Fantasy Baseball Advice

We at Razzball realize that exporting our views across the country has damaging consequences on the blogosphere.  To help make amends, we are reaching out to leading team blogs and featuring their locally blogged answers to pressing 2009 fantasy baseball questions regarding their team.  We feel this approach will be fresher, more sustainable, and require less energy consumption (for us anyway).  The 2009 Cubs Fantasy Baseball Preview comes courtesy of Hire Jim Essian.

1) Give me an over under on games played for Alfonso Soriano.  And are you taking the over or under?

In the regular season, 140.5, and I’ll take the over.  In the postseason, 3.5, and I’ll take the under.

2) Who’s the Cubs closer?  (If you say Marmol, please explain why the Cubs got Gregg.)

Carlos Marmol.  The Cubs only got Kevin Gregg so Sean Marshall wouldn’t be the ugliest pitcher on the staff any more.  This is, of course, assuming that Michael Wuertz is in AAA this year.

3) George Steinbrenner once called Dave Winfield, “Mr. May.”  Is it fair to call Derrek Lee, “Mr. April?”  Where has his power gone?

“Mr. April” is unfair, but “Mr. June” is accurate.  I’m going to go ahead and continue blaming Jim Hendry for Lee’s loss of power.  If Hendry had pulled the trigger and signed Rafael Furcal prior to the 2006 season, Furcal would have never drunkenly staggered into Lee’s wrist, breaking it and sapping Lee of all his power.  Plus, the Sports Corner would have never gone out of business if Furcal lived in Chicago.  If the collision with Furcal isn’t the sole cause of the drop in power, I expect the phantom slap fight Lee had with Chris Young finished the job of neutering Lee.  It’s not easy to put much of a charge into a ball when you’re hoping one of your teammates will get between it and you before you swing.

4) Geovany Soto’s projections from Bill James 71/23/89/.293 from CHONE 56/17/73/.279. Which do you think is more accurate?

Who the hell does Chone Figgins think he is?  A mathematician?  My KERMIT projections are more accurate than both.  I assume those numbers are Runs/Home Runs/RBIs/BAC after the Cubs win the World Series, so I’ll go with 100/30/105/.342  Those numbers assume that the Cubs sign Paul Bako, forcing Lou Piniella to play Soto in 160 games.

5) The guy from Saw becomes a baseball fan and makes you choose between a brain operation that makes you no longer enjoy the Cubs and sausage sanwiches or he’ll remove a testicle and the Cubs win the World Series.  Which operation do you choose?

Trick question.  The guy from Saw is dead.  OR IS HE?  Those movies suck.  A brain operation that takes away the number one source of stress in my life and lowers my cholesterol sounds good, but brain surgery is a lot more dangerous than testicle surgery.  Plus, as Felix Pie knows, sometimes the guys are way more trouble than they’re worth.  Take the ball from me, just like Lou should have done to Ryan Dempster after the fourth inning of Game One.

When I say, “Catcher…” You say, “Punt…”  “Catcher…”  “Punt…” “Catcher…”  “Punt…”  “Punt!” Ah, keeping you on your toes.  When you punt at catcher, you’re taking your fantasy baseball life into your own hands.  Drafting Geovany Soto is for either rich guys who have the butler do their drafting for them or Cubs fans (and never shall the twain meet).  Punting catcher is what those do that don’t mind rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty.

When you punt catcher, you need to stay on your toes on the waiver wire to see which catchers are hot.  You can’t sit back sipping brandy and watching Brian McCann hit a home run every ninth day.  Nooooo….  You’re under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge waiting for some schmohawk catcher to have a 3-for-4 game.  That’s right, you’re a catcher troll.  And you need to troll on, troller.  Sometimes for the whole season.  Sometimes you get lucky.  On my teams last year, I settled on Doumit or Shoppach on a few teams.  Every other team shuffled between Dioner, Jesus Flores, Iannetta and a few other schmohawks.  My catcher trolling is only outdone by my saves vulturing. (But that’s for another post.)  You can go through the archives on this site and know I was all about trolling for catchers.  It got so bad last year I was pimping Yorvit Torrealba like he was an El Dorado.  For the ultimate riff on catcher trolling, I turn this post over to commenter, Knightown, who had this to say sometime during last summer:

“ -I wasted a second round pick on V-Mart.
-Now he’s taking up a DL spot for me
-Picked up Rod Barajas
-Sobered up and dropped Rod Barajas
-Picked up the “red-hot” Miguel Olivo
-He retired or something and got 10 AB’s in the 2 weeks I had him
-Picked up Jarred Salta-something-or-other
-Started him yesterday, went o-fer.
-Dropped him and picked up Ramon Hernandez…honestly, only because he was mentioned in today’s blog.

YTD summary, ZERO HR’s from catchers this year.”

Notice what he said in the first line — he drafted Victor Martinez in the 2nd round.  Is there any better reason than that for punting catcher?  Yeah, actually there’s a few.

1) The top three catchers for 2008 were Mauer, McCann and Martin.  After that alliterative troupe, came Doumit, Soto, Fat Molina, Pierzynski, Shoppach, etc.  Notice something?  After the first three, the rest were all there for your picking, catcher troll.

