Unlike me, a fantasy baseball columnist has to write stuff every week. Like day traders, they have to believe in the hot stock. Otherwise, they run out of things to write about.

One way to milk out a column is to sort out some hot players and make believe they’re for real. In Matthew Berry’s recent effort, he’ll convince you that Asdrubel Cabrera is just as good as Dustin Pedroia. Or something like that.

Berry may be right. When he talks up a few dozen players in a single column, he’s bound to mention at least one whose numbers will hold true for more than a fortnight. But just remember that he wrote his column before Manny Parra‘s most recent outing.

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Christopher Harris indulges in an exercise of the obvious. Writing about the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff he writes:

Now, I’m not here to tell you that any of those guys will be major fantasy forces for the rest of 2009. But if you jumped early, for instance, onto the [Scott] Richmond bandwagon, how happy are you right now?

Well, duh. With this kind of modeling, Harris could be a global warming expert.

But rather than mock the evolving rankings of ESPN’s experts — they write to meet demand, after all — I thought I’d zoom out a level above rank and talk about strategy.

There are two kinds of starting pitchers — those you can count on and all the rest.

Those you can count on are Johan Santana, Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, and a few others. I’d mention Brandon Webb except that he’s injured, which means you couldn’t. These are the pitchers who almost always post a quality start. A pitcher can’t hit an ERA under 3.5 without great consistency.

Then there are the rest. Even if you avoid the truly horrible (think the Texas Rangers) or the horribly erratic (think Oliver Perez), the returns are still unpredictable. Most good but not great pitchers will have numerous bad starts. And you don’t know when those bad starts will happen.

For example, Javier Vasquez has pitched well this season, posting a 3.89 ERA in seven starts through May 9. But he also gave up 5 runs and 6 runs in successive starts on April 29 and May 4.

Given that reality, I look for pitchers that couple a respectable ERA with some additional tangible fantasy advantage. Strikeouts is the most obvious. Vasquez, for example, racked up 16 Ks in 14.2 IP in the two games mentioned above. The three other factors I look for are innings, team run production, and the backing of a good bullpen. All of these are indicators of whether or not your average pitcher can stay in games and get wins.

Finally, there’s one great intangible — youth. You never know when a young pitcher will take a step up in capability. That’s what you have to hope for with Richmond, even if he is already 29.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Strategy

In the game of making predictions, fantasy gurus are increasingly calling upon peripheral statistics to support their claims.

Peripheral statistics generally come from analysis of how a ball is put in play (or not) in relation to the outcome of the play. Perhaps the best known is batting average on balls in play, or BABIP, which measures “the number of batted balls that safely fall in for a hit (not including home runs).” BABIP averages are compiled for ground balls, line drives, and any number of other splits.

BABIP is most often invoked to estimate luck. A batter hitting lots of line drives and not getting hits is supposedly due for a positive correction. Likewise a pitcher getting ground balls and not getting outs.

Thus, Tristan Crowcoft recently used two BABIP averages to tell owners not to give up on Kevin Slowey:

Kevin Slowey’s BABIP numbers very much support his case as a big-time buy-low candidate. Both his .357 BABIP on ground balls and .833 BABIP on line drives were noticeably higher than the league averages…

Going many times better, A. J. Mass processes so many peripheral stats in his recent Hit Parade column that he can’t even reveal what they are:

Next, we take the velocity [read the column] and tweak it according to a complex formula based on each hitter’s skill set, determined by a combination of stats that measure patience at the plate, ability to put the ball in play, power potential and speed.

If he told you the formula he’d have to kill you.

How much do I care about BABIP? Not much.

First, these analyses often reveal the obvious. I’m keeping Kevin Slowey because he pitched well last year and because he has sterling minor league numbers, not because he has good peripherals.

Second, these analyses rely upon the premise that the player will continue to produce (or give up) the same types of hits. Your slumping star’s line-drive BABIP may return to the league average over time, but that means nothing if your slumping star hits fewer line drives. The correction you expect won’t have any effect. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis, Resources, Strategy

Bat Masterson, renowned lawman and gunfighter of the old West, eventually became a renowned lawman and newspaper columnist in New York City. Among his quotes is this:

“Every dog, we are told, has his day, unless there are more dogs than days.”

In Justin Masterson’s 2009 season there have been more dogs than days this year.

