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WORKBOOK

FINALLY, THE BANGKOK BUSHWACKERS HAVE RETURNED TO THE FIRST TIER. We'll see how long it lasts, but a 12-0 week can turn around the fortunes of any team, thanks Dobber and SRQ, I needed to get my groove back in the worst way. After a brief stay at the top the Moneky Machine has dropped into second with the Strapping Young Lads assuming the throne.

I will be updating the roto rankings today, but the rest of the workbook can be accessed at the link above.

Finally, the Lamigo Moneky has vaulted into first place. After sitting in second three different times and never being less than fourth, this Tier 1 veteran has overcome the obstacles to take over the lead. The rest of the top of Tier 1 is basically the same, but we do see Damn I Love a Good BJ climb 11 spots into 8th and Sai is a piece of shit Dobber it's way into the first tier moving up 12 spots this week. He wasn't the biggest mover, though, as that honor goes to I'll Vogt for Scott way down their in Tier 4 now knocking on the door of Tier 1.

Our biggest faller (16 spots) goes to I FIP'd My Pants. Regression set in in the form of an 0-12 record this week. Great job! Honorable Mention goes to Litha Rays. Since starting out in 3rd place after one week it has been a progressive fall off the mountain as the 15 spots dropped this week moved this team into 27th. For those keeping score at home, I moved up five spots to 25th continuing my crusade and am still currently beating the team that says they are better than my team.

Since his name change, Warde has gone 0-69 to drop to 23rd place. How's that working out for you? Tier 2 is beginning to heat up despite the runaway success of it's top two teams. How are the rest of these tiers shaping up?

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You can check out the rest of the workbook HERE though I have not updated the Roto Standings tab.

What up? We've now completed the first four weeks of the season and I'm continuing my own personal journey to the top moving up another two spots to just sneak into tier 3 at 30th. I accomplished this by besting former league leader DaveH and his CANTBE TAMED crew. Our new overall leader is Deadeye who has moved up one spot each week to assume this position. We see a lot of familiar faces up top, though Strapping Young Lads have made a ton of progress over the last three weeks and our biggest mover up the ladder was Sai Sreedhar and his Overaged Specimen climbing 11 spots to move into 10th. Will it last?

Our biggest dropper was Damn I Love a Good BJ falling 8 spots to 19th, though Warde and Diaper tried to give him a run for his money with each falling back into tier 3. Care to relate your own sob story or talk about how much it sucks that Werth got hurt? Then comment away. Lastly, Put Up Your Dukes's team continues to look like shit. Make sure you remind him that they suck when you get a chance.

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After three weeks we're starting to see the wheat separate from the chaff a bit. I managed to move up two spots to 34 and at this pace should be in first sometime in August!!!! The son of no one, none other than DaveH is now leading the entire league with another Tier 2'r nipping at his heels in Deadeye. Our biggest mover upper was FIP'd My Pants elevating from the doldrums at 30 just last week all the way up to 14. The biggest (panty) dropper was the aptly named Sai is a Piece of Shit falling 11 spots to #30. Last year's overall champ The Hit Show is now sitting in 29th and it's not looking pretty. With the first month in the books I'd expect to start seeing the trading scene start to gain steam as pretenders can become contenders virtually overnight. Unless you think you're sensational and then you'll probably stay in dead last. Lastly, we see that PUDY continues to lie to those he loves as his team name is still a complete lie.

Use this thread for all your fantasy talk. It should be a good place to #runtelldat about who is on your block and what you're looking for.

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Between Steve's relocating to the Eye of Sauron, Massachusetts and Collette's travel schedule, the process versus the Rangers did not get completed. Thanks to Sandy Kazmir for leading in the absence of leadership

As I did for the Minnesota series, I wanted to take a Pitch F/x look at the guys we should expect to see in this upcoming series with the vaunted Rangers. We should see Matt Harrison in game one, followed by Colby Lewis, and last will be horribly nicknamed Derek Holland. I hope by now that you have a grasp of what the tables are showing as I don't have the time to delve into this as much as previously. I will highlight some things that stand out to me in lazy bullet form.

Continue reading this post »

I've updated our overall standings through two matchups and I'm not very happy about my current standing staying in 34th overall place. Tip of the cup to Ryan Gilliss as his Party Rockers have vaulted into the number one position. We all know how much he values sitting on the poll so let's give him a hand. The biggest dropper this wee was Team Moore Bush falling from 10th last week to 29th after our most recent week. Kudos to Lueke's BackDoor Slider for reversing that course going from dead last 40th all they way up to 21st.

