Each year there are surprises in all aspects of fantasy baseball and in particular pitchers. Last year Sonnanstine surprised many of us and ended up with a very respectable 3.91 FIP, 3.35 K/BB, and a decent 1.29 WHIP. He was able to turn all of that into a 13-9 record for the AL champs and put himself on the fantasy radar in 2009. What came next was even more surprising to fantasy owners in 2009.
Sonnanstine started the year off badly and has been inconsistent (I’m in a kind mood today) at best since then. So far his FIP is close to 5 (with an ERA even worse), his K/BB ratio is down to 1.81, and his WHIP is an astronomical 1.78. The fact that he has been so horrible came as a complete surprise in the bad way. After his latest beat down, I had to see if there was anything in the Pitch Fx (from Fangraphs) that would show what’s different from last year.
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Pitch FX
Andy Sonnanstine, Pitch FX
With the slow day today hopefully there won’t be too much new injury news this afternoon. Let’s catch up on the last couple of days.
Carlos Beltran had an MRI which showed bone bruising at the top of his tibia inside the knee. He received a cortisone injection into the area and Carlos described the injection as successful. I’m a little suspicious of how effective it will be long term because the bruising wasn’t a result of an outside force but it the force was produced by his own body. He underwent bilateral knee surgery to clean up his patellar tendons at the end of 2007, so it’s not unprecedented for his body to be producing detrimental forces across his knee. Right now, I don’t think this current situation is anything long lasting but it may require a couple days here or there later in the season.
Brett Myers came off the mound yesterday with inflammation in his hip and xrays revealed “jaggedness” according to an Xray. This isn’t the news that he or the Phillies wanted to hear and likely means he’s facing an extended DL stay if not surgery. If there are bony changes in his hip that show up on xray the structural change will not go away with rest and rehab. There will need to be some procedure to clean that up or fix it. Whether or not it can wait until the end of the season is a question that will likely be answered after an MRI and subsequent evaluation.
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injury analysis, news
Brandon Backe, Brett Myers, Brian Bruney, Carlos Beltran, Cliff Floyd, Edinson Volquez, Hanley Ramirez, Jorge Posada, Kelvim Escobar, Melky Cabrera, Roy Oswalt, Ryan Braun, Ryan Freel, Xavier Nady
After seeing the debacle of Liriano’s line, I immediately thought of two things. First, the Sox must be very happy and second, my fantasy team just took a hit. We all know Liriano’s history by now but a quick recap. Johan-Lite came up and lit it up big time. He was as unhittable and as feared as Johan was and he was just a rookie. Unfortunately, the devastating slider that made him so great also seemed to hurt him and so in late 2006 he went under the knife, subsequently missing all of the 2007 season in rehabilitation. In 2008, he returned and was largely ineffective over his first 4 starts before being sent down to the minors where something clicked and he dominated once again. In a cost saving move, the Twins left him down there longer than he needed to be while others got lit up like a Christmas tree. Eventually, Liriano returned and was effective with some brilliance showing up now and then but he still didn’t have the same zip or the same bite on his pitches.
Which brings us up to the present. There’s been so much anticipation of Liriano returning to even 90% of 2006-levels that he was taken in the early mid-rounds of many drafts. Tommy John patients often aren’t back to their “normal” until 2 years after the operation and he’s now more than 6 months over that threshold. By all accounts he hasn’t quite reached the velocity he had prior to the surgery in 2006. He’s down approximately 3 MPH (now at around 91 and change) on his fastball and about 2 MPH on his slider (now at 85.7 MPH). Let’s take a look at the PFx data (from Fangraphs):
Pitch FX
Francisco Liriano, Pitch FX
Sorry for the lack of post the last two days. I’m been working on the mystery wrapped in an enigma within a conundrum named Liriano. The post will be up tomorrow so I hope everyone will read it.
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plan
My weekly summary is up at Rotosavants. Check it out.
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RotoSavants
What a great weekend this is. Pretty good weather in the Northeast, lots of baseball on TV and the radio, and BBQ’s galore. So let’s get on to the injuries.
