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Selling Pitcher Wins – Why and How

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At this point in the 2013 season, the Detroit Tigers are 68-45.  The Los Angeles Dodgers are 64-50.  Max Scherzer has a 2.84 ERA and a 0.90 WHIP.  Clayton Kershaw has a 1.91 ERA and a 0.88 WHIP.  So these two pitchers are having phenomenal years and play on teams with similar won-loss records.  We could expect similar won-loss records for the pitchers, right?  You’re smart enough to know that’s not the case.

Scherzer is 16-1 and Kershaw is only 10-7.  In fact, 19 pitchers have more wins than Kershaw.  Heck, Joe Saunders has 10 wins, a 4.58 ERA, and a 1.50 WHIP.  All the while playing for the 53-61 Seattle Mariners.

Need another one?  In 2012, Cliff Lee started 30 games and went 6-9 for the 81-81 Phillies.  At this point in the 2013 season the Phillies are 52-62 and Lee already is 10-5.  In 2012 he had a 3.16 ERA.  To this point in 2013 his ERA is 3.11.

You Can’t Predict Wins

Of course, I cherry-picked these examples.  But they illustrate a very important point.  You can’t predict pitcher wins.  Wins are by far, the most unpredictable of any common fantasy baseball category.

Exploit This Knowledge

Most semi-experienced fantasy baseball players know wins are unpredictable.   But what other choice does a manager chasing a title with a weak score in the wins category have?  They’re faced with the choice of chasing wins or having blind faith that their fortunes will reverse.  This is an opportunity for you.

Look at your roster and see if you have any marketable players in the wins category.  Maybe you can offer a Tillman, Masterson, Lynn, or Latos and upgrade in more steady and predictable categories of weakness.  Or maybe you have an elite Scherzer, Wainwright, Zimmermann, or Verlander and can land an elite player in return.

What To Ask In Return

I love this article by Michael Salfino of Yahoo! where he outlines the pitchers who have been “unluckiest” in the wins category this year.

One strategy you could employ would be to trade a pitcher that has been “lucky” in wins (like a Scherzer) for an “unlucky” player (like a Strasburg) and ask for something additional in return.  Something like an upgraded hitter, a stolen base specialist, or a closer.

Look at your team needs and try to convert the unpredictable wins into a steady and reliable producer in your own category of need.

Follow the principles outlined by Fred Zinkie in “Smart Elsewhere #6“.  Review the league standings and see which teams can benefit the most from a few more wins.  Reach out to them and let them know that your “lucky” wins pitcher is available and may be able to help them climb in the standings.

Conclusion

You can trade away wins even if you don’t have a strong hold on the category.  This is all about converting a very fickle and volatile statistic into one that you can more reasonably predict.  Don’t chase wins.  Let others do it.

Be smart.

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Fun With URLs and Player IDs

Fun With URLs and Player IDs

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Here’s a quick tip that can save you a lot of time if you maintain a spreadsheet of player projections, a list of player rankings, or if you’re simply looking for a more efficient way to do player research.

Hypothetical

URL4Let’s say you have a list of ten free agent pitchers you want to look up at BrooksBaseball.net.  You have a preference for pitchers that limit fly balls (thus limiting home runs), have a variety of pitches at their disposal, and you also want to see if they have an effective strikeout pitch(es).  You also want to view the mix of pitches used by the pitcher over time.  Finally, you wish to limit your research to the last two years of major league data (2012 and 2013 seasons, at the time of this article).

You visit BrooksBaseball.net and this example page below (for Clayton Kershaw) displays fly ball percentage, ground ball percentage, the number of pitches and times each has been thrown, and the whiff percentage for each pitch type over the last two years.

URL1

This example page shows you mix of pitches used, by month, over the last two years.

URL2

Between these two pages, we can do all the necessary research to make a decision about the free agent pitchers.

Looks At the URLs For Those Sites

The key to making this player research a more efficient process is to take advantage of the web address (URL) for these pages.  You can locate the web address for a web page by visiting the site and looking at the path shown at the top of your browser.

URL3

The image above is the URL for Kershaw’s “Tabular Data>Sabermetric Outcomes” page at BrooksBaseball.net.  The tail end of that URL has very important information embedded in it that we can use.

www.brooksbaseball.net/tabs.php?player=477132 &gFilt=&time=month&minmax=ci&var=so&s_type=2& endDate=08/04/2013&startDate=03/30/2012

The “player=477132” component of the URL specifies that this search/web page is for player ID 477132, or Clayton Kershaw.

The “endDate=08/04/2013&startDate=03/30/2012” component restricts the search to 2012 and 2013 season data (up to August 4, 2013, the time of writing).