Good luck to everyone this week.

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Yesterday I profiled a guy making his sixth career start against the Rays in Liam Hendriks. The Rays didn't disappoint as they let the Aussie off the hook several times. Today I wanted to take a look at the other two guys the Rays will face this series in Carl Pavano (tonight at 7:10, good seats are plentiful and available) and Francisco Liriano (Sunday at 1:00). Both these guys have been around and we have a better idea of what each is capable.

As in the Hendriks look we can look at the results for each using wOBAcon and run values in conjunction with pitch usage. All data based off Joe Lefkowitz's database from 2009 - 12:

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(Click to enlarge)

Pavano throws around the same number of fastballs to lefties and righties, but he'll also feature the change up around a quarter of the time to lefties and around one in five against righties. He'll also throw the breaking ball enough to keep it in the back of a hitters head, and slightly more to righties. Both righties and lefties feast on Pavano's unremarkable fastball while lefties tend to rip his breaking ball. His most successful pitch is the breaking ball to righties (.246 wOBAcon/-2.18 RV/100 pitches). His change to lefties is also a nice pitch at .336 wOBAcon and -1.22 RV/100 pitches. A good outing for Pavano sees him getting ahead of batters and staying out of fastball counts where batters can take advantage of his worst pitch (.394 wOBAcon/0.58 RV/100 overall).

First pitch to lefties doesn't deviate all that much from his other usage, but he will switch out fastballs for change ups to righties, a bit. When he get's two strikes on a lefty he will up his change a bit at the expense of his fastball while righties can count on an increased dose of the breaking ball that we've already seen is a devastating pitch for him. The Rays righties have to take advantage of the fastball when they can if they want to get Pavano on the ropes early and often.

Liriano is a completely different pitcher with wider platoon splits that see him just devastating to same-handers. He's mostly fastball/breaking ball to lefties, while showing an almost even split between his offspeed stuff to righties in addition to using his fastball only half the time. Righties can really expect to do damage to his fastball with a .410 wOBAcon and 1.28 RV/100. His breaking ball has a tendency to get hit around the yard when batters can actually square it up as evidenced by the difference between his wOBAcon of .409 and his RV/100 of -1.20. I feel bad for Joyce and Pena if they're starting against Liriano because he has the ability to make them look utterly foolish. Luckily, we could see some big games from Longo, Rodriguez, and Keppinger as it looks like righties fare a bit better.

Against both lefties and righties on first pitch he will ramp up his fastball usage at the expense of his breaking ball though against right-handers he'll still throw the softer stuff around 20% each. You see the opposite with two strikes as he throws the breaking ball a ton. You can see that his slider usage is over 50% in this situation and he throws barely any fastball against righties in that situation. Liriano is another guy that you just cannot afford to get behind, because you might as well give up once he gets you to two strikes.

I also wanted to look at the pitch results that each have displayed over the last several seasons:

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The white section shows the percent of all pitches that was a (Ball, Called Strike, Foul, In Play, Swinging Strike) while the colored section shows something a bit different. Swing% shows all pitches that were swung on while B/Tk% is the percent of times that a taken pitch was ruled a ball. Likewise, S/Sw% shows how many pitches were swung on and missed. Similarly, IP/Sw% and F/Sw% show balls that were put in play and fouled off, respectively, per swing. I find these sections more informative because we can see things like how effective Pavano's change is to lefties as he gets 24% whiffs per swing, and we can also see that batters swing a lot at that pitch, but when they don't it's called a ball 2/3 of the time. This seems to indicate that batters swing at all the close ones, but he also throws it well out of the zone quite often. Batters also tend to put it in play often when they do make contact because we can see that they don't really foul it off.

Another pitch I want to highlight is Liriano's change to righties which we've already established he'll throw a bit and not get a ton of success. Batters swing less than half the time and when they don't it's a ball over 3/4 of the time. He will get a whiff around a third of the time, but it's another pitch that gets put in play a lot and not fouled off all that much. I hope you take the time to look for things that stand out to you in here as I don't beat this horse too much. Please feel free to share what sticks out to you in the comments and also let me know if you have any questions. It looks like the Rays path won't be all that easy over the next two days so hopefully they can take advantage when they do have the upper hand in the count, on the bases, and at plate.

