Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals (8)
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (12) Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Tuesday, June 09, 2009Pitcher perfectPosted by Paul Singman at 1:50amThe day is Saturday in a Head-to-Head league and you are tied with the team you are playing against in wins. This is a great situation to add a pitcher for just one day to make a spot-start to increase your chances of winning the category. Let's go through a few of the criteria that you should go through when selecting the spot-start pitcher perfect for you. The overwhelmingly most important thing to weigh is the spot-starting pitcher's skill. LIPS ERA, True ERA, xFIP—whatever measure of pitcher's skill that works for you is the overriding factor. But if there are two or more pitchers available that have about the same level of skill, there are some tiebreaking factors that should next be taken into account. Almost everybody takes into account the lineup the pitcher will face, which is smart because there is a better chance a pitcher gives up more runs against a better-hitting team. Another thing most people account for is how well the pitcher has pitcher in his last few starts. Even though small sample size alerts may be going off in a few people's heads, The Book does show that hot streaks for pitchers do exist to an extent. Although relatively unimportant compared to the other criteria used to evaluate spot-starting pitchers, many people also are influenced somewhat subconsciously by the team of a pitcher. There is something unjustifiably more enticing about adding a Dodgers starter than a Nationals one. Admittedly, some merit exists in considering the pitcher's team since we are looking for a win and a Dodgers pitcher is definitely more likely to get the "W." Still, I would put it at the bottom of the list because there is another tiebreaking factor few people look at that has a much bigger impact on whether your pitcher comes away with the win: The opposing pitcher. My theory is that it takes a little more effort—and by effort I do not mean eight minutes and running a mile, but 30 seconds and a couple extra clicks with your index finger—to find out the starting pitcher for the opposing team and that is why so few factor it in even though it can have a tremendous impact. Sometimes it will not matter because the opposing pitchers for two potential spot-starters are about equal. Other times however, one pitcher will be facing Doctor Roy and the other Jamie Moyer. Clearly, you want the guy countering Moyer and not Halladay, as this will have a huge impact on whether your pitcher gets the win. Overall though, the spot-starting pitcher's skill is by far the most important factor and can override all of the others. When two pitchers are close in skill, then you can start looking at secondary and tertiary factors. For a reminder of their order of importance:  At the beginning of the article I made the context for needing a spot-start from a pitcher a daily updated, Head-to-Head league, but really I could have made it any type of league. Spot-starters are necessary in all league formats, just in some more than others. Any factors you use that I forgot to mention? Let me know in the comments. Paul has been managing fantasy baseball teams for many seasons and writing for THT Fantasy over the past year (and counting). In his first year competing in expert's leagues, he is both surprised and happy to say he finished in the top 30% of his three leagues. He welcomes readers' thoughts at his email here or in the comments below.
Eric/OR said...
Handedness is certainly crucial to consider - team OPS splits can be quite strong, as Mike points out. The other thing I’d suggest considering is Home vs. Road starts. It’s probably on the “less important” end of the spectrum, but a THT Fantasy article from earlier this year contained data indicating a noticeably greater chance for the home-team starter to win relative to the road-dog. Posted 06/09 at 03:32 PM
BobbyRoberto said...
Yeah, I always look at home/road splits. Sometimes, it’s obvious—you don’t spot start a pitching in Colorado. Also, most every MLB team wins more games at home, so I try to pick up guys who are playing in their own ballpark. Posted 06/09 at 08:14 PM
Paul Singman said...
All good points guys. Mike, your idea about handedness seems important to me. I plan at taking a look at all of the teams and creating a list of teams that favor lefties/righties/ or are neutral. And the home/road splits article you guys are referring to (a very interesting article by Johnny Halket) shows there is a slight advantage to the home pitcher. If you are stuck between two guys, there is no shame in taking the home one. Posted 06/09 at 11:00 PM
Page 1 of 1
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Next Post: Handling the least-considered category>> <<Previous Post: Roster doctor - 6/9/09 |
A couple of other thoughts
1-Handedness of opposing team - I prefer LHP vs. Minnesota & RHP vs. Milwaukee.
2-Park - This goes a bit with opposing team, but I’m hesitant to pickup a starter @CWS or @CIN. Both have reasonable lineups but I want to avoid cheap HR’s
3-Injuries & off days - I’m clearly less afraid of Cincinnati w/o Votto or Texas w/o Hamilton. If the catcher on the opposing team is a good offensive player, I can reasonably guess that he’s gonna get a day off on a day game after a night game.