2) No one wants a catcher as a utility guy.  So if you’re without a catcher, there’s a lot fewer teams to deal with trying to snag a productive one.

3) We’ll assume you didn’t draft V-Mart or Posada last year and went with Mauer in the sixth round.  Mauer’s numbers were:  97/9/83/.330/1.  Bengie Molina was the sixth ranked catcher and came in 126th overall on our 2008 Player Rater.  I think we can all agree that you could’ve had Molina way late in your draft if you wanted him.  Molina’s numbers were: 46/16/95/.292.  So you lose some value in Runs and Average and make some in HR/RBI.   You don’t think you could’ve made up that value with that sixth round pick that you wasted on Mauer?  Please.  When I say, “Catcher…”  Well, you get the picture.

One of the keys to a successful fantasy season is not drafting a pitcher who misses an extensive amount of time or performs much worse than the previous year.  Anyone who drafted Chris Carpenter or Dontrelle Willis in 2007 or Rich Hill or Aaron Harang in 2008 can attest to this.

There have been several theories posed in traditional publications (SI.com – Tom Verducci) and in the fantasy baseball blogosphere (FantasyPhenoms, Beyond the Box Score, RotoAuthority) that claim a correlation between a pitcher’s innings/pitches from the previous year and their performance the next year.

While these articles mentioned several positive examples, none of them really tested their theories to see if they are true predictors of either injury or decreased performance.  We decided to put them to the test along with several theories we’ve been kicking around:

• High Pitch Volume – Does a high volume of pitches have a carryover effect the next year?  (posed by FantasyPhenoms and RotoAuthority)
• Spike In Pitch Volume - What is the effect of a significant increase in pitch volume vs. previous year?  (posed by Tom Verducci)
• New To The Workload - Is a pitcher who first reaches the 2,700 pitch threshold more likely to fall back the next year vs. a pitcher used to the workload?
• High % of Breaking Pitches – Is a pitcher who throws breaking balls more susceptible to fall back vs. a fastball/changeup pitcher?

We also added a Common Sense test which predicted that weaker pitchers from year prior (4.00+ FIP) would be more likely to get hurt, moved to the bullpen, or demoted to the minors than stronger pitchers.  This ‘common sense’ test also serves as a proxy for a typical fantasy baseball drafter’s judgment as they would likely have more faith in pitchers who were successful in the previous year.

For the test, we focused on the past three years (2006-2008) and on pitchers who threw at least 2,700 pitches (~ 155-160 IP) in that year.  Pitchers who retired/semi-retired the next season for reasons other than injury were removed.  This left a total of 247 pitcher seasons.  We defined ‘miss significant time’ as someone who threw 2,000 or less pitches (~ 20 GS) in MLB the next year and ‘measurable decrease in performance’ as a 0.50 or more increase in their FIP (this is an ERA variation that stands for Fielding Independent Pitching based on only things within a pitcher’s control – K, BB, HR – and is more stable year-to-year than ERA).  If a pitcher threw less than 2,000 pitches the next year, we ignored their FIP so as not to add insult to injury (ha!).

It’s worth noting that throwing 2,000 or less pitches in MLB does not necessarily mean someone was injured – it could also mean their performance decreased to a level that was no longer MLB-worthy and they were demoted.  Since these amount to the same thing for a fantasy team owner (bupkus), we did not differentiate.  We also did not credit for pitches thrown in the minor leagues prior to arriving in the MLB or pitches thrown in the postseason.  This is partly out of convenience (our data source FanGraphs does not include this in their ‘Leaders’ section) and partly out of intent (a pitch in the minor leagues is not as stressful as a pitch in the major leagues).

In total, 59 (24%) of the 247 qualified pitcher seasons were followed up by seasons of less than 2,000 pitches and 53 (21%) were followed up with FIP increases above 0.50.  That means that about 45% of starting pitchers either pitched significantly less or had a measurable decrease in performance in the following year.  Ouch!

Below are the test results:

The best theory proved to be the High % of Breaking Pitches Theory as both the 27+% and 30+% thresholds finished in the top two for index (137 and 128 respectively – the 137 means that a pitcher who threw 30+% Sliders/Curve Balls in the previous year is 37% more likely than the average pitcher to fall below 2,000 pitchers or see their FIP increase 0.50+.  The Spike in Pitch Volume Theory (go Verducci!) and New to the Workload Theory also performed above average.

The ‘Common Sense’ test (FIP 4.00+) finished  at about a 100 index meaning picking a random pitcher would’ve been as effective as choosing one with this criteria.  This average performance may be misleading since it did a better than average job at predicting significant pitch decreases (29% to 24%) and its below average performance at predicting FIP increases may be because some of the FIPs were so high to begin with in the first place.