So I see that the Rays are facing something called Liam Hendriks to open their series with the Twins this evening. I've never heard of this guy and I live in the Twins AAA team's backyard so I thought I would take a look at what Pitch F/x has to say about this enigma. First off, let's look at his macro-level stats:

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You'll notice that he got a decent amount of strikeouts in 4 starts last year while having a nice walk rate and a passable homer rate. He also seems relatively neutral as far as groundballs vs. flyballs. His ERA leaves a large scar, but his LOB% looks incredibly low. His one start this year was against arguably the best team in MLB in the Texas Rangers. We see more of the same, for the most part. He looks like a control pitcher and a 4.04 FIP is pretty good considering we've never heard of this guy. What can we learn from the minuscule 461 pitches that he has thrown in the Show?

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He'll throw his 90 MPH fastball in about even amounts versus lefties and righties while leaning harder on the breaking ball vs. righties and switching that out for more change ups vs. lefties. No big surprises there. Looking at his wOBAcon we see that each type of batter has feasted on the secondary pitch that he goes to more and this is also confirmed in the next box that looks at linear weights per pitch type per one hundred pitches (< 0 means better than average for pitcher). So his fastball appears to be an ok, but not great pitch, but his secondary stuff is a bit lacking. We also see that the pitch he typically eschews looks to be pretty decent, though I'm sure the surprise factor plays a big part there.

I've also looked at a couple of specific situations here. First pitch seems to pretty well mirror what he likes to do to lefties, but against righties, he isn't afraid to ramp up his breaking ball usage. I don't care to take the time to take this next step, but I would think that like James Shields he'll mix in more first pitch breaking balls the more times through the order to keep batters off his pedestrian fastball. With two strikes is when he seems to really like to attack lefties with the breaking ball as it's almost an even split with the fastball. I have no doubt that we'll stack the lineup with lefties tonight so if they get two strikes they should be ready for the bendy stuff.

His fastball comes in at 90 on the nose with a lot more arm-side movement (about a foot) than the MLB average while also showing about six inches of less rise than the MLB average. This leads me to believe that he's heavily dependent on the two-seam or sinker type of fastballs so we can probably expect a bunch of groundballs if he's keeping the pitch down in the zone. This looks like exactly the kind of guy that Reid Brignac should be starting against. His change up looks to not be a very good pitch as it shows around 10 inches less arm-side run than the MLB average and almost two fee less drop than the average. Couple this with him only getting around 8 MPH separation from the fastball and Joyce, Pena, and Scott could be in for a feast this evening.

This isn't as deep as I typically like to look, but I think it gives a nice outline of what the Rays will be running into tonight. We've all seen this team make a guy that they've never seen before look like an ace, but I don't foresee the team having much trouble with Liam Hendriks.

Alright boyos, with one week in the books we've already begun to see some of the wheat separate from the chaff. Here are the updated rankings for all of the leagues using our adjusted winning percentage. Each set of 10 teams forms the new tiers for next year if the season were to end today. Yours truly is already staring Tier 4 in the face, but luckily it's a long season and I don't think too many teams will have an unadjusted win% of .750 when it's all said and done. You can find the entire workbook HERE if you're so inclined. I probably won't be updating teams more than once every couple of weeks, but I will be updating the rankings after the completion of each week. Don't fret my little pussyfarts there's still plenty of time to change your station.

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Nice showing Pudy, so far, your team is not living up to their awful name.

Every league has now had their draft and I think Hatfield is the only person that has already stopped playing so we're off to a good start. I've updated our workbook for the league so that you can see who everyone has on their roster as of a couple of hours ago:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhdYS83t3IB7dE1OaWZVUTF0S3B5UnpKWVV4Nmt4WWc#gid=8

Looks like a lot of teams with promise and only a handful look like they'll never have a chance. I plan to update each league on a weekly basis, but also want to keep a sheet for this initial look so that we can compare the end of season rosters against this. Good luck to everyone this year as we all try to break into Tier 1. Thanks for taking the time to make this a success and I hope you stay interested throughout the year and come back next season when relegation will work like this:

Your final record will be regressed based on which Tier you are in. Being Tier 1 is an honor that must be earned. Once you are there it will be difficult to knock you out while the lower levels should see a bit more movement.

Tier 1 will be regressed at a .600 winning percentage

Tier 2 will be regressed at a .550 winning percentage

Tier 3 will be regressed at a .500 winning percentage

Tier 4 will be regressed at a .450 winning percentage

For example, let's say you're a .500 team. Here's what your adjusted winning percentage would be in each tier:

1: 0.550
2: 0.525
3: 0.500
4: 0.475

Every team will be ranked by their adjusted winning percentage. The top 10 returning teams will be the new Tier 1 and so on. All new teams will be added to the bottom of our ranks. It's possible to go Tier 4 to Tier 1 and vice-versa, but it would take extremely good/bad seasons to do so. We should see plenty of movement through Tiers 2 and 3 allowing you a better chance of advancing next year. Stay interested, do well, and it's possible to advance quite rapidly.