Here’s the typed URL for the “Usage and Outcomes” page at BrooksBaseball.net:

www.brooksbaseball.net/outcome.php?player=477132 &gFilt=&time=month&startDate=03/30/2012&endDate=08/04/2013&s_type=2

The same concepts for player ID and dates apply.  We can now focus in on the bold red text which differentiates the actual type of page being visited.

A Quick Discussion On Player IDs

If you’re not familiar, there are a number of Player ID systems used to track the statistics of major league baseball players.  MLB.com, Fangraphs, and Baseball Reference all have their own player ID system.

Clayton Kershaw’s player IDs for these three systems are as follows:

ID System Player ID
MLB.com 477132
Fangraphs 2036
Baseball Reference kershcl01

Notice that the MLB.com ID for Kershaw is the same as the ID used at BrooksBaseball.net.  So we know that Brooks Baseball uses MLB.com Player IDs.

If you want to know more about Player IDs, look back to part two of the “Create Your Own Fantasy Baseball Rankings” series where we looked at Player IDs, what they are, and how to use them to your advantage when working with large sets of baseball data. (more…)

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Smart Elsewhere #6 – Trading Strategies from Fred Zinkie

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As Major League Baseball’s trade deadline passes, it’s a good reminder to review your league standings and diagnose any weaknesses in your team that need to be addressed before the stretch run.  Once you understand where you are and where you need to go, hit the trade market.  But how do you ensure you’re making the best deal?  How do you avoid getting frustrated by the often aggravating trading process?

Expert Interviews

The Baseball HQ Radio podcast, hosted by Patrick Davitt, is my favorite resource for learning new strategies and to be exposed to different ways of thinking about fantasy baseball.  In each episode, Davitt interviews at least one industry expert.  And we’re talking respected experts like Ron Shandler (creator of Baseball HQ, among many other accomplishments), Todd Zola (creator of Mastersball.com, fantasy author all over the web), Jeff Erickson (senior editor at Rotowire, expert league winner, writer of the year), and Larry Schecter (five time TOUT Wars winner).  There is a lot to be learned from guys like this.

During the interviews, Davitt inquires about the week’s hot players and current news, but most interestingly to me, he also ask about strategies and approaches the visiting experts use.  The topics can cover things as minor as FAAB usage techniques to as more significant topics like the July 5th trading discussion between Davitt and fantasy expert Fred Zinkie.


Talking Trades

Fred is a participant in the respected TOUT and LABR rotisserie mixed leagues and he is an extremely active trader (it sounds like he’s made more than 20 trades between the two leagues).  At the time of the interview, he was also leading both of these expert leagues.

Someone able to make that many trades, in expert leagues, and use the trades to push him into first place, must have some extremely interesting insight into how to make a trade.

How To Engineer a Trade

I’ll cherry pick some of Zinkie’s recommendations on how to engineer a deal and increase your likelihood of successfully making a trade.

  1. Don’t think about your team first.  Always start with the other team in mind.  
  2. Look over the rosters of the league and identify weaknesses for each particular team.
  3. When contacting the other team, use phrasing like, “It looks like you could use this…”.   Make it about them.  
  4. Verify that they’re interested in making some kind of trade.
  5. Then move forward and identify specific players to be involved in the trade.
  6. If you receive an insulting offer or insulting counter, take a step back and approach the deal realizing there may be a fundamental difference in how they value the players involved.  Maybe they’re really asking for another player or to address another weakness.

Other Thoughts

Fred also had an interesting thought about targeting inherently flawed players, whether it be in the draft or via trade.  Players that might be elite in one category but below average in many other, players with terrible batting averages, players proven to be injury prone, players coming off of P.E.D.  suspensions.  These flawed players will have something about them that certain managers won’t touch, no matter the price.  If you’re in a 15 team league, and because of flaws, at the draft, you’re then only competing against 10 teams instead of 15 for a player, you will end up paying less.  The law of supply and demand, if you will.

Highly Recommended

I highly recommend subscribing to or regularly checking in on the Baseball HQ Radio podcasts.  You can even go back in time and just listen to the expert commentary from old episodes.  The shows are scheduled in such a way that you can easily skip forward to Davitt’s discussion with that week’s expert and then bail on the episode once they move on to discussing only current topics.

Links To The Podcast

 

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Test Yourself - Are You a Stat Chaser?

Test Yourself – Are You a Stat Chaser?

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We’ve all been there.  A player gets hot and hits several home runs in a week or a rookie gets called up and goes 3-for-3 in his first game.  But one of the most dangerous things a fantasy owner can do is “chase” these stats.  When adding players, you don’t get credit for yesterday.

The challenge is to be ahead of the curve.  Pickup the players before the big opportunity comes.  Accumulate the good stats.  Sense when a turn has been made and bail.

