Archive for strikeouts

Even though this year’s Winter Meetings were slow prior to Thursday’s three-team deal involving the Mariners, Indians and Rays, the Rangers’ signing of Lance Lynn has yet to receive much attention. Lynn’s $30 million deal over three years pales in comparison on an annual basis to the contracts recently inked by Nathan Eovaldi, J.A. Happ and Charlie Morton. Given Lynn’s 4.77 ERA compiled with the Twins and Yankees in 2018, it’s no surprise that Lynn is drawing less interest than his free agent counterparts in the real and fantasy worlds.
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The emergence of Gerrit Cole as a top-10 starting pitcher and top-three pitcher for strikeouts was one of the more notable developments in fantasy in 2018. As unexpected as Cole’s emergence may have been, he did have a history of being an above-average strikeout pitcher, particularly in his second and third season with the Pirates. Just as noteworthy was a cohort of starters who catapulted themselves well above the major league norm for strikeout rate after having been average or below-average strikeout pitchers prior to this past season.
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Rob Silver, the 2016 National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) Main Event winner and high-stakes fantasy baseball extraordinaire, messaged me on Twitter a few days ago to ask a question: Which source of pitching statistics are most accurate? I’m paraphrasing. Also, I could paraphrase the question any number of ways: Which source should we be using? Which most reliably correlates with pitcher performance?

It was a question for which I had no answer. Admittedly, I use a variety of sources, none of which align with one another — something I have noticed before but about which I can do nothing but shrug and accept it as a quirk of being a sabermetrician who bears the struggle of dealing with publicly available data.

The sources cryptically mentioned above include the following:

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Chris Carter is off to a bad start. This is an unambiguously true fact. Jeff Sullivan, among other Twitterers (Tweeters?), have succinctly illuminated this unambiguously true fact:

selection of players with ISO of .000 Curtis Granderson Brandon Phillips Desmond Jennings Logan Morrison Chris Carter

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) April 21, 2015

Carter has supplemented the zero extra-base hits with four singles, 21 strikeouts and nary a run batted in to speak of through 51 plate appearances. (FYI, that’s a 41.2-percent strikeout rate.) His atrociously bad start is the talk of the Twitter town, and it has Astros Manager A.J. Hinch dropping him in the batting order. As of last night, Carter’s ownership had dropped to 67.7 and 73 percent in ESPN and Yahoo! leagues, respectively, as owners have jumped ship.
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Few Low-A teams have ever had quite the array of young position-player talent as the 2013 Hickory Crawdads–six of their nine everyday players ranked in Baseball America’s Rangers top 25 prospects coming into the season, and a seventh, Ryan Rua, came out of nowhere to lead the minors in home runs for much of the season…until he was promoted to Double-A and passed by fellow Crawdad Joey Gallo.

While Gallo’s race to the minor league home run championship in his first full season was probably the biggest story of the many intriguing Hickory developments, the heralded slugger wasn’t the highest-drafted member of Hickory’s vaunted group of teenagers, being picked ten selections behind teammate Lewis Brinson in the 2012 draft (39th to 29th). In the fight for attention on such a stacked roster, Brinson’s 2013 campaign got somewhat overshadowed by Gallo’s incredible power output, Jorge Alfaro’s ascension up catching prospect leaderboards, Nick Williams‘ big numbers, C.J. Edwards becoming a force on the mound (and subsequently the key to the Matt Garza deal), Rua’s out-of-nowhere emergence, and other stories. He still won plenty of praise for his tools, hit 21 homers, and posted a solid triple-slash line, but also raised eyebrows by striking out 191 times, one short of Harold Riggins‘ minor league lead.

Having seen Brinson in 17 games this past season, I’m going to use this post to dissect his current skillset and 2013 performance, hopefully lending some clarity to a rather extreme set of numbers.

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Chris Carter (ESPN: 21.7 percent owned; Yahoo!: 23 percent owned)

In the minor leagues, he never had a full season OPS under .800, nor has he hit fewer than 10 home runs in a season, yet Chris Carter has also never played even half a season in the majors. His power is not really up for discussion; he has hit at every level, including the majors, but his ability to contribute beyond 25-30 home runs a season is what has kept him from getting a serious shot in the majors until this year.

The move to Houston in the offseason was good for Carter’s value in a couple ways. First, unlike Oakland, who has designs on competing for the AL West title again this year, the Astros have a greater incentive to see what he can do given a full year of playing time than they have to sit him if he hits an extended cold spell. Second, given that the vast majority of Carter’s value comes from his HR and RBI potential, heading from one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in the majors to a far more hitter-friendly one should be a boon for his value. Read the rest of this entry »

Strikeouts. Max Scherzer has never wanted for strikeouts. 2011 was his worst season as a professional in that regard, and he still struck out about 21 percent of the hitters who faced him. He doesn’t get enough groundballs and he doesn’t throw a lot of complete games, but at the end of the day, Scherzer sends a staggeringly high number of opposing hitters shuffling back to their dugout in shame.

Scherzer’s downsides – an ERA over 4.00 and a WHIP north of 1.30 for his career – were never enough to prevent owners from deriving value from Scherzer, but they absolutely pushed him down draft boards and suppressed his trade value. After his move to Detroit, Scherzer added double-digit wins to his profile, which helped his value in theory, but since most owners know how fickle wins can be, it didn’t do much for his long-term value or perception. Read the rest of this entry »

A great band name?  Definitely.  Especially if you’ve got a series of gigs in downtown Cincinnati.  But we’re going to stick to fantasy baseball here and talk about the fact that Drew Stubbs’ league leading 205 strikeouts (yes, that’s right, he struck out more than Mark Reynolds) may just help you land what could be one of 2012’s most valuable fantasy assets.  Sure, his 15 home runs and 40 stolen bases will keep him on most people’s radar, but the .243 average, those strikeouts, and the overall decline from 2010’s breakout season should help keep the price down and allow you to grab him at a more bargain cost.

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