Use this thread for anything that you want related to these leagues and any other fantasy talk and have a great season.

Alright guys, we've floated this out there long enough. With 45 teams signing up we do not have enough to continue the four 12-man leagues from last year. We will go with four 10 man leagues and the extra five teams will be subs in the event that a team does not sign up before their draft (or some other deadline designated by that LM).

The Tier 1 LM will be Top Gun Numba 1. The Tier 2 LM will be 4qb or whatever his name is now. We do not have LMs for Tiers 3 or 4 yet so if you are interested please throw your name in the hat. If your league has an LM, get them your e-mail so they can get you set up in the league. All LMs will get together to go over the settings, rosters, etc.. before the season starts so that we have uniform rules and regs.

For those that are new, we will run through the course of the season like normal, but after your league playoffs the top team from each league will square off over a two-week basis to get an ultimate winner out of all 40 teams. This comes with bragging rights and perhaps fun giveaways. Here are your leagues:

Tier 1 (Top Gun Numba 1)

ShawnTSA
Top Gun Numba 1
Sveet
FreeZorilla
PriceMultiCyYoungs
catsondbs
PewterPirate55
kericr
Behn
dapriceisright

Tier 2 (4qb)

4qb
goopunch
staplemaniac
daveh33
Sandy Kazmir
Warde
DeadeyeRR
blackraven
firemangreg
PutUpYourDukes

Tier 3 (Ryan Gilliss)

nomoredevil
OneTonneBaby
gjsor
D. Russ
Ryan Gilliss
Hatfield
Ramedy
pudieron89
Lithia Rays
ChristopherGarcia

Tier 4 (SandalsNoPants)

SandalsNoPants
sc_monsta1015
BossmanJunior333
AllstotFan40
matthan
MakeitRayn
E-Bagger
DRAY34
multiple sources
Longorious

Subs (In the event a team no-shows, a no-show means you're banned, FYI)

MetsRaysFan
snailz
VoiceOfBC
My name is Charlie Montoyo
BIGSNOOK35

Please keep all discussion to this thread so that we have a source for all questions and answers and good luck this year, boyos.

It's that time of year again. If you played last year and want to play again, then please drop a line here or at the other thread to indicate that you want to play. Keep in mind that people that played last year get preferential treatment as they will be placed in a division that reflects their fantasy baseballing ability. I can understand if some of the teams that didn't do so hot are scared to come back, but if you did well and ended up in either of the first two divisions then you should be playing again. Otherwise that spot goes back to the bottom for someone else.

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I can't help but laugh when I hear announcers say things along the lines of, "This guy is the best/worst and here's why..."  There are various renditions of this, but what we're talking about here is using superlatives that aren't very specific.  It's one thing to say that Jose Bautista is the best at drawing a walk because this can be backed up by numbers pointing out that, yes, he not only leads Major League Baseball in total walks, but also walks per plate appearance.  It's a far different tale when the author is less specific and merely wants to point out that a player is the best at hitting based on subjective opinions.  

As a reader of this esteemed blog you've come to expect more from an author.  If we, as a community, want to know who are the toughest batters to get out we may refer to 1-OBP to get an idea of likelihood of making an out or looking at pitches per plate appearance to see how much of a grinder a batter is.  These are fine ideas, but I wanted to submit to this community a look at the toughest, and easiest, batters looking at how well they handle each of the four main pitches that pitchers throw.  

To that end I took a look at the accrued pitch value numbers for all batters with 1,000 plate appearances or more from 2008 - 11.  I decided to focus on how they fared against fastballs, sliders, curve balls, and change ups since these are the major repertoire's of most big league pitchers.  The sample size as well as these being the most common pitches should quell some of the issues that Fangraphs pitch value figures have in smaller samples relating to fielding bias and pitch classification.  I've turned the values into Z-scores in order to see which batters are the toughest to get out based on having few weaknesses against these pitches.  First off, let's look at table so you can see how all 295 of these batters ranked:

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Being a fan of a team from the American League East can be trying at times as other teams around Major League Baseball don't appear to be playing the same game. Sure, the bases are 90 feet and the mound is 60'6", but when it comes to the guys at the plate it's a bit of a different story due to the issue with unbalanced schedules. Previously, I made an attempt to quantify this (dis)advantage using the numbers from 2010, but this go around I'd like to take a different tact that looks squarely at the pitchers of the AL.

