The Daily Grind: Aumont, Bettis, Hechavarria
Agenda
- 98 With Movement
- Daily DFS – Aumont
- GB / FB Splits
- Tomorrow’s Targets – Bettis, Lohse, Norris, Hechavarria
- Factor Grid
1. 98 With Movement
For those of you who don’t regularly participate in the social experiment known as Twitter, you’re not missing much. If you were to carefully curate a list of the 400 best personalities in baseball, you’ll still mostly read play-by-play from people who assume you’re watching their game. However, the occasional gem shines through. Behold.
98 with movement pic.twitter.com/zBjBSLlas9
— Forbes to Federal (@ForbesToFederal) June 19, 2015
Woof. The initially trajectory looks like it’s heading towards the catcher’s cup. Then the ball decides of it’s own accord to fly free and clear. That’s perhaps the filthiest fastball I’ve seen this season.
2. Daily DFS – Aumont
The Phillies will start Phillippe Aumont. He’s the final piece remaining from when the club traded Cliff Lee to Seattle. Aumont has long possessed major league quality stuff, but his command has never taken a step forward. He prefers to start although it doesn’t really show up in his numbers. He had a 2.35 ERA in 14 Triple-A appearances with 8.03 K/9, 5.68 BB/9, and a 4.04 FIP. I half expect a patient Cardinals offense to knock him out of the game before the end of the fourth inning. If it comes to that, the Phillies bullpen is one of the weakest in the league.
Stack Targets: Marco Estrada, Mike Wright, Nate Karns, Dan Haren, Mike Leake, Matt Wisler, Colby Lewis, Yohan Pino, Phil Hughes, Taylor Jungmann, Jorge de la Rosa, Rubby de la Rosa, Roenis Elias
3. GB / FB Splits
The following hitters are recommended based on the works of Shane Tourtellotte and Dan Fansworth. They show ground ball hitters perform better against fly ball pitchers and vice versa. Using three-year values for hitter OPS and pitcher GB%, here are today’s top recommendations. Use this link for Jeff’s full list.
We have 35 names for ya today. My favorites are below.
Adam LaRoche, Geovany Soto, Jose Abreu, Adam Eaton, and J.B. Shuck vs Colby Lewis
Brayan Pena, Joey Votto, and Jay Bruce vs Dan Haren
Carlos Santana vs Nate Karns
Carlos Gomez vs Jorge de la Rosa
Adam Jones and Manny Machado vs Marco Estrada
Dexter Fowler vs Phil Hughes
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Bettis, Lohse, Norris, Hechavarria
Pitchers to Start: I’m not sure I’ve ever considered streaming somebody at Coors Field. Chad Bettis will face the hapless Brewers. Bettis has 7.89 K/9, 2.70 BB/9, and a 3.74 ERA on the season. He handled the Phillies with aplomb in two starts. The Brewers offense is comparably bad. It’s a risky pick – it’s Coors. Your alternatives are just as dangerous to your ratios. I’d be leery of using any waiver wire guy if I was in a roto league.
I wouldn’t start Kevin Gausman against the Blue Jays, but do note that he’s returning from the disabled list.
Also consider: Carlos Rodon, Jesse Hahn
Pitchers to Exploit: Kyle Lohse is another reason I like Bettis. The Brewers starter is suffering from an elevated HR/FB ratio and a league average BABIP (he’s usually well below average). His 4.16 xFIP is right in line with his career norms. If I ran a real team, I’d happily buy for pennies on the dollar. However, I doubt he’ll turn things around at Coors Field.
Also consider: Mark Buehrle, Rick Porcello, Tom Koehler, Nate Eovaldi, Tim Hudson, Robbie Ross
Hitters (power): Derek Norris is hitting reasonably well against right-handed pitchers, but he rises to the occasion against lefties. The Diamondbacks have tabbed Robbie Ray for tomorrow. Norris is hitting .341/.396/.477 against southpaws this season (.500 BABIP).
