Archive for Yu Darvish

We all have our guys. Those players where you circle a round in your notes and make sure you’re adding them to your squad. You chuckle, smile, and type your love for them into the league chat.

Today, I’m going to highlight three pitchers that I’ve found myself owning in the heavy majority of my leagues.

Zack Wheeler (New York Mets, FP ADP #94)

I’ve written a fair amount about my love of Wheeler and I’m going to add on a bit here. Wheeler sports a hard fastball that he favors not only on both sides of the plate within the same at-bat, but also elevated for strikeouts often. It’s an elite pitch, returning a 20+ pVal last season, including a rugged opening 14 starts to the year.

Read the rest of this entry »

And it’s evident you should now pay attention to him. Jeff Sullivan wrote about Miles Mikolas here — Sullivan does a good job of summarizing Mikolas’ skill set and how he’ll succeed stateside. Which is helpful. But, for fantasy purposes, it doesn’t help us a whole lot in terms of exactly what we should expect. Not that that’s Sullivan’s fault. He doesn’t keep a cross-league projection system in his brain.

So when you see a Tweet like this — from NEIFI Analytics, which FanGraphs has featured previously — it’s hard to ignore:

Congrats, Cardinals. Per NEIFI, Mikolas handily outperforms Jake Arrieta over next three seasons. Massive bargain, fantastic bet to be the most underrated FA of 2017 class.

— NEIFI Analytics (@NEIFIco) December 5, 2017

Then again, there are Tweets like this from ZiPS’ own Dan Szymborski:

Read the rest of this entry »

Funny how we have not written much at FanGraphs about Robbie Ray this season. Eno Sarris lauded Ray’s velocity in brief in the spring; in July I expressed enthusiasm in Ray but didn’t give him the most glowing recommendation; all of which finally culminated with August Fagerstrom’s piece two-and-a-half weeks ago declaring Ray MLB’s newest strikeout madman. That actually seems like a lot of coverage, now that I mention it all, and it kind of is. But it’s all more recent and probably deserved to happen sooner, especially since Ray has posted a strikeout rate of 9.6 K/9 or better in every month this season.

Sarris noted that Ray is mostly a two-pitch guy, thereby dampening his value. Fagerstrom uncovered related weaknesses during Ray’s third trip through the order, likely correlating negatively with his lack of variety. Then again, Fagerstrom acknowledges how big a role sequencing plays in a pitcher’s success, and Ray has been woefully unlucky in this regard, forcing the split between his ERA and FIP (E-F) wide open.

Let’s play pretend. Let’s say Ray never develops a third pitch. Let’s say Ray rides the status quo through next season. Would that be so bad? Probably not, because Ray is doing his best Yu Darvish impression (sound familiar?):

Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries decimated the 2014 Texas Rangers. Injuries to Prince Fielder, Shin-Soo Choo and Jurickson Profar played a big part in Texas hitters amassing the fifth lowest WAR total in the league. Injuries to Yu Darvish, Derek Holland, Martin Perez and Matt Harrison led to the Rangers using 15 different starting pitchers. As a group, those starters amassed the ninth lowest WAR total of any rotation.

The good news is that Darvish and Holland, their two starters who were above league average according to xFIP when healthy last year, are expected to enter the season healthy. The bad news is that Perez and Harrison won’t be back until at least summer and potentially might not be back at all this year. That’s especially true for Harrison who has had three back surgeries in two years and considered retirement after his last surgery. But they’ve added a few new arms that will hopefully limit the number of Nick Tepesch and Nick Martinez starts that Rangers fans have to watch this year. Read the rest of this entry »

I spent an hour trying to find something relevant to say about the last two weeks of the season but was unsuccessful. Or at least there was no topic worth spending several hundred words on. If you’re looking for a two start streamer in what is likely the last week of your H2H playoffs, look at Blue Jays Marcus Stroman and Drew Hutchison. They’re the most talented pitchers owned in less than 50% of ESPN.com leagues in terms of K-BB% and OPS allowed on balls in play (aka limiting hard contact). Instead, let’s spend a few hundred words quickly running through a way too early top 10 SP list for next year. Read the rest of this entry »

In terms of evaluating starting pitchers for the fantasy baseball season, owners have patiently waited for Masahiro Tanaka to sign with a major-league team. Ballpark and competition matter when evaluating players, so now that Tanaka inked a seven-year, $155 million deal with the New York Yankees, we can proceed to the more important stage of determining probable performance and probable value.

