Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

It’s been awhile since I’ve written something on here and I promise it was not because of slack. I’ve been working on this year’s fantasy guide and this one is going to be a lot better than last years. The write ups are longer and honestly have more substantial insight. This is the player capsule I wrote for CC Sabathia. I also wrote another capsule for Hyun-Jin Ryu over at Baseball Professor.

Much has been said about Sabathia’s decreased velocity being the primary cause for his down season, but most people forget to mention his fastball velocity actually increased as the season progressed except for August (a hamstring pull is most likely the cause for the drop off). Please see the image below of Sabathia’s fastball velocity since 2007 (courtesy of BrooksBaseball.net).

When looking at the chart the decline in fastball velocity is quite apparent, but according to the data in the table below the effectiveness of the fastball didn’t change very much in 2013 (data from BrooksBaseball.net). Also, from the research I’ve done, a drop in fastball velocity does not correlate to poor performance. Therefore, something else must have caused the poor performance.

There must be another reason why 2013 was such a poor season. According to one talent evaluator the weight loss was detrimental. “The weight loss has created a balance problem for him. He’s all over the place. He’s learning how to pitch in that body, a body he’s really never had. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him other than that. Sometimes you pitch at a certain weight all your life and then someone has the brilliant idea that you should lose weight because it’s putting stress on your knees, you do it, and then you’re dealing with something else.”

Sabathia was bad last year, but I believe he can still rebound and turn it around because he never relied on the fastball to get guys out. Also, you don’t need to throw in the mid-90s to get batters, just ask Hyun-Jin Ryu. I don’t believe he’ll return to 2011 levels, but he could still be a usable starter in 12-team mixed leagues if can repeat his delivery with his new, slimmer body.

If you are looking for his statistical projections please go here and download my latest projections.

In honor of The Baseball Show with Rany and Joe ending I wanted to evaluate one of the comments Rany Jazayerli made. Since I was listening to it as I was cooking I forget the exact quote, but he said something to the effect of (about Andrelton Simmons), “his contact rates are high enough  to have a .280 batting average.” He could have said high average instead of .280 or maybe it was some other number; I could have made it up, so I apologize if I misquoted him.

However, the idea got me thinking about contact rates. The most important takeaway of this idea is I wanted to see what type of significance do contact rates have on a hitter’s batting average? Specifically, do how high contact rates correlate to higher batting averages?

To get better understanding of regression and what R squared means, feel free to checkout a primer I wrote about regression. I looked at hitters with at least 200 plate appearances (by year) from 2008-13 via FanGraphs. The sample size was 2,095 hitters. The y-axis is batting average and the x-axis is contact%.

With an R squared of 0.09 suggests there is very little (positive) relationship between contact rates and batting average. So, basically, a player’s ability to make contact does not necessarily mean a player will have a higher batting average. I find this type of information really cool because there are times when I’ll write about a player’s contact rates without ever questioning if contact rates had any impact on batting average.

For fun I looked how well BABIP correlated to batting average (with the same sample size) and this is what I found (image below). With a R squared of 0.64 suggests there is a positive relationship between a high BABIP and a high batting average. That said, it is not the end-all-be-all so do not automatically assume a higher BABIP will automatically result in a higher batting average.

After the A’s traded for Drew Pomeranz I thought the A’s were done making moves because it looked as though the 25-27 man roster was ready for the start of Spring Training. However, in the A’s traded Jerry Blevins to the Washington Nationals for minor league prospect Billy Burns. The trade is very interesting because I believed Blevins was going to be the much needed second lefty specialist (in addition to Sean Dolittle) in a division that now contains Robinson Cano, Prince Fielder, Logan Morrison, Josh Hamilton and Kyle Seager.

With Blevins out of the picture it appears Dan Otero is the front runner to assume the fifth spot in a very good bullpen. Otero is a sinker ball (sits 90-92 mph) pitcher and has performed better against lefties than righties, which isn’t that surprising as the sinker has a lot arm-side movement (i.e. it breaks away from the left handed hitters bat).

Another dark horse for the bullpen is newly acquired Fernando Abad who was acquired from the Nationals two weeks ago. Before last year his fastball sat 90-91 mph, but in 2o13 his velocity ticked up and he was sitting 93 mph and touched as high as 97. In terms of his secondary offerings he throws a knuckle curveball that is a solid weapon against lefties, especially when he’s locating his fastball. If I were going to pick between the two I say Abad gets the slight edge over Otero. However, towards the end of the Bob Melvin was putting Otero in more high leverage situations towards the end of the year.

Another popular trend on Twitter is Pomeranz will become the next lefty reliever in the bullpen, which is highly unlikely for 2014. I’ll admit I said yesterday his floor is an eighth inning power reliever, but the A’s are going to try to keep him as a starter because 180 innings is more valuable than 60. For a deep sleeper, do not sleep on Jeremy Barfield because he is left handed and has a low to mid-90s fastball, slider and split-finger. It’s very possible he could follow the same path as Doolittle.

Overall, this seems like a small salary dump as Blevins is expected to make $2-3 million dollars in arbitration this year. Also, Blevins’ services must have been seen superfluous as they have internal options within the organization. Based on the scouting reports I’ve read Burns is gamer who possess one elite tool (speed) and is an above average defender in center field. Even though his numbers in the minors were good last year, do not forget he was old for the level and this year will be a big test for him in triple-a. I can’t wait to see him play.