Carlos Rodon and Kevin Gausman Are Even Better in 2022 - So Much For Regression
With six starts under their belts in the 2022 season, Kevin Gausman of the Toronto Blue Jays and Carlos Rodon of the San Francisco Giants have looked like the two best pitchers in baseball and thrust themselves onto the shortlist for the Cy Young Award in their respective leagues. Despite having excellent 2021 seasons, both... Read More
Hitter Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - xwOBA Leaders for Week 6
We're far enough into the season that we can dive into expected stats with some sense of reliability. Let's begin with everyone's favorite - xwOBA! Its given name is expected weighted on-base average and what it represents is the quality of each at-bat by a hitter. Statcast uses a combination of exit velocity, launch angle,... Read More
Pitcher Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - BABIP For Week 6
Welcome back to RotoBaller’s Statcast pitcher Studs and Duds article series! Each week, I will select one advanced metric, choose two pitchers with strong values and two with poor values, and analyze what those values may mean for future performance. Over the last two weeks, I took a look at different components of pitchers' batted-ball... Read More
Starting Pitcher Standouts: MLB's Best Pitch Arsenals
After watching Shane McClanahan just absolutely dominate with all four of his pitches on Wednesday night, I got to thinking. I wanted to take a look at the full-pitch arsenals that the leagues' starting pitchers are throwing and try to identify the players that are doing the most to dominate hitters with multiple offerings. It's... Read More
Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 6
Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. What we're doing here is taking good, close look at the hitting data each week to see which hitters are standing out the most. The idea is to find hitters that have made changes and/or really improved this season to find start-worthy... Read More
Pitchers With New Pitches - Should We Care For Fantasy Baseball? Part Three
Welcome to another episode in this FSWA-award-winning series Pitchers with New Pitches. We take the simple premise that not every new pitch should be greeted with praise. The new pitch, like the shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to be a complement to what a pitcher already has.... Read More
Hitter Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Swing & Take Leaders for Week 5
Admittedly, it's as exciting to measure 'swing and take' metrics as it would be to look at something like Barrels. One of them often results in a long fly ball that leaves the ballpark and puts runs on the scoreboard. The other can be a player staring at the umpire after watching a pitch hit... Read More
Pitcher Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Launch Angle For Week 5
Welcome back to RotoBaller’s Statcast pitcher Studs and Duds article series! Each week, I will select one advanced metric, choose two pitchers with strong values and two with poor values, and analyze what those values may mean for future performance. Last week I took a look at exit velocity, and this week I will analyze... Read More
Baseball's Oldest Batters - Busts or Buy Low Candidates? Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz, Justin Turner, Yuli Gurriel
The first month-plus of the season has not been particularly kind to a few of baseball’s oldest hitters. That includes players who put together monster years in 2021 despite their already-advanced age. This article takes a look at a group of four old bats, to recalibrate expectations on their rest-of-season output. When evaluating the biggest... Read More
Starting Pitchers Breaking Out for Fantasy Baseball - The New Strikeout Kings
We are nearly one month into the season and most starting pitchers have three or four starts under their belt. Some big names have dominated out of the gates, while others have faltered. And some lesser-known pitchers have made a splash by piling up some big strikeout totals. I do daily strikeout projections for DFS... Read More
Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 5
Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. What we're doing here is taking good, close look at the hitting data each week to see which hitters are standing out the most. The idea is to find hitters that have made changes and/or really improved this season to find start-worthy... Read More
Changes to the Baseball in 2022 (And What To Do About It In Fantasy)
Offensive production has been down quite a bit early on in the season, and there has been plenty of grumbling about the state of the baseball, including from some Major League players. At the time of this writing, the league triple-slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG) sits at .232/.306/.370 and we have seen a significant reduction in homers... Read More
Finding Breakout Hitters for Fantasy Baseball: Chase Rate Early-Season Metrics
In an earlier article on Blast Rate, I mentioned that this was the time of year that some hitting metrics start to stabilize. While many of us want to focus on exit velocity and hard-hit rate because they lead to more exciting outcomes, I think focusing on plate discipline metrics can be just as important.... Read More
Pitcher Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Exit Velocity Changes For Week 4
Welcome back to RotoBaller’s Statcast pitcher Studs and Duds article series! Each week, I will select one advanced metric, choose two pitchers with strong values and two with poor values, and analyze what those values may mean for future performance. Statcast has a cool year-to-year change feature for a host of metrics, and this week... Read More
Hitter Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Average Exit Velocity for Week 4