The worst thing you can do is continually chase today’s “hot” player, hold him for the next two weeks when he does nothing, and then repeat the cycle.

This is extremely difficult to do.  It’s against human nature.  It makes us feel warm and fuzzy to pick up that hot player.  It’s stressful and fraught with uncertainty to pickup a struggling player that may soon come into opportunity.  How can we fight these urges and determine how well we do at this?

Look Back

Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easy way to look back at every player you’ve owned over the course of the year to see the statistics they earned for your team?  You could see if you’ve owned a bunch of players that performed well below their season averages.  Then you’re likely a “stat chaser”.

Or maybe the majority of players performed in line with the rest of their season statistics and you’re displaying the patience and foresight necessary to succeed at this game.  Regardless, a restrospective review of your players’ performances can indicate if a change is necessary or confirm you’re on the right track.

The Good News Is…

There is an easy way to do this (at least in Yahoo! and CBS leagues).  In Yahoo!, access the “Team Log” link on your page.  In CBS leagues, look up player stats and filter them to show “fantasy” stats, meaning those actually accumulated for your team.

How To View Accumulated Stats In Yahoo!

  1. On your “My Team” page, locate the “Team Log” link.
    retro1
  2. You’ll then be presented with the list of every player you’ve owned over the course of the season and the statistics they’ve accumulated for your team (Forgive the small images.  Click on pictures below to see a full-size image).
    retro2
  3. You want to see players with stat lines consistent to their season averages.  The rate statistics like batting average, ERA, and WHIP are easy to compare.  You’ll have to adjust counting stats for games played, at bats, or innings pitched.   If you stream pitchers or selectively start those on your team, you hope to see an ERA and WHIP below season averages (under the assumption that you’re cherry picking the good matchups).
    retro3
  4. You don’t want to see pitchers with stat lines well worse than season averages.  This indicates one of several things.  You’re either failing at selecting good matchups.  You overreacted to one or two bad starts, accumulating the bad stats and not having the patience to wait for the regression.  Or you’re unlucky.
    retro4
  5. Be on the lookout for stat lines like the one below.  They’re not necessarily problematic if done in the right fashion.  I will often speculate very early on a player that I think will soon come into a favorable situation or opportunity, hoping for a huge payoff.  For this approach, hopefully I’ll also see a handful of “hits” to offset “misses” like this one on Martin.
    retro5

 

How To View Accumulated Stats in CBS

The process to get these statistics on CBS’ website is a little more convoluted, but it’s not difficult to do. (more…)

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Case Study: How I Increased Team Batting Average 30 Points

Case Study: How I Increased Team Batting Average 30 Points

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It was this article by Tristan Cockroft in early May that jolted me.  I was sitting in the middle of the overall rotisserie standings in my mixed league, but was last in batting average by over 10 points.

One of the main takeaways from Cockroft’s article is that if you’re in trouble in the batting average category, you need to recognize this and make changes earlier in the season to address the problem than you do for the counting categories.  This is because batting average is a ratio statistic in which the denominator of the calculation (at bats) continues to steadily grow as the season goes along.  It’s much easier to nudge the batting average 5 points in May than it is in August or September.

I Needed To Act

On April 24th I sat in last place with a .236 team batting average.  Pretty pathetic for a fantasy squad in any format.  At the All-Star break I’ve managed to raise the average to .266 and climb into 6th in the category.  Here’s how I did it.

Date Move Verdict
April 24 Before even reading Cockroft’s article, I made a key move that has really paid off.  Added Matt Carpenter.  Dropped Kyle Seager.  Win
April 28 Still hadn’t read Cockroft’s article.  Took a shot on a potential batting average stud.  Added Nolan Arenado. Dropped Andrew Bailey (he had just gone on DL).  Draw
May 2 Read Cockroft’s article.  I realize it’s time to start making some bold moves to address the problem.
May 5 I’m also last in SB.  Added Dee Gordon.  Dropped Ike Davis. Nothing to lose here.  If Gordon could have hit .220 and stolen bases he would have improved my team average simply by not being Ike Davis.  Draw
May 10 Dropped Wil Middlebrooks.  Added Norichika Aoki.  Win
May 16 Nobody wanted to believe in the hot start.  Couldn’t believe he was still a free agent.  Dropped Josh Rutledge. Added Josh Donaldson.  Win
May 27 Decide it’s time to cut ties with Dee Gordon.  Dropped Gordon.  Added Leonys Martin.  Win
May 28 My dearth of hitting is at least offset by riches in the pitching categories.  Decide I’m willing to overpay for hitting because of significant leads in pitching categories. Trade away Prince Fielder, Adam Wainwright, Mariano Rivera, and Hyun-Jin Ryu.  Received Miguel Cabrera, Brett Gardner, and Matt Cain.  Win
June 9 Painful to look at this one in retrospect.  Decide to go for more proven batting average and SB possibilities.  Dropped Leonys Martin.  Added Shane Victorino.  Loss
June 15 Still need SB too.  Dropped Norichika Aoki.  Added Nate McClouth.  Win
June 21 Still need average and steals.  Cain had started to turn a corner.  Still had a lead in pitching categories.  Traded away BJ Upton, Aaron Hill, and Matt Cain.  Received Hanley Ramirez and Hunter Pence.  Win
July 5 Realize my DL slots are unoccupied.  In preparation for their pending returns, dropped speculation pick of Johnny Giovatella and added Adam Eaton and Derek Jeter.  TBD