Also consider: Preston Tucker, David Murphy, Gerardo Parra, Chris Coghlan, Kyle Blanks, Delmon Young, Steve Pearce, Nolan Reimold
Hitters (speed): Adeiny Hechavarria isn’t much of a runner, but he has been promoted to the two-hole. A .347 BABIP has helped him to a .295/.327/.405 line. At a thin position, sometimes hitting ahead of Giancarlo Stanton is the difference between a useful middle infielder and waiver fodder.
Also consider: Anthony Gose, Adam Eaton
5. The Factor Grid
The table below indicates which stadiums have the best conditions for hitters today. The color coding is a classic stoplight where green equals go for hitters. The weather conditions are from SI Weather’s home run app. A 10/10 means great atmospheric conditions for home runs. A 1/10 means lousy atmospheric conditions.
Lots of rain throughout the country, but it’s mostly avoiding the stadiums. Conditions changed rapidly yesterday and could today too.
This post is not brought to you by any DFS platform. The current author is quite pleased to present a DFS ad free environment.
You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
How about Williams Perez tomorrow vs Shmets? Elevated WHIP, but nice ERA. Mets are a weak lineup.
It’s iffy but doable. I thought about it but decided he was in the middle ground.
Thoughts on Yankees bats vs. Verlander?
Count me befuddled as to what we can expect from Verlander.
Tyler Lyons @PHI or Maker of Shoes @ Oak?
And to try and make this into a learning experience, do you tend to choose a worse pitcher with a better matchup(Lyons) or a better pitcher with a worse matchup?
I prefer the better pitcher. I would go with the cobbler.
Looking ahead to next week, which 2-starter do you prefer– Locke (vs CIN; vs ATL) or Milone (vs CWS; @MIL)? Would either be worth holding onto after next week.
Milone and no
EE+Buxton for Harper?
If it’s a keeper league, maybe. Depending on the costs. Or if you’re worried Harper will be out awhile. But EE is just as injured and Buxton probably won’t do much this season. Even Trout was ordinary in his first stint.
It’s a keeper. I’d be trading a 1st round Edwin and a 24th round Buxton for a 1st round Bryce
Also, don’t need Buxton to contribute much this season. Got Marte, Reddick betts Rusney and C Dickerson also in OF
Oh, assuming you’re still playing for something this season, I’d definitely do it. How quickly would Buxton’s cost escalate? That’s the only mitigating factor in play.
Ok, so you like Harper side better? And Buxton would be a last rounder forever, but again, can only keep 6. Right now I’d be keeping any combo of Edwin, correa, rendon, betts, Marte, Dickerson, Buxton and Jose F
Tell you what, if you can afford to be patient for a day, I’ll make this the topic of section 1 tomorrow. You can crowdsource it a bit. My instinct is to take the sure-fire first rounder, but you might be sacrificing the most valuable player in your league.
Awesome, thanks man. I’ll be in the comments tomorrow.
Hi Brad one question about the GB/FB matchups. Just glancing at the first one on the the full list I noticed Laroche is a FB hitter and he’s facing Colby Lewis. Lewis is an extreme FB pitcher. I thought the theory was supposed to match up FB hitters with GB pitchers and vice versa? Please let me know if I’m missing something here? Thanks for the great articles.
The query actually just pulls player splits regardless of whether or not they go in the right direction. A.J. Pollock is a ground ball hitter with a higher gbOPS. There are a few similar examples.
The theory is that GB hitters are better against FB pitchers and vice versa. However, there are some guys with reverse splits.
OK thanks I think I get it. So Laroche is a GB hitter because of his batted ball % (higher% GB% than FB% this year), even though he has a higher OPS on fly balls? Is that what you mean by reverse split? Like a guy hits more grounders, but has a higher OPS on fly balls than grounders? Thanks!
Read your post again and I think I answered my last question. I think you just meant that the theory isn’t always true- that some FB hitters perform better against FB pitchers and vice versa. Excel sheet looks like it matches up high FB OPS’ with FB pitchers and vice versa.
Right, the theory is less perfect than handedness splits. And it’s even less clear when we’re seeing signal or noise. However, we are using a 3 year sample for those players who have it.
by the way, Carlos Gomez probably won’t start because of his injuries.