Investing & Maybe Fantasy Baseball

If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.

Despite two years in a row of sub-3.20 ERAs and his high prospect ranking I’m still not buying Julio Teheran. I have a hard time trusting pitchers who are fly ball pitchers and have had good luck on their side. By good luck I mean he’s had below average BABIPS, HR/FB rates and LOB%’s in the last two seasons, which has led to his ERAs to be far above his respective FIPs and xFIPs.

Mark Bowman at MLB.com wrote how the slider emerged in 2014, but the stats don’t support it (table below).

The fact he’s a low walk and fly ball pitcher works really well for his home ballpark so I shouldn’t have a bias about Teheran’s ability to continue to repeat the numbers he put up the past two seasons. The most recent case of a pitcher with a similar profile as Teheran is Jeremy Hellickson. Hellickson, is a fly ball pitcher, had extremely good BABIPs, HR/FB rates and LOB%s from 2011-12. He defied the odds by consistently putting up ERAs below his FIP and xFIP. However, in 2013 his good luck ran out.

Teheran is a better pitcher than Hellickson. First and most importantly, Teheran misses way more bats because his stuff is much better. However, they still both rely on generating weak contact in order to get outs and for me, that’s not a profile I want to pay top dollar for.

It’s important how the offense was inept last year and how it’s going to continue next year. In eight losses of his losses last season, the Braves scored a total of nine runs and were shutout three times. As of late December I have serious questions of the Braves offense will score runs. Last year they were 27^th in the majors in wOBA and 29^th in runs scored. Now they lost Justin Upton and Tommy LaStella and replaced them with Nick Markakis and Alberto Callaspo. At the very least I don’t think the offense is going to be even better so it’s possible Teheran will struggle to earn wins.

My 2015 projection for Teheran is 210 IP, 3.40 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 170 Ks and 12 wins.

If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.

Based on Jon Lester’s 2014 numbers, the team he plays for and the contract that team gave him he is going to be one of the most over drafted players next year in drafts. Before the 2014 season began I was not buying Lester as a real life ace because his track record looked more like a number two starter (you can ask Jake Devereaux from Baseball Professor about the lively email debate about this at the start of the 2014 season).

Lester gets a lot of praise for how good his cutter is, but looking at the statistics (table below) the performance of the cutter was good last year, but it was “worse” compared to previous seasons.

Last year his strikeout rate was the highest it’s ever been since 2010 and the reason for this was due to the larger incorporation of the curveball. The image below (from BrooksBaseball.net) shows his swing and miss rate on the curveball since 2007.

The curveball was exceptional last year. Among qualified starting pitchers his curveball had the third highest swing and miss rate (behind Matt Garza and Corey Kluber). It’s no wonder he started throwing the curveball more last year.

Judging by how much he tightened up his release point (image below from BrooksBaseball.net) with his other pitches its no wonder why hitters were having difficulty picking up the curveball out of the hand and swinging and missing more than ever.

The big question is, is this change sustainable? Last year his HR/FB rate was 7.2%, which was the second lowest of his career. You may be thinking his time in Oakland suppressed that number, but in fact he had a 6.5% HR/FB rate with the Red Sox before being traded to Oakland so he actually got lucky last year. It’s possible the reemergence of the curveball caused the lower HR/FB rate, but I think there is going to be some regression next year.

In regards to his wins potential I have questions about their infield and outfield defense. The defense was below average last year and I don’t see any reason for a dramatic improvement in 2015. I have questions about the Cubs bullpen’s ability to hold leads (especially if Pedro Strop is given high leverage innings again).

My projection for 2015 is 210 IP, 200 Ks, 3.15 ERA, 1.13 WHIP and 13 wins.

If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.

Before you think about Johnny Cueto in your top 10 do not forget about the three separate times he went on the DL for the same injury in 2013. After coming off the DL for the last time he changed his delivery and used the same new delivery in 2014 and was healthy the entire season. Even though he may have a higher injury risk than other pitchers he’s still one of the best pitchers when healthy.

Since 2011 he has a 2.48 ERA with a 1.07 WHIP, 20.8% strikeout rate, .264 BABIP, 8.6% HR/FB rate and 79.6% LOB%. Last year he was extremely lucky with the BABIP and LOB% (.238 and 82.5% respectively) so regression should occur. Also, what’s troubling was his ground ball rate was the lowest its been since 2010. The reason why the ground ball rate has decreased is because he’s not throwing the slider nearly as much and has opted to throw a cutter (image below from BrooksBaseball.net).

The usage of the cutter is likely to remain consistent which means I do not expect the ground ball rate to increase back to pre-2013 levels. The positive side of using the cutter more is it misses a lot of bats. In the last two seasons the cutter has a 24% strikeout rate.

Overall, I expect Cueto’s 2014 numbers to regress, but not as much as you might think. I still believe he’ll have a sub-3.00 ERA with the same strikeout rate. I’m projecting him to make 25 starts because of the injury risk. Its important to note that when you calculate your rankings and/or dollar values for each player that you add 5-7 additional starts to your estimated statistics from a replacement level pitcher that’s likely to be available in your league format. If you play in a shallow format Cueto’s value gets an uptick because there is going to be a big pool of streamable pitchers available on the waiver wire.

My 2015 projection for Cueto is 160 IP, 2.80 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 163 Ks and 10 wins.