Other Items Of Note

It wasn’t just who was added and dropped that made a difference.  We are also constantly making the decision of who to keep.  Who you choose to hang on to, especially during their times of struggle, is just as important.  Here’s a list of players that remained on my team from April 26th to July 14th and their batting averages at those end points:

BattingAvg

Evaluating The Approach

Looking back, you might argue that this was really all based on luck.  And to some extent luck has played a very important role.  But there was also a concerted effort to accumulate strong batting average plays and also a few “lottery tickets”, many of which have paid off.  And in the end, that’s what fantasy baseball is.  Collecting a bunch of assets that we hope will pay off.

I was acquiring Miguel Cabrera for a .330 average and wasn’t expecting .360.  I’m didn’t expect Josh Donaldson to continue to hit over .300, but he seemed like an upgrade over Josh Rutledge.  I continue to look for more “tickets” in Adam Eaton and Derek Jeter, both potential batting average stars (especially in relation to what else you can find at this point in the season).

I made mistakes along the way.  I was in on Leonys Martin very early.  Too early to catch the recent hot streak, and not patient enough to wait around for it to play out.

In hindsight many of these moves seem obvious.  I swapped a bunch of players hitting below .240 and replaced them with guys having the potential to hit for much better average.  But in the moment, it can be difficult to make moves like this.  You want to believe in the potential of guys like Ike Davis, Wil Middlebrooks, and Josh Rutledge.  The key is in realizing when the detriment of a .240 average is outweighing the possible 30 HR from a Davis or 15 SB from a Rutledge.  Recognize when the .280 hitter that will only hit 20 HR is the better fit for your team.

Takeaway

If you have a lot of ground to gain in a category, a concerted effort and a series of thoughtfully guided moves, all carefully aimed at improving that weakness, is your best move.  These don’t all have to happen in a short period of time, but you must constantly be monitoring your team and your place in each category.  Make steady and continuous effort to address weaknesses.

Take chances.  Overpay, using categories of relative strength, if you have to.  Be diligent.  Be relentless.  To borrow and tweak a quote from Mark Cuban’s foreword in “The Extra 2%”, “No one move is likely to make a difference.  But collectively, those moves make the difference between winning and losing”.

Mistakes will be made.  But because you’re making a series of calculated moves that all have a relatively high likelihood of panning out, you will make progress over all.  The wins will exceed the losses.

Thanks For Reading

I know it’s taboo to talk about ones own fantasy teams.  But I believe this exercise was a helpful illustration of what it takes to make significant progress in the standings.

Stay smart.


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Smart Elsewhere #5 – TINSTAAPP with Paul Sporer and Doug Thorburn

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In this edition of “Smart Elsewhere“, we take a look at the TINSTAAPP podcast started recently by Doug Thorburn and Paul Sporer.



About The Duo

Paul Sporer’s work can be found all over the web, but he’s most known for his Starting Pitchers Guide series, his work at Baseball Prospectus, and his own blog, PaulSporer.com.

Doug has a pitching mechanics background and worked for a time at the National Pitching Association and does great work on analyzing MLB pitchers’ mechanics (you can see a great sample here).

Paul and Doug teamed up this year on the 2013 Starting Pitchers Guide.  This guide, originally started by Sporer several years ago, is a lengthy and in-depth look at hundreds of starting pitchers, Paul’s expectations for the season, statistical analysis and more.  He added Doug’s work on pitching mechanics to the guide this year.

About The Podcast

These two team up about once each week and pump out a three or four hour podcast dedicated exclusively to pitching.  It’s a lot to take in, but it’s great content.  The information is not directly from a fantasy baseball perspective, although Paul will very frequently mix in his thoughts and how their discussions relate to fantasy baseball.

One mission of the podcast is to explain that poor pitching performances are not simply the result of bad BABIP luck, unlucky strand rates, or flukey home run rates.  Poor and inconsistent mechanics result in the inability to locate pitches and problems with command and control.  They seek to diagnose the specific reasons why pitchers are struggling and determine if and how things can be corrected.