The High Pitch Volume Theory proved to be a relative failure.  We tried four variations – one-year (3400+ and 3500+), two year (6500+) and three year (9000+) and all of them finished at a below average rate.  Both the 3400+ and 3500+ theories did a good job at predicting 0.50+ FIP increases but that is tempered by the fact that they had a higher percentage of pitchers throw enough innings to qualify.  For instance, if you were to back out the 19 of 56 pitchers who fell below 2000 pitches in the Spike In Pitch Volume Theory, you would have 38% (14 of 37) that had 0.50+ FIP increases.  So there may be a slight correlation that a heavily used pitcher does not perform as effectively the next year but they will perform.

I’d theorize the failure of High Pitch Volume Theory in predicting significant pitch declines is because totaling high pitch counts in a year is more of a skill than an abuse.  It is easier for someone who has run a marathon in the past to run another one versus someone who has not.  While this group is not immune to missing time, they have built the stamina to at least pitch close to a full season (2700+ pitches).  Below are the 16 members of 2007’s “3400+ Pitch Club” .

The collective average went from 3,534 pitches to 2,991 pitches which, though a decline,  still represents about 29 starts.  8 of the 16 pitchers on this list finished in the top 30 in 2008 total pitches.  The below 100 index in the test and the above chart indicate that a pitcher with 3400+ pitches in the previous year is a sign of durability not vulnerability (note: given the high injury rate with pitchers, though, it’s not that strong of a sign).

We then tested several combinations of the three above-average performing theories and threw a last bone to the High Pitch Volume theory (which tanked even after adding the High % of Breaking Balls requirement).

While the top two combo theories are very good predictors, they are also very rare – about 1 in 25 pitching seasons.  The most impressive predictor of the bunch is test #6 – 27+% Sliders/Curve Balls OR 700+ Pitch Spike.   Why?  Because that 128 index applied to a huge sample – nearly half of the pitcher seasons in the study.  The impact is best seen by comparing this group against its mirror image – pitchers who threw < 27% Sliders/Curve Balls AND had < 700+ Pitch Spike.

So a pitcher that qualifies in at least one of these categories is 28% more likely to throw less than 2000 pitches in the next year or to see an FIP increase of 0.50+ than the average pitcher.  Just as important, one that qualifies for neither category is 24% less likely than the average pitcher to meet these respective fates.

That’s it for now but we’ll be revisiting this topic in the near future.  In the next post, we’ll go over the top 20 starting pitchers risks for 2008, perhaps uncovering a couple pitchers that you’ll be surprised to see…

While the bad buzz on Torre’s book is permeating the web (even Buster Olney knocks him), we would like to stand up for Joe.  Really people — Do you think they called Alex Rodriguez “A-Fraud?”  Joe Torre obviously softened this for mass consumption.  More likely tauntnames for A-Rod:

1. Gay-Rod

2. Jeter’s-Rod

3. A-Hole

4. Alice

5. Latina

6. Choke-Rod

7. Showing Up Really Late To The Madonna Vagina Party-Rod

8. Pretty Boy

9. Scotty J (Philip Seymour Hoffman character in Boogie Nights.  “Derek, look at my car.”)

10. Best Power Hitter of His Generation But We Still Don’t Want to Hang Out With You-Rod

Stay classy, Joe!

Before we take our 2009 fantasy baseball rankings to the arms, we look at the top 5 designated hitters for 2009 fantasy baseball.  These players are only eligible at Utility.  Frankly, I don’t think you should draft any of these hitters.  They don’t allow enough flexibility.  For example, what if you had David Ortiz clogging up your Utility spot last year and you really wanted to pick up Jayson Werth but had 5 outfielders already?  You would’ve been S to the Crewed.  If you want some perspective on where these 5 designated hitters fall in the big picture, look at our 2009 Fantasy Baseball Player Rater.  As always, this top 5 for 2009 will be broken up into tiers, and their 2009 projections will be included.  Anyway, here’s the top 5 designated hitters for 2009 fantasy baseball:

1. David Ortiz – This is the first tier. This tier goes from here to Thome.  I call this tier, “David Ortiz and Jim Thome.”  Ortiz just turned a Latin 33 and is easily coming off his worst season in six years.  Was it the knee?  Was it the wrist?  Was it the real birth certificate that says he’s actually 47 years old?  I can’t say for sure, but I’m not counting on much of a rebound season.  Though some ‘perts are.  At Utility, it’s not worth the risk.  2009 Projections:  85/27/110/.285

2. Jim Thome – As Adam Dunn should say, “Thome is the Founding Father of Country Strong.”  2009 Projections:  85/30/100/.250

3. Travis Hafner – This is a new tier.  This tier goes from here to the end of the list.  I like to call this tier, “For sadomasochists only.” As some of you might remember, I had faith in Hafner going into last year.  Then some time in May, Hafner let me see behind the curtain and he looked like Zelda Rubinstein.  2009 Projections:  60/22/85/.275

4. Gary Sheffield – With three years since his last thirty home run season, I think it’s safe to say he’s not going to suddenly explode back on the scene.  Could the Yanks have parted ways with an aging vet at the right time?  Appears so.  2009 Projections:  50/15/60/.255/7

5. Rocco Baldelli – Take that, mitochondria!  2009 Projections:  50/12/50/.280/3