We can finally start extrapolating something from one of the easiest Statcast metrics to decipher - exit velocity. This stat stabilizes after approximately 70 plate appearances or 45 batted-ball events. Last week, we looked at early leaders in maximum exit velocity because it doesn't take long to take something away from that metric. Keep in... Read More
Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 4
Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. What we're doing here is taking good, close look at the hitting data each week to see which hitters are standing out the most. The idea is to find hitters that have made changes and/or really improved this season to find start-worthy... Read More
Early Pitching Outliers: Swinging-Strike Rate vs. Strikeout Rate
It is very early in the season, as the league leaders have made just four starts. Because of this, we have a lot of strangeness in the data that has been generated, especially with pitching, which is an inherently random exercise. One thing that can be a bit random over a small sample size is... Read More
Hitter Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Hard-Hit Rate for Week 3
Admittedly, it's still early for many sabermetrics to be considered descriptive but fantasy managers can't wait until midseason to start digging for hidden gems. You could always say that taking anything away from a two-week sample size is an overreaction. The purpose here is not to proclaim these players as the hard-hit kings or absolute... Read More
Pitcher Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Swinging-Strike Rate For Week 3
Welcome back to RotoBaller’s Statcast pitcher Studs and Duds article series! Each week, I will select one advanced metric, choose two pitchers with strong values and two with poor values, and analyze what those values may mean for future performance. We still have small sample sizes because the season is early, but a metric that... Read More
Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 3
Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. And just like that, we are on our third version of the weekly breakout hitter watch analysis. For those who are not familiar, I'll be writing this article weekly and it will be published on Thursday mornings. So far, we have identified... Read More
Pitchers With New Pitches - Should We Care For Fantasy Baseball? Part Two
The new pitch, like the shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to be a complement to what a pitcher already has. Much like a toy that's the exact same as a toy we already have makes us forget the older toy. So instead of just celebrating that some... Read More
How Sustainable is High Fastball Usage? Hunter Greene, Justin Steele Analysis
Hunter Greene and Justin Steele have looked very sharp to start the 2022 season. They are both trendy waiver wire additions in fantasy leagues right now, but I noticed something very interesting about these two guys. They have both been extremely reliant on their four-seam fastball in their first two outings, and in Greene's case,... Read More
Hitter Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - Max Exit Velocity for Week 2
We couldn't wait for the delayed 2022 season to get underway and now we eagerly await the Statcast data to accumulate so we can dissect it. It's obviously too early to make anything out of a majority of the data but we can evaluate something that requires one good swing of the bat - maximum... Read More
Pitcher Advanced Metrics Studs and Duds - xwOBA For Week 2
Welcome to the first edition of RotoBaller’s Statcast pitcher Studs and Duds article series for the 2022 season! I am happy to be back at the helm for this series once again. Statcast provides a ton of insightful advanced metrics that can be used to better understand pitchers' performance and predict future fantasy performance. Each... Read More
Pitchers With New Pitches - Should We Care For Fantasy Baseball? Part One
I'm excited to start year number two of this column. Last year, I began the column in spring training with the simple premise that pitchers throwing new pitches is cool but that not all new pitches should be treated equally. Some can be missing pieces to an arsenal, while others can just be an unnecessary... Read More
Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 2
We've got a week of baseball data in the books, and we're back for breakout hitter watch – week two! The data samples are still quite small, of course, so we have to continue to rely on some non-numerical data here. As you see, I'll still be relying a bit more on the current and... Read More
FaBIO Analysis: Spring Training Starting Pitcher Fundamentals
My Rotoballer debut article more fully explains the FaBIO methodology. Every plate appearance is sorted into one of 12 event type bins (BB+HBP, K, IFFB, Pull OFFB, Center OFFB, Oppo OFFB, Pull LD, Center LD, Oppo LD, Pull GB, Center GB, Oppo GB) and the pitcher is charged with league's average runs value for that... Read More
Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 1
It is finally Opening Day and I could not be happier to be here writing on RotoBaller to share it with all of you fine readers. We all made it through a particularly rough offseason and now we're ready to get back into the swing of things. I'm very excited about this series, which I... Read More
Identifying Risk via ATC Projections – Top 100 Players
In my previous article, “Identifying Risk via the ATC Projections – Round 1,” I provided a primer on the ATC Projections volatility metrics. To further your understanding, and for a visual explanation of how these volatility metrics work, please check out the seven-minute video entitled, “Using ATC Projections to Minimize Fantasy Baseball Draft Risk.” This... Read More