The 10% Pitch

In an earlier TINSTAAPP episode the two made a passing reference to the phrase “a 10% pitch”.  It was a quick mention, but the implication was that if a pitcher can add a third pitch that can be thrown 10% of the time, that it can have a dramatic impact on the pitcher’s results.

This piqued my interested greatly because as you may recall, over a month ago we learned that Max Scherzer began using a curveball much more frequently than in the past.  He’s throwing it about 10% of the time in 2013.  With this in mind I then launched a quest to find other pitchers throwing new pitches in 2013.

Hearing Doug and Paul mention this “10% pitch”, I needed to know more.  So I e-mailed them to get a better explanation.

The Response

My e-mail was actually read and addressed on the June 25th episode (links below, my e-mail is referenced at about the 1 hour 45 minute mark if you want to hear the audio).  Sporer and Thorburn offer two explanations as to why adding an effective pitch that can be thrown at least 10% of the time is a big deal:

  • Paul points out that besides the fastball, pitchers need to have at least one more effective pitch for facing opposite-handed batters (typically a slider thrown by a right-handed pitcher is effective against right-handed batters, but not as effective to left-handed batters).  So in effect, a pitcher needs a second pitch that is effective to same-handed batters and a third pitch that is effective against opposite-handed batters.  When a pitcher adds a new “10% pitch”, it’s often indicative that they are adding a pitch intended to face these opposite handed-hitters that they currently don’t have an effective second pitch for.  If you consider that this “10% pitch” will be focused on batters on one side of the plate, it’s more than likely a 20% or more pitch to batters on that side (and closer to 0% to the same-handed batters).
  • Doug answered from a straight probability point of view and his response made great sense to me.  He gives the simplistic example of dividing the strike zone into four even quadrants (from the hitter’s point of view:  up and in, down and in, up and away, low and away).  A pitcher with one pitch can allocate pitch location to each of the four quadrants, giving a 25% likelihood that this one pitch will be thrown in a given quadrant.  If you mix in a second pitch, that increases the available options to eight (pitch #1 in each of the four locations, pitch #2 in each of the four locations).  From a probability standpoint, this means a 12.5% likelihood that a hitter could correctly guess pitch type and location.  And if you now add a third pitch, you have 12 options.  This means only an 8.33% likelihood that a hitter could guess pitch type and location correctly.

Applying This

Not only might it be a good idea to revisit the process to find pitchers throwing new pitches to identify those with a new 10% pitch, it’s a great tool to keep in mind for pitchers to target prior to next season.  Sporer and Thorburn spend a great deal of time talking about how Shelby Miller really only has a fastball and a curveball and has not yet developed another 10% pitch.  But you can see from the usage data at BrooksBaseball.net that Miller is working on a changeup.  If he can add this as a legitimate pitch in his arsenal, he may be a top ace as early as next year.

Make smart choices. If you haven’t already done so, please follow me on Twitter if you find the work on this site worthwhile. Thanks for reading.


 Links To The Podcast

 

 

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Quick Tip: Keep Your DL Spots Occupied

Quick Tip: Keep Your DL Spots Occupied

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Awhile back I wrote about “The Extra 2%” by Jonah Keri, in which he outlines many little strategies implemented by the Tampa Bay Rays that helped the team gain a competitive advantage and allowed them to turn around the struggling franchise.

The key in that sentence is the phrase “little strategies”.  “Big strategies” are obvious.  They work for a short period of time and soon enough everyone catches on.  But a conglomeration of “little strategies”, unlikely to be noticed or deemed worthwhile, can also make a tangible difference over time.

Enter a very simple tactic I always try to employ, but rarely see others use.  In a league with a specified number of DL spots, I always keep my DL spots filled.  This means actively monitoring free agents on the disabled list (ESPN has a handy feature that lets you see free agents on the DL).

DL

Who To Carry

There are almost always interesting names available.  This could be a struggling player off to an extremely slow start that went on the DL or a pitcher not expected to return from Tommy John surgery until August.  It doesn’t matter.

Try to target someone with potential.  Or someone who might be able to be traded later.  Or someone that fits a specific need on your team.  And if another more intriguing injured player comes along, grab that flavor of the month and stash him.

Why?

Why not?  If you’ve got a DL spot you might as well use it.  You can often hold a player in the DL spot even after they’ve returned from their injury, until you need to make another acquisition.  This can give you a week or so to monitor the player’s performance upon returning from the DL and weighing if they’re worth hanging onto.

It might not pan out.  You may simply end up cutting them in the end.  Or a legitimate player on your roster may end up needing to occupy the DL spot.  But this will give you the first chance to acquire the player.  You won’t be battling with others in the league, using waiver priority, or using FAAB to acquire someone.