Masterson is the classic case of a young pitcher who has great stuff (especially a mid-90s fastball) who can’t seem to master a whole game. He was advanced so quickly through the minor leagues that it is hard to guess what he can do as a starter. His overall minor league ERA is 3.79 and his 2.89 ERA in 9.1 innings at AAA Pawtucket in 2008 is hardly any reassurance that his subsequent 3.16 ERA in Boston that season was for real.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Fantasy Baseball, Player Analysis

The official scorer for Saturday’s Indians-Tigers game changed Asdrubal Cabrera’s double to a two-base error:

In the fifth inning Saturday, Cabrera sent a drive to left field with the bases loaded, two out and Zach Miner pitching. Left fielder Ryan Raburn broke in on the play, slipped to one knee, righted himself and gave chase.

He put a glove on the ball at the warning track, but dropped it. Official scorer Ron Kleinfelter originally called it a double and credited Cabrera with three RBI. Official scorers have 24 hours to change a call and just before gametime Sunday it was announced that Kleinfelter had changed the call to an error.

This happens, but it’s rare for a scorer to take that long to make up his mind.

In the Mynci, a 24-24 tie between the Maniacs and Corn on Sunday night became a 24-21 point for the Corn Monday morning.

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, Other teams

Once in a while, when the Red Sox are off, I’ll tune to the Yankees (on WPRV, AM 790) . I like the Yankees well enough and I like to follow the AL East.

The problem is listening to John Sterling’s play-by-play. Sterling may be the worst radio announcer of all time (we’re only talking 100 years). I hope he’s the worst. I hate to think there’s someone else out there that combines a more limited repertoire with the same excess of ego.

Admittedly I’m biased by experience. I grew up in the deciduous swamp of upstate New York listening to Yankee broadcasts by Frank Messer, Bill White, and Phil Rizzuto. From left to right that trio produced a blend of great playcalling and great storytelling. Later at night, through the crackle and hum of the analog band, I could pick up Radio Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell on WJR calling Tigers games.

Now I mostly listen to Red Sox games, broadcast by the solid duo of Joe Castiglione and Dave O’Brien. Castiglione has the traditional baseball delivery, gravelly and conversational, while O’Brien is a true professional — accurate, descriptive, and unobtrusive. It’s not surprising that O’Brien also calls games for ESPN.

Sterling does not match up well. It is not his insipid trademark calls, nor his proudly banal understanding of the game that make him awful. It is his lack of cadence and flow.

Thuhhhh pitch.

Sterling must say that 100 times a game. It’s like listening to a man clear his throat for three hours.

I have never noticed Castiglione and O’Brien coughing up a verbal tic like that, so I paid attention the last few games to their technique. What they do is simple. Instead of fixating on “the pitch,” they describe the context of the pitch. They might mention the count, the pitcher’s delivery, the actions of baserunners. Sometimes they don’t describe “the pitch” until after the pitch. Here’s a mix of their calls, the first five from O’Brien, the second five from Castiglione:

Jacoby edging off first base and Garza delivers…
The 2-1 to Ortiz…
The 2-2 on the way to Ortiz…
Bailey takes a strike on the inside corner…
The righty sidearms one for ball one…

The 2-1 pitch…
Count full, runner goes, the pitch is taken low…
Masterson is ready, slings it in there…
The tall right hander is ready, here it is…
At the belt, here it comes, high ball three…

Yes, there’s repetition. But it’s the kind of reptition within variation that makes for good music. Cadence and flow.

Comments (2)  |  Filed under: Baseball, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees

I missed this story on Pitch f/x a year ago:

Since 2006, Major League Baseball Advanced Media LP, baseball’s swashbuckling digital arm, has quietly spent approximately $4 million installing sensor cameras in major-league stadiums that can track and record the trajectory of every pitch. The system, called Pitch f/x, made its public debut in the 2006 postseason. This season it became operational in all 30 major-league parks.

Now The Daily Fix provides a link-rich synopsis of the history of Pitch f/x (above) and the work of people like Dave Allen at Baseball Analysts in mining the data. Allen’s work is collected here, in reverse chronological order.

(From a design perspective, note the dramatic difference in readability between the rainbow-wig Run Value heat maps and the gray-scale Home Run Rate heat maps.)

Comments (0)  |  Filed under: Baseball