Sabermiketrics

This offseason has been a little frustrating as a Yankees fan. The team is coming off a fantastic 2018 season. 100 wins is nothing to scoff at, plus the team has one of the best young cores in the game, while also getting the payroll below the luxury tax threshold, an accomplishment that’s been in the works for a seemingly long time. Those 100 wins ultimately weren’t enough, as the Boston Red Sox were even greater; 108 regular season wins and a World Series title to top it off. So now it’s time for the Yankees to make the additions to make it to the top right? Well not exactly. The Yankees quickly traded for James Paxton, and have re-signed J.A. Happ and Zach Britton (who both only spent half the season in New York last year) to appropriate deals. They even signed DJ LeMahieu to a two-year deal. These additions are all great but for a lot of fans, seems to be insufficient. The big disappointment early in the offseason was when Patrick Corbin signed to the Nationals after many fan...

Watching the Yankees last month, the team was scuffling in a four game series against the Baltimore Orioles. They lost three out of four in that series, including a 14-inning loss and a 12-inning loss. During the second of those extra inning losses, Michael Kay on the broadcast asked Paul O’Neill why hitters seemingly get worse in extras. Specifically, he hypothesized that hitters went up to the plate and were thinking about the one big swing that could send everybody home right then. O’Neill agreed, and I couldn’t help but wonder about if it were true. First things first, it’s not just an illusion that teams hit worse in extra innings. From the start of 2017 to now, the Yankees had a .340 team wOBA in innings one through eight. In the 9 th inning plus extra innings with the go-ahead run at the plate (in other words, a home run would end the game), their team wOBA dropped down to .250, which is a gigantic difference. It’s not the just the Yankees who see a drop off in extras. Th...

The 2017 MVP race in the American League was an important one, or at least for me. Growing up, a lot of awards races ended up shaping the way I view baseball now. In 2010, King Felix won the Cy Young award with an amazing   2.27 ERA in 249.2 innings pitched but only a 13-12 record. Pitching wins no longer mattered. In 2012, Mike Trout put up what I think is the best overall season in my memory, dominating in hitting, defense, and baserunning, but still losing to Miguel Cabrera’s triple crown. Conventional stats overshadowed Trout’s season. In 2016, Mookie Betts put up an amazing 9.5 WAR season for a division winner, while Mike Trout put up an even better 10.5 WAR season for the subpar Angels. It turned out you didn’t have to play for a playoff team to win MVP. The 2017 AL MVP race was pretty fun for me despite not having different baseball cultures clashing. Two guys were the obvious candidates, winner Jose Altuve and runner-up Aaron Judge. Traditional stats loved them; Altuv...

When I last talked about fantasy baseball, I focused on the best way to draft catchers. Essentially, I realized that the few offensively-talented catchers were sandwiched between superior players, so it would make most sense to draft the best players available. The goal of course is to draft a team with the highest projected points that I can possibly get, so passing up on better players didn’t make sense. I looked at the “net rank” for catchers, which is how they ranked in projected points minus how they ranked in ADP. This approach made the most sense to me because if I was drafting a catcher with the best net ranking, I knew I wouldn’t be hurting my team by drafting them in their ADP with better players potentially available. This made sense but over time, it started driving me a little mad with a flaw it had. This chart that displays the 2017 fantasy season among position players, starting pitchers, and relief pitchers should explain why: There are a few takeaways fr...

No position is trickier to draft than catcher. People value defense greatly over offense when it comes to catcher, and because of the physically demanding nature of the position, they typically don’t play as many games. Only 22 players who primarily played catcher played in 100 or more games; 12 played in 120+. As a product of defensive priorities, only eight of those 22 catchers even hit at an above-average level (OPS+ over 100). Mix lack of playing time with lack of talent and you got a position that lacks players that are actually valuable in fantasy. Because a good hitting catcher who plays a lot is so rare, it’s going to take a pretty high pick to get one of the elite. There’s really two catchers that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of the pack: Gary Sanchez and Buster Posey (20 and 59 ADP respectively). Wilson Contreras (53 ADP) is projected as being the third best, who in limited playing time has hit great in his career, with Molina, Perez, and Realmuto getting mor...

As I continue on my quest to master the world of sabermetrics, there’s another thing I want to conquer: fantasy baseball. What’s so great about fantasy is it uses the traditional counting stats we’ve always used, such as hits, walks, strikeouts, runs, and so on, but we try to predict and project the future using the advanced data we have available. Up until the season, and maybe even throughout the season, I’m going to keep up this series of me trying my best to draft the best team possible. Since I’m a positive guy, I figure we’ll start with some players that I think will break out, bounce back, or just be great in 2018. I’ll focus especially on the player’s stats from the past three seasons, and use stats such BABIP , xWOBA , various batted-ball metrics from Statcast , walk rates, strikeout rates, FIP , left-on-base percentage , and ADP. ADP (average draft position) is critical here because certain players become steals based off having a value that exceeds where they rank in A...

I’ve written about Broxton a couple times now. It first started when I proclaimed him to be the next big thing in baseball , and then I listed him as one of the power/speed/defense hybrids that we now see in today’s center fielders. Really that’s what is so frustrating about Keon Broxton; I have so much good to say about him yet I was so, so wrong about him being the next big thing. Based off his 2016 season, I saw a lot of good in him. In just a half season, he hit 9 homers and stole a very efficient 23 bases. He was fast, he hit the ball as hard as the best hitters in the league, and when he was called up for good in the second half, he put up really impressive numbers. 2017 saw a lot of that same talent. It’s definitely there, just check out this great highlight video . Homers! Catches! Effortless speed! I love all those things. In 2017, Broxton continued to show off the skills that I saw. He hit 20 homers with 21 stolen bases, one of only nine players to accomplish 20/2...