It’s worth the risk.  There’s nothing to lose.

Go Check Your Waiver Wire

You might see names like Paul Konerko, Mike Morse, Lance Berkman, Brandon Morrow, Scott Baker, Colby Lewis, or Cory Luebke.  Stash them and see what happens.

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Reader Question: I Only Have Several Hours A Week To Devote, What Resources Should I Use?

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I recently received a great question from one of the SFBB readers.  So great, that I thought I’d answer in the form of a blog post:

We hit the waiver wire only once a week in our league.  You certainly have given me great tools, but if you have my three or four hours a week to devote, with what and who do you suggest I spend this time? For instance since reading your thoughts, I really believe Olney is a must read.

~ Eddie

This seemingly simple question became complicated for me to answer.  I wasn’t sure if Eddie just wanted to know who my most trusted resources are.  Or if he wanted an outline of a specific process and prioritization I would use to fill three hours a week.

So I’ll take a stab at both.  If you’re looking for my list of most trusted fantasy baseball resources, skip down to the bottom of this post.  If you’re curious about the specific process I would employ to get the most “bang for your buck” by making the most of those three hours each week, keep moving along.

A lot of the thoughts below are just common sense.  This is certainly not the most technical article I’ve ever written.  But hopefully breaking down the process will make us all think more critically about how we conduct player research and how we could more efficiently use our time.

Eye Opening

I didn’t have an immediate answer to Eddie’s question.  At first I laughed, thinking to myself that Eddie only has a few precious hours each week and here I sit posting 20 minute videos and 1,000 word blog posts, sucking up his valuable time.  My next realization was that I don’t even have my own formal system of prioritization in place.  I fly by the seat of my pants, but that’s certainly not “smart”.  Maybe it’s time to think about one.

To design an effective process one must understand the exact problem.  If I had to simplify the fantasy baseball problems I’m trying to address, I would summarize them as “Understanding My Team”, “Identifying Talent”, and “Learning”.

UnderStanding My Team

Before I can reap any benefit from an expert’s advice, I’ve got to have a strong understanding of my team and its place in the standings.  This means:

  1. Assessing my team’s weaknesses and strengths (by roto category)
  2. Assessing my team’s position in the standings and those teams around me
  3. Determining players that are expendable, that I can consider dropping

Items one and two above don’t need to be done every week.  They’re not really time consuming chores, but they must be done to give context to your player research.  I can quickly filter through expert recommendations of sneaky stolen base specialists if I already lead that category.

I probably give a thorough look over the league standings once every two weeks or so.  The standings don’t change rapidly at this point in the season, and it’s going to take time to chisel away at a 20 RBI deficit.  So every couple of weeks I’ll give a good look over my situation and identify areas for improvement.  Then that analysis sticks with me for the next several weeks and becomes the focus of any transactions I’ll make and the player research I’ll conduct.

Item three can’t be done in isolation.  I need to have potential free agents in mind in order to conclude on who is expendable, but I always like to have an idea of who my most expendable player is.  Whether it’s the least talented player on my roster or someone that is talented but simply doesn’t fit current needs, it always helps to know who’s droppable.

Identifying Talent / Player Research

The exercise above of understanding your situation and knowing the approximate value of the player I can drop will allow me to more efficiently conduct player research (and make better use of the few hours I have so I can get back to writing blog posts).   To illustrate, let’s assume I’m looking to gain standings points in home runs and RBI.  After looking over my roster I conclude the player I’m most likely to drop is a struggling corner infielder expected to finish the season with 20 HR and 75 RBI.

With this in mind I can do my own basic research or I begin looking for expert advice on possible pickups.  To do my own research, I start with simple sorting of the free agent list to look for the following:

  • Best overall players available (best preseason rank but struggling)
  • Best categorical players available, year-to-date (which corner infielders have the most HR and RBI)
  • Best categorical players available, last month (which corner infielders have the most HR and RBI in the last month, this might turn up players getting more playing time in the last month than earlier in the season)
  • Which corner infielders are getting at bats over the last two weeks and which of them offer HR and RBI
  • Which corner infielders are most frequently picked up (most major fantasy providers have ways of researching the hottest pickups)

With those results in mind, I can turn to the “experts”.  I can pull up the SFBB Fantasy Baseball Expert Twitter List and scroll through the many “Weekly Pickup” columns that will surely be available.  But now that I’m armed with a sense of my team, the league, and the free agents available, I’ll be able to quickly hone in on the advice and player names that make sense for my team.  If an article clearly misses the mark of addressing my needs or is not consistent with the free agents available in my league, I can move along to the next piece.

