Archive for Yasiel Puig

Last week, Paul Sporer had some highly encouraging things to say about Hunter Dozier in his piece on early batter breakouts. Paul noted that Dozier has radically changed his approach in the early going, and with another week’s worth of data to consider, at least one of his changes remains staggering to ponder. Last season, Dozier was more aggressive than the typical major league hitter, swinging at 50.1 percent of the pitches he saw. Just over a month into this season, he has become extremely selective, lowering his Swing% to less than three-fourths (37.0 percent) of what it was in 2018.

The improved production that we have seen from Dozier — the higher walk rate, lower strikeout rate, higher Avg and OBP and possibly also the increased power as well — can all be traced back in part to this one change in approach. It’s still early enough in the season that it is more than reasonable to ask if his improvement is for real. If we answer that question by looking at the peripherals that underlie Dozier’s improved fantasy stats, we’d have to say it does look real.
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As I so often do, I ran some numbers through the z-score method yesterday. I ran each player’s 2015 numbers through as well as the Steamer rest-of-season projections and compared the results. Given the cumulative nature of fantasy production, I looked at each player’s production, actual and projected, on a per plate appearance basis to get an idea about who the projection system thinks is going to bounce back in the second half. Read the rest of this entry »

We, as fantasy writers, tend to make a lot of favorable recommendations throughout the year. We talk about which players we like, which ones we anticipate having a breakout season, which ones you should think about picking up during the year and which ones you should watch for in-season call-ups. And while all of that “draft this guy” and “pick up that guy” prove to be valuable pieces of information, rarely do we see the equally valuable “I wouldn’t draft this guy if you paid me.” Well, since I’ve already been accused of writing some mean-spirited things about players in the past, I’ve decided to turn that negativity into an entire post and tell you three players who I refuse to draft this season and why you shouldn’t touch them either. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 89

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris to preview the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Skype was being a bit wonky today so apologies in advance for any audio issues during the podcast.

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 61 min of joyous analysis.

FSTA draft results mentioned several times in the show

Yesterday Blake Murphy detailed how some teams are using a lot more players in their lineups late in the season so that we can identify good pitching matchups. More youngsters in the lineups means better stats for pitchers. But young hurlers don’t see as much late season experience because of innings limit concerns. This explains why a large majority of the probable starters today are guys who have been in the majors for most of the season. In my estimation, all but three or four of today’s probables have been around for most of the year.

Today’s probables also happen to be a pretty above average bunch. Below is a chart showing how today’s starters have fared this year compared to league average.

Because there are so many good starters going today, you’re probably going to need to load up on more expensive hitters facing the few bad starters today. To save some money for bats, we’ll pick some of the cheaper starters with at least decent matchups. After the jump there will be a chart showing which of today’s starters you should be stacking up hitters against and how those starters fare against hitters of each handedness, and then we’ll pick some names.

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The Yasiel Puig hype is out of control. After a hot spring, he landed on everyone’s fantasy radar and now here we are, four games into his major league career and already we are shipping his cleats off to Cooperstown and engraving the plaque. No one is screaming “small sample size” and no one is referring back to the throngs of ballplayers who made a big splash to open their careers yet did nothing to follow it up. Instead, we’re being inundated with comparisons to already well-established superstars, insane statistical projections and lists of Cuban-born players who have found success in Major League Baseball. In fact, the amount of Cuban history that I have seen, heard and read about in the past week is overwhelming. So much so that I have actually decided to try out a brand new strategy for my fantasy team. I have decided to become a fantasy racist. Read the rest of this entry »

1. 70% of opening day closers won’t still have their jobs by the end of the year…

You don’t need me to tell you that closers are easily replaced, and so saying that we’ll see changes in the ninth inning isn’t really that bold. So if we’re going to make this exciting, let’s say that more than a full two-thirds of closers won’t last the season, either through injury or ineffectiveness. That may sound like a high number, but then again, remember who teams were counting on to finish games for them last April — guys like Alfredo Aceves, Javy Guerra, Jordan Walden, Brett Myers, Heath Bell, & Matt Capps. Even top-tier closers like Mariano Rivera & Brian Wilson weren’t immune, though of course for other reasons. By my count, only 10 closers made it wire-to-wire, and a few more (Carlos Marmol, Huston Street, etc) had to deal with changes at some point in the season. This really drives the point home that you can almost always find saves somewhere. The bell tolls for thee, Sergio Romo & Jim Johnson.
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