Pitching

rsigler65  7/19/2016 11:06 AM

I noticed some guys on Mike Leake last night.  I had him rated pretty bad so I apparently have some work to do evaluating pitchers.  Just wondering if anyone was on him last night, and why.  Padres strike out %?  Vegas line?  Those are the only 2 things I can think of.  And price I guess.

gehrenberg   7/19/2016 12:35 PM

He was still pretty low owned yesterday on fanduel (10% in the slam) but there was a couple reasons he ended up in lineups. The first was that the cardinals were the biggest favorite of any team playing yesterday. Secondly to make a stack of coors field you needed to use a cheap pitcher. The only two viable options were tropeano (who got injured) or leake. They both had similar ownership rates and leake had what will almost certainly be his best game of the season. In a bit of randomness leake rarely gets many strikeout but has had double digit strikeouts two games in a row after not having more than 6 in all his other starts this season. The result will drive up the ownership of Carlos Martinez tonight and I am pretty sure we can project him to have the highest ownership tonight of any pitcher

bellsofwar3  7/19/2016 3:02 PM

I had Leake ready to go all day yesterday but switched him for Tropeano last minute.  I've been kinda good at identifying pitchers.  Leake looked good for a several reasons.I have my stats to show me last game, last 3 games and last 5 games.   So I'm looking for some sort of recent stability.  I have all the stats BBM offers I look at.  I've found the new k% and k%h is helpful and what I look at first.  If both are green it's usually a go.  From there i make sure ISO and wOBA and ISOh/wOBAh aren't red and preferably green and SOMETIMES pink.

That being said, ATM tonight I'm liking Carlos Martiez and Vincent Velasquez, but Velasquez always worries me.  Arrieta is probably good too, but his recent history + price worry me.

This is my method and it's helped me lower my pool to 3 or 4 people, from there it's just picking the correct two.

gehrenberg   7/19/2016 3:46 PM

My thoughts are similar bellsofwar. My pitchers for tonight are mostly Velasquez and Martinez. Martinez will be the chalk, but I think it's for good reason. I'm off Arrieta until he gets his mechanics figured out. He has been struggling with his release point, which has resulted in him having erratic control. Lots of walks has lead to high stress innings and more and runs and shorter outings. I was doing some research into this earlier on fangraphs and noticed that with each start this year his release point has gotten slightly more sidearm. It's not significant from start to start but comparing his last start to his first start it's pretty noticeable. His workload has been pretty substantial the last few years and this can be the sign of fatigue and/or potential injury. I will be interested to see if his release point changes at all after a week of rest 

rsigler65  7/19/2016 4:17 PM

Thanks guys - I guess what caught my eye was a few top players I saw on FD that used Leake in cash games.  Maybe the Coors stack theory - I'll have to go back and see if that was the case.

gehrenberg   7/19/2016 4:52 PM

Some bad weather in St. Louis is making Martinez a little tricky. I would guess it will depress his ownership a bit although it obviously makes him riskier as well 

Suicidesqueezer  7/19/2016 11:00 PM

I always use the Ease Rankings to look at teams to target.  I will look at pitchers playing against Brewers, San Diego, Atlanta, Phillies ect. Leake looked to have a good matchup against SD. Good Gpp play but did not use him in cash.  He has a high ceiling but a low floor which makes you nervous in cash games.

rsigler65  7/27/2016 9:30 AM

Anyone have any thoughts on why Brandon McCarthy is having such a high strike out rate so far this year?  Seems like a strong play today if that continues.

gehrenberg   7/27/2016 9:50 AM

Mostly because he has only thrown 22 innings so we are looking at an extremely small sample. I think it's reasonable to expect he will strikeout around 8 per 9 innings 

rsigler65  7/27/2016 4:43 PM

Only 4 innings but struck out 7. I wish I had more time to dive into FanGraphs.  I wonder if his velocity is up at all.  Not that it would necessarily mean anything.  

ken_admin  7/27/2016 4:46 PM

We do have pitch velocity (assuming fastball is what you need).  I'm not sure what the best way to show it is.

rsigler65  7/27/2016 8:40 PM

I don't know, there may be more important things to add before that, like SIERA and the like...I did figure out how to find the velocity on fangraphs.  Just type in the player name at the top and scroll down to the PITCHf/x Pitch Velocity table.  McCarthy's velocity is up the last 3 seasons but I don't know if that's unusual, or if it make's that much difference in K% - I just happened to notice and wondered - I suspect it would.

gehrenberg   7/27/2016 10:14 PM

Rsigler is you are looking for a stat that is telling of strikeout rates i recommend looking at the swing and miss stat on fangraphs (labeled as swst% under plate discipline). While velocity can be the cause of swings and misses its the ability to create the swings and misses that actually leads to the strikeouts. Research has shown it takes 70 innings for strikeout rate to normalize. 

sangamc  7/29/2016 5:55 PM

Taking it a step further. On baseball reference they have the Strike%, Strikes looking, Strikes swinging & Strikes Foulball under pitch summary

http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/sPPuc    

rsigler65  7/29/2016 6:44 PM

I'm surprised they don't have all the batter choke positions broken down by pitch type lol!!

gehrenberg   7/29/2016 9:23 PM

Don't worry you can find any statistic you want for baseball, no matter how ridiculous you might think it is