Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
Francisco Rodriguez doctoring the ball
Sure, Derek Zumsteg is flogging his book about cheating in baseball, and I don’t have the video to see the more convincing evidence, but is it coincidence that in his first appearance after this brouhaha began K-Rod allowed a game-losing dinger? [thanks baseballmusings.com]Â
The Official Site of Major League Baseball
The new column is posted, in which I pick Clay Hensley over Cole Hamels mere hours before Hamels makes an impressive season debut. Oh well, it’s a long year and I’m in it for the duration. You’ll also find some talk about Jorge Cantu, BJ Upton and the advantages of getting off to a quick start.
Kevin Millar describes pitch by pitch striking out against Curt Schilling on Schilling’s blog after some playful mockery between the two. Lovely!
One of the great disappointments of Tout Wars is that we’ve never figured out how to make the live experience work for those with the good sense not to visit a hotel somewhere in the New York area on a day they could be seeing the Allman Brothers in their annual visit to the Beacon Theater.
But the first few rounds of this year’s AL draft as recorded here tell a story that Matt Berry better back up with results. He bought Santana, he bought Halladay, both for relative cheap (because the so-called experts are wimpy when it comes to pitching), but then he interestingly continued to buy star powered players.
He turned a lesson in how experts don’t value pitching enough into a lesson in how you should buy chalk players, and let everyone else scramble. It may have worked out, but we’ll need the resurrection of the Tout Wars software to let us know who Matt is actually jamming with.
What we know now for sure is that (barring catostrophic injury) he won the league by grabbing Santana and Carpenter at those prices. Unless he paid too much for his other guys.
(Tout Wars NL will be taking place Sunday morning, March 25, at 9am, at the Marriott whatever at 6th Ave and 42nd Street. See you there.)
I’ve only spent 15 minutes on the site, where I learned that my immediate “friend” Derrek Lee lists all the members of the Chicago Cubs as his “friend”s (where am I?), but I get the distinct feeling that someone has gotten the virtual stock market right. How it works out will depend on how free they let the shorts roam, and how real money plays a part (I’m not clear about this).
The “analysis” offered that I’ve seen mimics broader cable TV analysis, but it seems at Protrade everyone gets their own blog, so in time reliable reporters and analysts might prevail (if there’s a reason for them to persist, it doesn’t look like there is a meritocratic payment system for analysts yet).
But most importantly the scoring system is clear, so if they can convert their virtual financial system into a real one there is a gambling game here that might warrant some real attention. Stay tuned.
Same Pitchers Different Stats 2006
This is an excel file about 100K.
We’ve run this chart in the Guide in the past, when we’ve had an open page, and I had a request from a reader that I post it. Here’s what the caption said in the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2005:
ERA and Ratio do a decent job of describing what a pitcher did, but not necessarily everything about how well they did. While putting together the magazine we consistently look at the BB/9, K/9, and HR/9 metrics. These tell us how well a pitcher kept runners off base, got outs without the ball being put into play, and kept the ball in the park. These pitchers are ranked by their relative effectiveness in these three measures last year, from best to worst.
The other two columns show the opponents batting average against a pitcher on balls in play (HR and strikeouts are removed), and for all at bats. We’re less sure what to do with these, though a high AVG-BIP is thought to indicate that the pitcher had some bad luck. Have fun.
Looking at the results, it’s clear that comparisons between starters and relievers don’t have much validity. And with two 100 IP starters near the top of the chart, workload probably plays a part there, too.
Still, if Ben Sheets can stay healthy he clearly has his effectiveness back. He’s not going to be cheap but he could be a bargain.
It was a great, dominant outing. But it was only two innings, ahead of putative Sox closer Pineiro’s meltdown. Francona says he’d like Papelbon to be his closer, but the doctors say he’ll do better as a starter. If that’s the case, why didn’t he start today?
I know I’m spitting into the wind, but this isn’t over yet.
The real work here is in the original post, but David Pinto’s take on Buck Showalter seems exactly right to me. He’s able to get a team close, but it is his departure that is the catalyst for actual success.
Not that it looks like the Rangers are that close. But in these days of parity it won’t take much to move them atop the AL West.
Useful survey of which Americans and Koreans are playing (and managing and coaching) in NPB this year. Thanks Tim.
I stopped my BP subscription a year or so ago, not because I didn’t enjoy the writing of many of the BP guys, and didn’t value their observations, but because it was all getting a little familiar. For free, I’d attend every day, but having to pay made it a little easy to stay away.
I’ve been surprised how few times I’ve felt like I was missing something since. I still read the newsletter and the beginnings of the stories, and I’m still awfully impressed by a lot of the work that goes on at BP, but I end up feeling like I’m already on their page, I don’t need to be hectored about this and that.
But the lede to this story is choice. Or as my friend Fleming Meeks has said, cherce. Jim Baker discovers an orphaned pool of BP stats about teams and their rate of being shut out. What I learned is that the 1981 Blue Jays were shut out 20 percent of the time.
These days that seems pretty much impossible, but things in baseball change. 1981 was the dawn of Rotisserie baseball and baseball’s age of statistics. I have no other point than at this moment I wish I could read the rest of Jim’s story.