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 (9)
Killing two birds with one stone (1) Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) 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
Monday, June 04, 2007Rich Hill: For Real or Fluke?Posted by Derek Carty at 3:44pmAfter his first three starts of the year, Rich Hill had allowed just 1 Earned Run. At that point, many people began to cite Hill's great potential and fantastic start to the year as the reasoning behind a potential ascension to the elite ranks of starting pitchers. A couple of people I know even began to say that Hill would end up a legitimate candidate for the 2007 NL Cy Young award. Hold your horses there... those are some big predictions to make just three games into the season. Well, that was back in April. We're nearly a week into June now, and Hill's ERA stands at an impressive 2.89 and his WHIP at a phenominal 1.03. Is Hill truly becoming one of the elite pitchers in baseball, or is he on the receiving end of some good luck? Let's take a look at some of Hill's critical numbers.
We see that Hill has a good, but not great Strikeout rate. It sits just below 8.00, which provides a lot of value to fantasy leaguers just on its own. His Walk rate has improved from 3.53 in 2006 to just over 3.00 this year, leaving him with a good, but not great, K/BB of 2.63. Seems all of these stats are good, but not great. His ground ball rate isn't good or great. It's up from 30.0% last year, but it is still well-below average. It is unlikely to improve much. A ground ball rate that low should lead to a lot of Home Runs, but as we see Hill has given up a rather average 1.26 HR/9. Because his ground ball rate is below-average, we see that he is giving up a few less home runs than he should be. Now, let's look at his hits and runs. His Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) is nearly .080 below average. We can actually see that Hill has the second lowest BABIP in all of baseball among qualified starting pitchers. Hill isn't giving up nearly enough hits, and this is liable to change at any time. When it does, his WHIP should raise significantly. We also see that on the hits (and walks) that he is giving up, a disproportionate number of these batters are never crossing the plate. On average, a pitcher should allow 28% of base runners to score. In other words, he should strand 72% of these base runners. A large variance from this number is an indication of either good or bad luck. Hill, allowing just 17% of his base runners to score, is getting some very good luck, as he seems to be doing with most of his stats. Over time, Hill's HR/9, BABIP, and LOB% will regress towards the mean and his surface numbers will, correspondingly, worsen. Hill is a pretty good pitcher, but he is not the great pitcher that many are heralding him as. He has the potential to one day become a very good pitcher (although the low ground ball rate will always prevent him from becoming one of the absolute best), but for now his fantasy owners will have to settle for just good. If you can trade him for a proven starter such as Felix Hernandez, Curt Schilling, Cole Hamels, Jeremy Bonderman, John Smoltz, or a number of others, do it. Derek Carty is a 22-year old fantasy baseball analyst residing in New Jersey. In addition to writing for THTF, his work has appeared at Rotoworld (NBC), Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and Heater Magazine. In his two years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 four top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail. CommentsNext Post: A Look at John Buck>> <<Previous Post: Homer Bailey to Start Saturday? | ||||||||||||||||
