I spent Friday afternoon calling TD Ameritrade to see if Grey had traded me to ESPN for the return of Manny Ramirez to MLB. After seeing reports on Twitter from Jeff Passan that Grey was actually at Boba Hut — the Star Wars-themed boba joint — instead of The Great Fantasy Industry Meetup, I started to relax. My eyes shut, the words Fidelio shooting through my head. Yes, I was loyal to Razzball. Grey was loyal to me. I could sleep, not worried about being traded…And then the e-mail from Boba Hut came. Its contents stated: “1 – Mandalorian Suit, Size XL. 1 – Boba Hut Face Mask (extra ventilated). 1 – Boba Hut Platinum Membership Card. Start date: August 1, 2021.” He sold me for a boba! Grey, I hope you enjoy that umami texture. As for me, I’ll be on the 4AM – 10PM shift at the Boba Hut in Pasadena, so come see me if you have a moment.
- James Stallion, what a stud! Do you have your social media channels ready to mute the JT talk come the 2022 offseason? On the one side, there’ll be the horde of fantasy gamblers saying, “Stallion had TWO Tommy Johns…wait, JT had 2 TJs? That’s causation! 1.16 ERA through July in the middle of the stick crackdown, top of the 30-day player rater! Imagine what he’ll do in his second year of health! +EV, +EV! Pass the colloidal silver!” Then there’ll be the corner of SABRmetric folx wearing their Battlestar Galactica shirts, munching on vegan peanut butter, saying, “Yeah but he had a 4.87 SIERA and 5.15 xFIP through that period. His ground ball rate was 30% [dramatic pause to look at etherium holdings] And his swinging strike rate was under 10% [music from Animal Collective starts playing].” Where will I be on this one? Guess which camp. Stallion is benefitting from a surprisingly helpful Yankees defense, but pitching against the likes of BOS and TOR and even BAL, Taillon can’t survive on a sub-8.00 K/9 and sub-10% swinging-strike rate. By allowing 70% of balls to be lifted or driven in a line (that’s the SABRmetric word for “line drive”), Taillon’s looking at some harsh regression coming soon. Regression tends to come quickly for pitchers (i.e. the 0.2 IP, 8ER kind), so you might want to calm your Stallion before he gets taken to pasture.
- FrankenMonster is still available in some leagues and has an 11+ K/9 to a 2.6 BB/9 rate over the last month with a 2.30 ERA and FIP/xFIP around 3.00. I get a lot of questions about Montas every week — should I start him, add him, wine and dine him — and the answer is that you should do at least two of those three. I’ll let you decide which ones. With the trajectory of his performances since June, he might even be in the keeper conversation. Maybe you should wine and dine him before you call him a keeper, though.
- LoGi! Let’s give this guy his own Disney+ show. Logi: The Logic Magician. Or maybe, LoGI: The Low Gravity GI. Or just somebody buy me Disney+ so I can watch Loki and know what everybody’s talking about. But this LoGi, he’s available in 30% of leagues still and has an 11.6 K/9 to 2 BB/9 with a 3.76 ERA to 2.59 FIP, indicating the best is yet to come! [cue Dionne Warwick on Spotify]
- Here you are Mr. Cat in the Hat: Julias is doing just dang fantastic, and I put him below a bunch of pitchers you wouldn’t roster.
- Next week, Kenta Maeda will be 33 years, 3 months, and 30 days old. If that isn’t the perfect time for a no-hitter, I don’t know what is. Can you imagine that the next no-hitter — which will break the all-time record for MLB no-hitters in a season — could belong to a guy that’s celebrating his numerological zenith? Can I get somebody to check which house Mercury is in right now? But the way the no-hitters went for the pitchers earlier this year — Corey Kluber, Spencer Turnbull, Christian Yelich (wait, he’s just not hitting…) — maybe we don’t want Maeda to throw a no-no. ENYWHEY. Maeda’s back. I can’t believe some of you gave up on him. I told you he hated cold weather, and I told you he had some oblique issues. And now he’s throwing 11+ K/9, 1.84 BB/9, and a 2.15 ERA to a 2.30 FIP over the past month. Never mind that three of those starts came against the Tigers and one against the Royals…because Maeda will be pitching against the basically abandoned AL Central for the rest of the year. I’m not a truther of strength of schedule determinism, but if you could choose one pitcher to finish the year on your team, would you take Jameson Taillon against the AL East, or Kenta Maeda against whatever AAA-league the AL Central calls itself? That’s what I thought.
- Even the boss man Grey was be-Gombing that he started the Pyle Driver against the Dads. Honestly, it was a good process decision. Gomber’s got a 2.18 ERA and acceptable FIP over his past 6 starts, but the 7 K/9 and sub-1.0 BB/9 make him look a lot like old-school Mike Leake. Y’all remember that dude? No? Then how about Jon Gray? Gomber looked like Gray. Can’t believe the Rockies are planning a rebuild around Jon Gray. But Gomber? OK, he got Pyle Driven, but stats say that he should be fine to recover going forward.
- In my Sunday DFS article, I asked people to stack against Fedde. But secretly, as I was examining Fedde’s previous game, I was a bit intrigued. That 95+ MPH sinker! Who boy! So I made a DFS lineup with Fedde, and was rewarded with an 8K/1BB performance over 6 IP. His swinging-strike rate doesn’t look stellar, or usable, or even acceptable. But, there are some nice signals of usability underneath his noise of a tough July, so I’ll be keeping my eye on him to see if he heats up down the stretch of the MLB season.
- MLB debut! And 6 runs in 4 innings. Our resident Angels expert, the esteemed Anthony Coolwhip Jr., was cheering Detmer’s gorgeous curveball in the Razzball chat, followed quickly by shouts of “NO NOT LIKE THAT.” Detmers destroyed AA and AAA this year, with K/9s over 13.5 at each stop. Data says he’ll be fine, and after the rough start, he’ll likely be more available than expected. Must add for dynasty managers, and he’ll likely be a good pitcher the rest of the way. If you’re looking for upside — and if you’re not doing that then I assume you’re here for my upcoming space opera narrative — then Detmers is one of your top targets.
- Good night, sweet prince. He’s off to see Dr. Freeze for an 18-month vacation. You’ll see him again in the 2023 pre-season rankings.
Space:X Rankings
Well, we’re into clear “IP cap” territory. I’m going to add a factor that considers how much of a pitcher’s innings are coming from recent performances to give us an idea of whether we can be confident in a pitcher’s ability to rack up IP. As a reminder, IP are actually a major factor (in most fantasy formats) for the certainty of projections. A pitcher who goes 4-5 IP per start is much more volatile than a pitcher who is allowed to work 6-7 IP. Why? That third time through the order. Those strikeouts. Those extra IP to reduce run volatility. We may not get a clear answer on some pitchers, but we will get more confident about top pitchers, which will help us choose our targets going into the final weeks. I didn’t change my algorithm because forwards IP projections are projected in Rudy’s ROS values and I found it redundant to re-weight it. I did, however, include it for your visual inspection in case you want to decide how much leverage to give certain pitchers. The recency figure incorporates IP as an SP from July 1 to July 31.
As always, I give a confidence score for pitchers based on if they pitch. Do I know when deGrom or Bieber or Kershaw are coming back? Nope. But I would sure as Shane start Bieber over Alex Cobb.
With that, we’ve got a couple of new guys on the board this week: Nestor Cortes, Jake Woodford, Daniel Lynch, Griffin Jax, Jose Suarez, and Spenser Watkins.
Have an awesome week, and I’ll see you down in the comments!
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