"… the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same – pitching.” — Earl Weaver
Altuve is my fantasy leader for the 2nd year running. Photo via mlblogs.com
Standard disclaimer; I do this post every year. If you don’t play fantasy, you probably won’t care about the 3,000+ words contained herein. You won’t hurt my feelings by not reading. I’ll include a jump so it doesn’t blow out your mobile reader. Back to our regularly scheduled programming next week with final roster analysis once the last bench spots are announced.
Last year’s version of this post.
Lopez is the #1 Verducci effect risk factor arm for 2017. Photo via wp.com/Mitchell Layton getty images
This year’s installment of si.com’s Tom Verducci‘s “Year After Effect” (which he’s using as the title instead of the eponymous “Verducci Effect”) was published earlier this month. This is a quick review of the past few years of his work and documentation of his macabre “success rate” in predicting trouble for young arms working on large innings load increases.
Here’s my reviews of his lists on this same topic from year’s past: 2013 year after effect and 2014 year after effect, and 2016’s year after effect (I forgot to do it in 2015). In the 2013 post, there’s some counter-arguments to whether or not his “effect” actually exists, with research on all pitchers who qualified for the thresholds he laid out at the time. I won’t go into the same arguments made there; what I will do is point out the actual results of his predictions:
So in the last four years, he’s identified a total of 40 arms at risk and 31 of them regressed or got hurt. That’s a 77.5% overall “success” rate at predicting regression or injury over multiple years. You can quibble with those who claim this “effect” doesn’t exist but you’can’t argue against Verducci’s research year over year. For me, his analysis is less about running pure numbers to find candidates and more about giving context to the pitchers he selects. Mostly they’re starters (not relievers), mostly they’re young and mostly they’re guys who had to pitch high leverage innings on top of vastly increased workloads. But if you want counter arguments to his observations, see the 2013 post above for links.
So who’s listed this year? A slew of pitchers this year, including a name at the top that we’re quite familiar with. Most of his pitchers this year are very young and nearly all of them only pitched part-time in the majors. In a departure this year, 9 of the 12 guys he lists pitched mostly in the minors in 2016 and mostly struggled in the majors, which is going to make my judgement next year as to whether the player “regressed” more difficult. But here’s the list of 12 guys:
| 2017 Candidate Name/Team | Age as of Jan 2017 | 2016 IP | 2016 IP delta increase | 2016 ERA | 2016 FIP | 2016 xFIP | 2016 SIERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reynaldo Lopez, White Sox | 22 | 155.3 | 56.3 | 4.91 | 3.92 | 4.52 | 4.55 |
| Aaron Sanchez, Blue Jays | 23 | 203.6 | 70.3 | 3 | 3.55 | 3.75 | 4.01 |
| Rob Whalen, Mariners | 22 | 144.6 | 48 | 6.57 | 5.05 | 4.77 | 4.47 |
| Brock Stewart, Dodgers | 24 | 149 | 48 | 5.79 | 5.9 | 5.03 | 4.62 |
| Joe Musgrove, Astros | 23 | 147.3 | 46.6 | 4.06 | 4.18 | 4.04 | 3.98 |
| Julio Urias, Dodgers | 19 | 127.6 | 40 | 3.39 | 3.17 | 3.69 | 3.88 |
| Jeff Hoffman, Rockies | 23 | 150 | 46 | 4.88 | 6.27 | 4.96 | 5.22 |
| Michael Fulmer, Tigers | 23 | 174.3 | 49.6 | 3.06 | 3.76 | 3.95 | 4.03 |
| Sean Manaea, A's | 24 | 166.3 | 44.6 | 3.86 | 4.08 | 3.96 | 4.04 |
| German Marquez, Rockies | 21 | 187.3 | 48.3 | 5.23 | 4.26 | 3.89 | 3.97 |
| Jake Thompson, Phillies | 22 | 183.6 | 43.6 | 5.7 | 6.16 | 5.64 | 5.68 |
| Daniel Mengden, A's | 23 | 170.3 | 39.6 | 6.5 | 4.34 | 4.57 | 4.5 |
Click here for my full Verducci effect worksheet with detailed stats pre- and post-season.
The guys i’m most intrigued by include:
Hey, at least there’s no Nats this year 🙂
Well, he’ll always have Kate. And his Ferraris. Photo unk via rumorsandrants.com
Every year I publish an “End of Season Awards Prediction” piece, and then every year I write a post-mortem patting myself on the back for how good I was at predicting the awards.