Of course, the most obvious obstacle hindering most fantasy analysis regarding Tanaka is the switch from the Nippon Professional Baseball league to the major leagues. The right-hander twirled a sparkling 1.27 ERA in his final season in Japan, but it’s unclear how that will translate to the American League. Furthermore, how do we know where to draft him and what kind of peripheral statistics can we expect? He’s bound to get glossed up by the hype machine in the coming months, especially since he will be wearing pinstripes, but fantasy owners realize they must trim away the fat to get at some core truth.

I’m not going to pretend I can project Tanaka’s overall performance in 2014. No matter what, he’ll remain kind of an enigma heading into the season. However, I do feel we can glean some important relational information by comparing him to how owners treated Yu Darvish when he stormed the league a couple seasons ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yu Darvish may have compiled the least-heralded sub-3.00 ERA season in recent memory. Unfortunately, most of that stems from a lackluster 13-9 record, as his run support was putrid through certain stretches. To illustrate that point, in 17 of his starts, the Rangers scored three or fewer runs, which will certainly make it difficult to become a 20-game winner. Only logging 13 wins caused most of America to forget about Darvish’s stellar season, and it even got to the point that area sportswriters questioned his ability to hold leads late in games.

Regardless of the lack of attention lavished on the right-hander, fantasy owners certainly took notice. Zach Sanders had him ranked as the fourth-best starter in the league, while ESPN tabbed him as the five-best starter. In short, he anchored fantasy rotations and was a bona fide stud in every style of league.

Darvish took a significant step forward in 2013 due to BABIP and his strand rate. They combined to see his ERA drop from 3.90 in 2012 to 2.83 this past season, but the core components of his performance suggest his overall effectiveness was similar. His FIP remained almost identical, while he traded a few more home runs for fewer walks and more strikeouts.

His home run rate jumped from 0.66 HR/9 in 2012 to 1.12 HR/9 this past season. His HR/FB certainly changed for the worse, but it appears the larger discussion point should surround his decreased ground-ball rate. It decreased roughly five percent, and while that’s not a significant downturn, it seems at least interesting to note his home run rate increased in tandem with more fly balls.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever happened to the power of positive thinking? Obviously it’s a lost art form when you’re talking about a certain percentage of fantasy baseballers. If you recall a Kicking Rocks piece I did  during the spring called Draft Characters, you’ll remember the outline I provided of the different types of people you’ll likely face in the war room on Draft Day. The first “person” discussed was the Know-It-All — the guy loaded with information and always willing to endow you with his wisdom. Well, what I didn’t tell you is what happens to this person once the season begins. The best way to describe it is to equate him to a petulant child who just learned the word ‘no.’ No player you like, does he like. No trade that you make, would he make, and heaven forbid you play with him in a league where you vote on trades. The transformation takes place shortly after the start of the season and your league know-it-all sadly becomes The Naysayer. Read the rest of this entry »

This past week, the Texas Rangers landed Japanese ace Yu Darvish for a cool $112 million. The right-hander’s virtues are apparent: he has what’s considered an ideal pitcher’s build (6-foot-5, 215 pounds), he throws 95 mph, and he thoroughly dominated the competition for the Pacific League’s Nippon Ham Fighters in his early-to-mid-twenties. The projection systems either like the 25-year-old (a 3.62 ERA and a 169/46 K/BB ratio from Dan Szymborki’s ZiPS) or want to propose cyber marriage (a 2.40 ERA and a 223/44 K/BB from Brian Cartwright’s Oliver).

But Darvish’s signing has also been met with some skepticism. Some starting pitchers coming from Japan to the U.S. have found success (Colby Lewis after initially bombing in the majors, Hiroki Kuroda), but many others have disappointed.

Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kei Igawa, Kaz Ishii, Hideki Irabu and Hideo Nomo all got lots of cash and press, but Dice-K is the only pitcher among that group to post a career adjusted ERA better than the league average in Major League Baseball (and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would say he has lived up to Boston’s $103 million investment). Critics say that for whatever reason — cultural adjustments, four days’ rest between starts instead of six, pitching backwards in a more fastball-heavy league, exhaustive workloads at a young age that eventually take a toll — Japanese pitchers haven’t lived up to the hype. What makes Darvish any different?

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it.  Fantasy football is for suckers.  You can have the worst draft in the world and still end up in your championship game just by being active and playing the waiver wire properly.    It is not nearly as complex nor as difficult to find success at as it is in fantasy baseball.   Still, it serves as a great distraction through the long, cold winter when all you have to keep you warm is the news from the Hot Stove League and the anticipation of your fantasy baseball draft.

Read the rest of this entry »