I don’t have any “appointment reading” where I visit specific websites daily or weekly.  I let Twitter accumulate the listings of fantasy baseball advice and I’ll scroll through the feed looking for articles that pique my interest.  Similarly, podcasts are a favorite medium of mine, because I too have limited time to devote to research.  But podcasts let me make productive use of time in the car or when I’m going for a jog.

Learning

One of my main goals is to learn along the way and gain exposure to new ideas, new strategies, and new lines of thinking.  The benefit here is twofold.  First, the more I learn, the more likely I am to win and be competitive.  Second, learning is a way for me to garner enjoyment from fake baseball even if I’m not winning.

Allocating Time Between the Categories

The allocation between these three categories will fluctuate throughout the season.  If you haven’t done a thorough review of your team and the league standings in a few weeks, you’ve got to allocate time to this exercise.  I haven’t analyzed this, but I think it’s a safe bet that player research early in the season is more important than later in the season because acquisitions have the opportunity to affect your team for longer and accumulate more stats.  It’s also the time when we know the least about playing time and batting orders.  As the season progresses, if you happen to find yourself out of the running, more time can be devoted to learning about new ideas and new strategies to employ, or for expanding the horizon of your player research (looking more long-term if you’re in keeper/dynasty leagues).

My Most Trusted Fantasy BaseBall Resources

These are my personal favorites.  This is not to suggest there aren’t loads of other great, or maybe even superior, analysts out there.  But based upon their analytic mindsets, their ability to work strategy into their discussions, their insight, and my personal experience with them (they nailed a couple of players that really helped me out), these are the individuals I have grown to trust the most.  I also find many of them funny and pleasant.  I’m not a big fan of brash over-confident fantasy guy.  And they’re out there.

I’m certain you won’t enjoy all of these folks.  Or they just won’t “click” with you.  But maybe there are one or two here that you will connect with.

Name Twitter ID Description
Todd Zola Zola regularly states he would rather teach you something than manage your team for you. That’s a rarity.  I love his stuff.
Jason Collette
Paul Sporer
I group these two together because while a lot of their fantasy work is done independent of each other, I mostly consume their advice via the Baseball Prospectus “Towers of Power Fantasy Hour” podcast these two do weekly.  It’s my favorite fantasy baseball podcast.
Tristan Cockroft A lot of the content on ESPN is targeted for the masses.  Advanced statistics, tables, and deep analysis scare the masses.  But Tristan puts a lot of deep analysis and number crunching into his work.
Buster Olney He’s not a fantasy writer.  But I really enjoy his work and it’s important to think about regular baseball at times and not just focus on fake baseball.  He is on top of everything that happens in the game.  And a lot of what happens has a fantasy impact but won’t necessarily be written about by the fantasy community.
Stephania Bell ESPN’s injury expert.  I don’t track her success rate, but it seems high. If she’s worried about a player, despite the positive news from the team or player, she’s usually right.  If I have an injured player or I’m considering acquiring one, I want to know her thoughts.
Corey Schwartz Corey is a cohost of the MLB.com Fantasy 411’s podcast.  He works a lot of great strategy talk into the podcast.
Eric Karabell Karabell has an analytical approach to the game and a very conservative approach to his play/advice (give me the solid aging veteran over the sexy rookie hype machine).  I like his work.
Mike Podhorzer Mike hosts Fangraphs’ podcast “The Sleeper and The Bust” and is very active elsewhere in the fantasy baseball world.  He uses a lot of advanced statistics and other metrics, like batted ball distance, to identify potential value.
Ron Shandler He’s one of the legends of the industry.  Perhaps the father of the analytical approach to this game.  He doesn’t do much player analysis, but when he speaks, it’s worth listening to.

Do Share

Who are your most trusted resources?  Do you have a formal strategy of how to manage your time?  I had never formally thought about it, but I guess there’s some semblance of thought in my practices.

Thanks.  Make smart choices.

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Case Study: Ron Shandler's Monthly League

Case Study: Ron Shandler’s Monthly League

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If you’re not familiar with the name Ron Shandler, he’s been a legendary figure in the game of fantasy baseball.  He was one of the first writers to begin applying sabermetric-type thinking to fantasy baseball, he created the LIMA plan, founded BaseballHQ.com, and started the Tout Wars expert league.

And He’s At It Again

Shandler is experimenting with a new monthly league format.  One of the big selling points of the format is the ability to draft (or select) a new team each month.  Giancarlo Stanton, Curtis Granderson, Troy Tulowitzki, or Matt Kemp ruining your season?  The monthly format alleviates those concerns.  Multiple “draft days” during the season?  Sign me up.  Find a happy medium between the luck of weekly head-to-head formats and the marathon of a 162-game rotisserie format?  Perfect.