(I should put this in as a reminder; my “prediction” pieces are just that; my attempt to Predict how the BBWAA electorate will vote. It is NOT my personal opinion on who should have won. )
In 2015 I went (7 for 8). In 2014 (6 for 8), 2013 (8 for 8), 2012 (7 for 8), 2011 (8 for 8), and 2010 (8 for 8).
However this year, I missed on fully half the awards. Here’s the ones I got right:
And here’s the ones I got wrong:
For the ones I got wrong, here was my thinking for predicting the wrong winner:
So what happened? My conclusion; I think the Electorate is finally starting to get these awards “right,” or at least more “right” than in recent memory. All of my “narrative-driven” predictions were wrong thanks to voters being smarter and picking the right winner (well, except for Verlander of course).
This is great news! Bravo to the BBWAA writers for improving. Now about that Hall of Fame ballot….
Scherzer may have the best shot of our 4 “finalists” for awards this week. Photo via washtimes.com
Quick break from Nats off-season stuff to talk about the “silly season” of baseball. Its awards week, with all the major BBWAA awards to be given out this week.
Here’s my predictions for how the awards will go. This is not necessarily how I believe the awards should go … once again, I think narrative wins out over Mike Trout‘s 10+ WAR season, and we may see an east coast bias in the AL rookie award. But lets see how it goes.
Here’s the list of finalists, published last week.
The writers have to submit their ballots at the end of the season; I finished this post in early October but waited until the awards season to arrive to publish it. Thus, it contains no inclusion of any post-season accolades or accomplishments since the votes were already in before the playoffs started.
How do I think the voting will go?
Actual Award Results added as they were awarded:
My prediction results: 4 for 8. Got Seager, Franconia, Scherzer, Bryant. Missed on Fulmer, Roberts, Porcello, Trout. Historically i’ve been pretty good at these predictions; this was a very bad year for me. Which is good, because it means that the electorate is improving and that generally my over-thinking of voters picking bad results should lessen.
Links to other awards that I didn’t necessarily predict:
Note: I made some prediction mistakes based on the publication of the 3 finalist links; I’ll note those in the discussion links below.
Discussion:
Running Diary of Awards candidates.
End of April; Here’s MLB’s players of the month link.
Mid May Check-in:
Half-way point of the season: Cliff Corcoran’s First half Awards, Jeff Passan‘s mid-way awards article. The Ringer’s Mike Baumann‘s mid-season awards post.
Mid August check in:
Mid September check-in:
Altuve was a huge driving factor for me in Fantasy this year … but it wasn’t enough to win the championship. Photo via mlblogs.com
Usual caveats apply; if you don’t care about Fantasy Baseball, you probably won’t care about this post. I’ll return to Nats next week and am hoping to return to my detailed per-level pitching reviews this year….
Fantasy Baseball has wrapped up for the year; most leagues are doing their playoff finals this week. This is my post-mortem for the year. Here was my 2016 team preview article at the beginning of the year to show my drafted team.
My strategy for this year (pulled from the preview article):
Results: My strategy worked out pretty well. I had very good hitters, I got quality starters late and off waivers, I kept 3-4 closers all year, and I finished the regular season in 1st place by 3 games. I was able (as always) to find quality OF and 1B on the waiver wire (in my case, Will Myers who exploded). My one strategy miss may have been waiting on a Catcher; my catcher was awful all year and there was no help on the waiver wire until later (see below for who I picked up).
Even despite finishing in 1st place regular season, my pitchers badly declined later in the year, I had an off-week offensively in the playoffs and I got bounced by the 5th place team in the semis. And when I say bounced, I mean I lost 2-8 on the week. So, a disappointing finish. But i think the strategy was sound and I’ll do it again next year.
Here’s how I ended up in team stats for the season:
Yeah; too bad we’re not playing Rotisserie. The only category i was guaranteed to lose nearly every week was Steals. Overall I had a pretty good year.
Here’s my initial draft and the player disposition on the year.
I drafted 9th out of 10 spots. Here is my team (the two numbers are Round and # overall).
So, just 8 of 21 players on my team all year from the draft. And not one player drafted after the 10th round made it all the way though. I’m not sure if that’s an indictment of my drafting, or just the nature of fantasy baseball.
Here was my team (save for playoff transactions) at the end of the year:
So, how do we improve for next year? My downfall was depending on waiver wire starters who faltered late. I definitely had too many rookies (Sanchez and Fulmer in particular) leading the line.
I need to be patient with starters of course, but that’s the same thing every year.
I need to focus on getting a SB threat in the draft.
I need better luck. Or to go rotisserie. Or to get some transactions during the playoffs (which became a huge issue in our league, especially as I lost 3 different guys to injury during the playoffs).