Vladimir Guerrero hit a double last night in his rehab appearance at Racho Cucamonga, the Single A affiliate for the Angels. He struck out and field out in his other plate appearences, so it’s not like his swing is 100% back yet. There is some speculation that he could rejoin the Angels next week, presumbly solely at DH. Fantasy Impact: Mike Napoli and Jeff Mathis will both likely lose playing time as Napoli won’t have the DH role to slot into. Gary Matthews and Juan Rivera will also lose a little playing time.
Kelvim Escobar also was at Rancho Cucamonga and he also did well. Escobar only gave up one hit, 1 walk, and struck out 4 in 4-2/3 innings. He sat around 93 and only gave up 1 unearned run. Fantasy Impact: He’s obviously going to need a couple more starts at least but this is definitely a good start. Once he does return, Palmer is likely the one to be bumped from the rotation through no fault of his own.
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DL, news
Aaron Laffey, Alex Gordon, Anthony Reyes, Carlos Zambrano, Chris Carpenter, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Gary Matthews Jr., Jeff Mathis, Jo-Jo Reyes, Kelvim Escobar, Mike Napoli, Nate Robertson, Omar Infante, Scott Kazmir, Troy Percival, Vincente Padilla, Vladimir Guerrero, Xavier Paul
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One of the great things about daily fantasy baseball contests like Draftbug (enter pitchfx in the promotional code for a deal) is that there are a so many different angles that can impact your strategy. Not only are you trying to figure out who the best players are, which games provide favorable situations to one team, and which players are priced attractively, but there are situations where some players match up particularly well against their opponent.
One of those situations is good base stealers against starting pitchers who are easy to steal against. The first thing to understand about this is that while both pitcher and catcher impact the difficulty of stealing bases, the influence of the pitcher is greater. Because of that (and to keep things simple), when I evaluate these match ups, I look at who the pitcher is, and ignore the catcher. ‘Stolen bases against’ data tends to show very good consistency from year to year, so it’s definitely something with good predictive value.
Here are the “leaders” from 2008. If you’re looking for a good player to pick in Draftbug, see whether any good base stealers are opposing anyone on this list:
Floyd
Jurrjens
D. Cabrera
Wakefield
Millwood
Webb
Danks
Feldman
Burnett
R. Johnson
Volquez
Maddux
G. Olson
Weaver
Pettitte
Snell
Lincecum
Others who would have made the list quite easily if they had started more games include:
Contreras
C. Young
Gorzelanny
Banks
A player like Juan Pierre could be a good play against almost anyone on this list. Not only can he exploit their inability to prevent stolen bases, but he’ll rarely strike out against anyone, neutralize a large part of the edge that most good pitchers have. And he doesn’t rely on home runs, so ground ball pitchers like Webb also lose the advantage they gain from that edge. And at a price of only 84 in Draftbug, he’s a steal…
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DraftBug
After another poor outing, Baker has dropped to 1-5 on the year. He hasn’t been anything close to the same pitcher as he was last year as his ERA is around 7 and he’s giving up home runs left and right. The Twins (and my fantasy team) need him to turn it around and do it quickly. But is it likely to happen?
Baker has always been a flyball pitcher and thus prone to being hurt by the long ball but he is giving up a surprising amount of them. His HR/9 has more than doubled from last year to a 2.33 in 2009, which is also his 3rd straight increase. His 59% left on base % (LOB%) is well under the generally accepted 70% range which is mainly due to his HR rate. His HR/FB% is close to double the league average of 10% (18%). With any runners on, he’s given up 7 out of his 10 HR and every single HRA has been to right handed batters. 70% of his HR have been when he’s ahead in the count and lastly regarding home runs 80% have been off his Four Seam Fastball according to the MLB pitch Fx system.
It’s not just the HRA though. 2009 is the 4th consecutive year his BB/9 has been increasing but his strikeouts are only staying the same resulting is a K/BB ratio that has decreased in each of the last 4 years.
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SP
Scott Baker, SP
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