muscle is strained, the tension that the muscle originally supported during pitching is now transferred to the ligament. If you’d like to know more about this – there’s a very interesting discussion on flexor-pronator muscle tears/strains on the “fixing pitchers” podcast – http://fixingpitchers.com/podcast/baseball-pitchers-ice-games/.

This is a very important note for young pitchers – do not ignore your body’s warning signs. If something doesn’t feel right, tell your coach and get it looked at by a doctor.

There are no red flags in this analysis for Shelby Miller – but had the strain been noticed a bit sooner, there is a chance he wouldn’t have torn his UCL.

References

Whiteside, D., Martini, D. N., Lepley, A. S., Zernicke, R. F., & Goulet, G. C. (2016). Predictors of Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction in Major League Baseball Pitchers. The American journal of sports medicine, 0363546516643812.

Playing Ottoneu typically requires an adjustment. Many fantasy leagues have some form of keeper/dynasty component, but having a player’s “keepability” be tied directly to his salary can add a wrinkle many owners are not familiar with. Sometimes this can be daunting. How do you value players when salaries come into play? Where is the line between talent and salary and how much weight do both of these factors hold? What do you do with a highly paid player who is under performing? How do I account for the salary cap? What if I have no financial flexibility? How am I supposed to make free-agent pickups or gain cap space?

These are several questions that spawn out of the specific salary structure within Ottoneu. While I certainly can’t answer all these questions at once, I want to take some time to focus on the last one. Specifically, how Ottoneu is different than other fantasy formats for free-agent pickups and how you can use this format to help gain an advantage on your league-mates?

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Jeff Sullivan pointed out that Stroman discovered Roy Halladay’s Sinker and presented his arsenal change (Fourseam and Cutter swapped for more Sinkers):

Stroman upped his Sinker usage and was comfortable using the pitch despite the count situation. From Sullivan’s post on 2/13:

Stroman was comfortable using the sinker when behind in the count against all hitters. Same when he was ahead in the count. Same when he was even. Same on the first pitch. Same with two strikes. He’s got other pitches, a lot of other pitches, and he still has his four-seamer, too, when he wants to elevate some heat, but the sinker has given Stroman something he didn’t have: a groundball pitch he can locate and use to get quick outs.

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Earlier this week, I suggested some names to buy and sell at third base and today I’ll turn my attention to the bump. There are actually a lot of pitchers who occupy my “sell” list, but a couple names jump out as prime candidates that you might want to jettison before they turn into pumpkins.

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Last week I took a look at the best fantasy hitters over the past calendar year by running the results of that split through Zach Sanders’ z-score method for calculating fantasy value. The motivation for that post was to make an argument that when voting for All-Stars the second half of the previous season should be considered. I understand that the “Past 1 Calendar Years” split on the leaderboards includes stats that were pre-All-Star break 2013, but…close enough. And I also realize fantasy value doesn’t necessarily equal All-Star, but, again, close enough. I quickly want to highlight the starting pitchers I’d vote into the All-Star game (ten per league) based on their performance over the last 365 in the image below. After that I want to discuss a few guys whose ownership percentage is out of whack with their performance in the past calendar year. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 88

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris to preview the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs.

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 66 min of joyous analysis.

FSTA draft results mentioned several times in the show

They say adversity creates opportunity, whoever “they” are. But there’s likely no group that appreciates that quite as much as fantasy baseball mavens. With Chris Carpenter apparently headed for the disabled list, potentially aeternum, there’s an obvious trickle down effect on the St. Louis Cardinals rotation. The immediate beneficiaries are likely to be some combination of Joe Kelly, Trevor Rosenthal, and/or Shelby Miller.

What we know is the Cardinals still have Adam Wainwright, Jake Westbrook, and Jaime Garcia. What we don’t know is how healthy Garcia is after having his ailing shoulder derail his ability to pitch in the playoffs this past season. But uncertainty about Garcia only further cements Lance Lynn in the rotation. Lynn, as you’ll recall, was bounced from rotation to bullpen after he started to get shelled in August. It wasn’t entirely clear if they wanted to use Lynn as a potent setup man for Jason Motte or if they planned for him to start games. With Carpenter down, they probably get their answer whether they wanted it or not.

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