The Rules

Because of the All-Star break the contest will span five weeks.  Rotisserie scoring.  Players are selected based on a salary cap system in which salaries are assigned based upon production during the season to this point.

  • 30-team league
  • 30-man rosters made of 23 active players and 7 reserves.
  • Traditional rotisserie rosters – 2 C, 1B, 3B, Corner IF, 2B, SS, Middle IF, 5 OF, UT, 9 pitchers
  • 7 reserves can be any position
  • Salary cap is $300 for all 30 players
  • Players can be owned by multiple teams
  • 4×4 rotisserie scoring with the offensive categories of HR, SB, OBP, Runs Produced (R+RBI-HR, subtracting out HR removes “double counting” of RBI and R that occur on a home run) and pitching categories of W, Sv+Hld, K, ERA
  • No free agent pickups
  • Intra-roster moves (reserve-to-active and active-to-reserve) can be made twice weekly

The Player List

If you’re interested, the list of player salaries can be viewed here.

Thinking Through The Strategy

Because of the 30-team format, punting any category seems out of the question.  Stress needs to be put on forming a balanced team.  Being unable to pick up free agents means your team has to be constructed to absorb injuries that may arise during the month.

The ability to make moves twice a week looks like an opportunity to implement a pitching strategy.  You can’t gain much of an advantage in games played offensively, but it seems like carrying additional pitchers would allow for squeezing out a few extra starts over the month.  Alternatively, if one were to carry extra relievers with Save and Hold opportunities, you could implement a strategy of going after the Sv+Hld category while still being competitive in K and ERA.

After reviewing the rules, my strategy was to focus on building an offense with positional flexibility (to minimize the hitters necessary on my roster) and then use a volume strategy for accumulating pitching stats (more pitchers = more K and more Wins or Sv+Hld).

Finding The Value

In looking through the list of players, a number of “values” jumped out.  Players that have been injured or severely underperformed to this point in the season have extremely low values (Aaron Hill, Hanley Ramirez, etc.).

Realizing this, I needed a way to ensure I could identify all of the valuable players.  Simply combing through the list of 500+ hitters and 500+ pitchers isn’t reasonable.  I would surely miss someone valuable.

Building a Projection Tool

I used many of the principles and tactics outlined in the “Create Your Own Rankings” series.   (more…)

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Use PITCH f/x Data To Identify Potential Breakout Pitchers (Part III)

Use PITCH f/x Data To Identify Potential Breakout Pitchers (Part III)

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If you’ve made it to Part III in the search to identify potential breakout pitchers, congratulations.  If you missed them, you can find Part I here and Part II here.

Enough Talk, Where Is This List Of Potential Breakout Pitchers?

I’ve uploaded an Excel file to Microsoft Sky Drive.  You can edit, view, or download the file for your own uses.  It’s mostly the same data from the YouTube video, but I added a lot of bells and whistles.  A red cell indicates a pitch that has declined in use from 2012 to 2013.  A green cell indicates a pitch with more usage.  The color intensity indicates the magnitude of the change.  The links to the right take you directly to that specific player’s page on BrooksBaseball.net.

PitchClass14
Click on the image to be taken to the editable file (you can edit or download for your own use).

Disclaimer #1

Keep in mind, I started this analysis on June 24th, 2013.  So if you’re finding this information after that time, you may want to double-check the usage graphs for any pitcher you’re researching.  But I’ve tried to document the approach to doing this research in the video and other parts of this series.  You can perform this research at any time (it would be great if we could get monthly usage reports from Fangraphs, then we could do this in the offseason to identify pitchers who started to change their mix late in the season).

Disclaimer #2

You saw from Part II of this series that these changes in mix have to be taken with a grain of salt.  And even after you’ve verified that there is indeed a change in pitch mix, you still need to go review the effectiveness of the pitches being used more frequently.  I wish I could go through each of these pitchers and break them down for you.  But it’s just not practical (my two-year old and four-year old don’t find PITCH f/x research very entertaining).  Hopefully I’ve equipped you with the tools you need to go analyze these pitchers more closely.

For pitchers on your team, check them out.  If you’re thinking of picking up a free agent, check him out.  If your pitching staff is terrible and you need to find the next big ace, check them all out.

Conclusion

Granted, it’s a small sample size.  But I’ve done a deep look in this fashion for Edward Mujica, Max Scherzer, and Alexi Ogando.  And all show promising results.  There will certainly be pitchers that change their mix and it has little effect on their end results.  But this seems like a promising exercise.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK Or If You Have Questions

I realize this is quite involved.  It’s certainly more difficult than reading the weekly pickups columns that are out there.  But anyone can read those and snag players just as easily as you can.  This process will put you ahead of the curve, give you players to monitor, and give you first crack at picking them up.

Thanks and be smart.

 

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