The idea here is pretty simple. We're looking at how all batters faced have performed against a pitcher's handedness over the course of the season, and compare that to how well the pitcher actually did against these batters. An example is probably in order so think of it like this: we can look at all the batters that faced, say, Josh Beckett and get a wOBA figure for how those batters hit righties on the year. In this instance, the set of batters that Beckett has faced have a collective weighted wOBA of .320 (all data valid as of July 30, 2011) against all right-handers while that same set of batters have hit for a wOBA of .242 against Beckett. Similarly, the set of batters that have faced CC Sabathia have hit for a collective weighted wOBA of .327 against all lefties, while the Cy Young favorite has actually allowed a wOBA of .280.

This now gives us a chance to compare pitchers based on the difficulty of lineups that they've faced. Another Cy Young favorite is Jered Weaver who has been very impressive allowing a wOBA of .245 against, but the set of batters he has faced has only combined to put up a wOBA of .310 over the course of the year. Now comes the question of which is better an actual of .245 when you'd expect .310 or an actual of .280 when you're expected to allow .327?

Initially, I wanted to look at this as a simple percentage of Actual/Expected to give an idea of which guy has most out-performed expectations. After thinking on it, it works better if you square both terms so that you can better separate those that had an easy go of it and excelled from those that performed roughly the same against much stiffer competition. I'm calling this d^2, but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and if you're into visual expressions it looks like (Actual wOBA^2)/(Expected wOBA^2).  Here is a ranking of each of these pitchers by d^2:

More after the jump...

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Kind of a frustrating game as the Rays were putting a bunch of balls in the air all game. One culprit was B.J. Upton who had two deepish fly balls in his first two at bats. His last one he got all of it, however, and hit himself a nice little walk off dinger. We only (I know, only) had five Ks on the night with one walk, but I was more concerned with the lack of hard contact. Our first run was a bloop single by Kelly Shoppach that drove in Sean Rodriguez from second. Longo's timing looked off in his first start in a month, but I think that's to be expected.

Wade Davis pitched in and out of trouble, but managed to give the team six innings of two-run ball. He was relieved by the spawn of Bartlett as Brandon Gomes came in and immediately showed that he wasn't here to screw around by brushing back the fearsome John McDonald. He went on to get all six batters he'd face with a twist. He was clearly pitching carefully, and eventually around, Adam Lind. Lind went on to be thrown out easily trying to pilfer second. He was followed by Cesar Ramos who got a fly and a K in his only work. Adam Russell was also warming up. It would have been interesting to see all three get into Gomes's debut, but Professor Farnsworth was called on to get the last out.  He did after a deep double by the one they call E5. Nice work by the pen tonight.

Pretty boring, quick game, but a win is a win. Also, congrats to the Lightning for going up 3-0 in their series.

The Return of Longo is going to be much needed this series as we take on two lefties and a very good righty.  Go Rays!

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Only thing better than a 3 game winning streak is a 4 game winning streak.  Tune in to see if Wade Davis can beat Nick "Ball in Play" Blackburn.


Fuld lf
Damon dh
Joyce rf
Lopez 3b
Upton cf
Rodriguez 2b
D. Johnson 1b
Shoppach c
Brignac ss
Davis p

Go Rays!

With this installment we now reach the half-way point in this countdown.  As a recap, here are Parts 1 & 2.  Here is a brief rundown of who has done what so far:

Shields: 23, 24

Garza: 28, 29

Price: 26, 30

Nieman: 21, 22, 25

Davis: 27

For 16 - 20 we have:

20) James Shields

19) James Shields

18) Wade Davis

17) Andy Sonnanstine

16) Jeff Niemann

Click the jump for the details...

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In part 1, we looked at the  26th - 30th best starts of 2009.  Continuing on the countdown I now bring you 21 - 25.  If you use your memory or clicked the link you may have noticed that Jeff Niemann and James Shields were missing.  Well, not to worry, as they comprise this entire list:

25) Jeff Niemann 2.82 FIP, 0.235 wOBA

24) James Shields 2.78 FIP, 0.234 wOBA

23) James Shields 2.44 FIP, 0.254 wOBA

22) Jeff Niemann 3.03 FIP, 0.197 wOBA

21) Jeff Niemann 1.78 FIP, 0.270 wOBA

Let's dig a little deeper after the jump

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Over the next six weeks I will be bringing you the best starting performances by Rays pitchers this season.  Every Friday you will get the chance to rewind to a better part of the season, when the Rays gave us something to do every night.  So how did I pick the guys that made the cut?  Some might use strikeouts or hits or gamescore or some other statistic.  I took a different approach.  First, I gathered the FIP and wOBA for every start.  Then I ranked each from 1 - 162.  Taking the average of the two I was able to re-rank every start.  That's it.  Without further adieu the 26th - 30th best starts of the year are after the jump.

