The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 424 – Rays Corner… All Episode!
2/5/17
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
Follow us on Twitter
Leading Off: Question of the Day (1:50)
- How psyched are you that Logan Morrison is back??
- Is this the best video ever??
Strategy Section: Team-by-Team Breakdowns
- Tampa Bay Rays
- Will Rasmus and Dickerson be platooned as RosterResource suggests? (6:30)
- Does Nick Franklin have playing time to make an impact? (9:00)
- Is this the Blake Snell breakout season? (11:45)
- Is Alex Colome a top 10 closer? (24:16)
- Favorite Targets: Colby Rasmus, Alex Cobb (31:17)
- Stayaways: Brad Miller (36:30)
- Matt Andriese discussion (40:34)
- Off-the-Radar: Mallex Smith
- Wilson Ramos discussion (54:45)
- Impact Prospects? Jose De Leon, Brent Honeywell, Jake Bauers, etc… (43:20)
Strategy Section: Pitcher Battles
You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.
In case you didn't read all that, here's the short version. Membership includes:
✓Ad-free browsing
✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
✓Historical & platoon projections
✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps
✓One-click data exports
✓Customizable player-page dashboards
✓Dark & Classic site modes
✓Weekly Members-only mailbag
✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review
✓Optional homepage photo removal
✓Gift articles to non-members
- Chris Archer v. Carlos Carrasco & Stephen Strasburg (1:00:10)
—
As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed. Please rate & review the show in iTunes letting us know what you think!
Approximately 71 minutes of joyous analysis.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Paul- not directly related to the podcast, but any timeline on when 2017 player profiles will be uploaded onto player pages?
Great Rays video. Along those same lines, I always like to direct people to “Keith’s Brewers Rap” a fan music video for the 2011 brewer team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Prp_R9tmc
Another good episode! Regarding Mauricio Cabrera, you guys might be selling him short.
Now, the skills. This is the fun part.
The research shows, as you’ve discussed on your show, that it’s harder to hit HR’s on pitches above 94 mph. There’s some kind of drop off. Mauricio gave up 0 HR’s in 38.1 IP (and 33.2 more at AA earlier in the season, he skipped AAA). So you talk about how his 102 mph fastball isn’t that great, but he has a quality GB rate (was almost 50%) and the 0 HR’s (and only 4 2b’s) is probably not all luck. If major league hitters know the pitch is coming and still can’t drive it, then it’s a good pitch despite the low whiffs.
Aroldis Chapman had a lower swStr rate on his fastball in his rookie year than Cabrera did. and it was only 12.5% the next year. Chapman didn’t get it over 15% until his 3rd season.
Major difference is that Chapman’s slider was pretty great right away.
But Cabrera *does* have a slider and throws it about 16% of the time. It got a decent 13.1% swStr. Nowhere near Chapman, but still, no one hit an XBH hit off it. It’s a pretty good pitch, and he’s 23.
Though I agree with your bottom line that he’s very unlikely to be a closer this year, he should be on the radar. He’ll get holds and a few saves. Johnson could be traded and Vizcaino could be too, Coppy has been aggressive at trading guys outside the core.
Damn
Good stuff! I don’t totally hate Mo – http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/five-relievers-who-could-close-in-2017/ – I was just a little underwhelmed when I finally laid eyes on him a few times last year. You’ve made great points here.
>Is this the best video ever??
The show is always great, but that song and video are garbage.