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Remember when the Rays had the most runs in either league?  Remember when they were the best offense in the game?  Yeah, it's been awhile since we've seen the dynamic offense that carried our beleaguered staff earlier in the season.  With guys like Longoria, Zobrist, Bartlett, and Crawford getting off to hot starts it was easy to bank on runs in bunches.  We knew they would regress more in line with career numbers, but we figured that other guys like Burrell, Upton, Navarro, and Pena would play up to their historic numbers.  For your viewing pleasure:

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So far our defense has looked pretty good, right?  Right?  Especially that secondary, right?  Anybody???  OK, there's no fooling Bucs fans let alone rival offensive coaches.  Right now they are licking their chops to play us so that they can send up some fireworks.  My solution, since learning that Tanard Jackson has an undisclosed substance abuse problem, is to move Ronde Barber back to FS.  This move would not be unprecedented as other players have made the switch.  Probably the best example is Hall of Famer Rod Woodson.  After starting at corner for 10 years Baltimore decided to put him on the back line.  At the age of 34 he had a bit of a renaissance season netting 7 picks and making 54 solo tackles.  As an aging player that was never really known for his quicks, this move allowed him to play another five seasons after the switch.

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Ok, not really the world, but near the end of the GDT tonight there was a quick mention about how we could not trade Garz, because of his numbers against the AL East.  Off the top of my head I could remember many great starts against the Red Sox and utter ownage of the Blue Jays.  My point was that it's a pretty small sample to base such a big decision on.  At this point I got curious about the numbers, so I checked out B-Ref.  Here is a link to the workbook.  Keep in mind that these are small sample sizes, I will list the raw stats after the jump, but here are some relevant stats by division:

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2009 was a missed opportunity. If Tampa Bay wants to remain in the mix with the big money teams, they can't afford more missed opportunities. The Rays need to reload their roster this winter, and if it takes a willingness to part with some of their young talent in order to do so, than so be it. Building for the future is great, but they can't let too many chances to bring a World Series title slip through their grasp.

 

- Fangraphs

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With the grand playoff push starting in roughly January this year it is easy to lose track of just how far we've come.  I became a big fan of the Rays in 2002.  Since then they have assimilated with my body and have now replaced my left ventricle.  I bring this up because of how Gawdawful they were that year.  It was a mess.  I loved it because like a good recipe or a cool treehouse we were about to make something great completely from scratch.  With this in mind, here is the (Devil) Rays records sorted by number of wins:

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via www.fangraphs.com

Lance Cormier -.462 WPA

Since we were discussing this earlier I thought I would put some work in on this.  There is a messy, quick example within the Bartlett Declining Defense thread.  The first step is seeing how much value Bartlett carries beyond his contract.  Because Bartlett is an arb-eligible player for 2 more seasons he will be guaranteed to be paid less than the value he is capable of contributing.  Luckily, BTB developed a great Trade Value Calculator.  That link will take you through the whole article that I will be applying to Bartlett.  SO CHECK IT OUT.  On with the pretty pictures:

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A couple of statistics, calculated from B-Ref, for Pat Burrell.  These are by 10 game increments.  This is the most success he has had all season, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to continue to go this well with that Babip.  He is making great contact right now, while maintaining good BB-rates.  I like this PtB.

So I haven't done one of these since May 11 so I figured it would be a good idea to see how things have moved in the last 2 months.  I'm not going to go as in depth, because, frankly, I don't have the time right now, and it seems like overkill anyways.

Thanks be to Fangraphs

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It sure is nice to watch a great start.  Niemann was brilliant last night and is really showcasing himself as the sponge that can go out and soak up some innings.  I wanted to present the update Est. Wins for another reason, though.  James Shields is a FREAKING STUD.  He has thrown a sub-3.00 FIP in NINE of his eighteen starts.  According to these numbers, that means in half of his stats he has given us, AT THE MINIMUM, an 83% chance to walk out with a win.  SCORE THIS MAN SOME GD RUNS!  Garza has also pitched really well, being roughly a win behind Shields. 

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