All posts under "Key Articles" - Page 4

The Actual Art of the Deal Itself In the first two parts in our series on trading, we talked about how perceptions can skew player values and how you should use that to your advantage. And we offered ideas on...

Jay Bruce – Reds Outfielder – Bats Left – 6-2, 206 – 4/3/1987  The Red’s first round pick in 2005 should be on everyone’s radar by now when considering top offensive prospects. Last year all Jay accomplished was the...

This week’s closer’s report centers around Chicago where I warned you earlier that Lou Piniella was about to start flailing. Sweet Lou is considering moving Ryan Dempster to the starting rotation in the near future and using 25-year-old Angel...

Shaking the Trade Tree In the first part of our series, we talked about how one critical aspect of the trading game is being aware that every player has more than one absolute value. He has, in fact, a different...

Jesse Litsch – Blue Jays Starting Pitcher – Throws Right – 6-1, 175 – 3/9/1985 The 22-year-old right-hander was strong in his MLB debut against the Orioles on May 15th, holding them to 1 earned run on 4 hits...

style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Pitching Category Mashup (K/BB and QS%)   Good morning everybody. For today's First Pitch we are going to do something a little off the wall -- and perhaps mathematically unsound - and mash together a couple of key pitching...

Homer Bailey – Reds Starting Pitcher – Throws Right – 6-3, 190 – 5/3/1986 The Reds’ first round pick in 2004 out of La Grange Texas has been considered as one the top pitching prospects in baseball. As a...

There is a power shift in Washington this morning as Jon Rauch takes over the closers role in place of Chad Cordero who has been placed on the bereavement list.   Rauch’s indicators hardly spell c-l-o-s-e-r. This year in...

Good Morning! We are supposed to be preaching patience to you. We are supposed to tell you not to panic and not overvalue what are still some pretty meager statistical samples when we look at our rosters. That is always...

Hunter Pence – Astros Outfielder – Bats Right – 6-4, 210 – 4/13/1983 The Astros finally figured out that Chris Burke was a problem. It just took them a bit longer than the rest of us.  That brings up...

In our continuing series on player recommendations, today we take a look at the pitchers who are deviating from their projected production. Please refer to the Batters article for an explanation of the terms used such as FPI (FPI^ =...

American League 1 Alex Gordon KC 3B A+ He's walking more lately, but just not making enough solid contact. Patience is advised. 2 Delmon Young TAM OF A+ Slow start....707 OPS and 20/4 K/BB suggest a breakout may not come...

This week we start with Tom Gordon heading back to Philly to have his painful right shoulder examined. The Phillies say that Gordon will not be with the team this weekend in San Francisco. We are early in this...

Your fantasy offense is an Army. It is, hopefully, a relentless snowfall of stats that accumulates into major problems for your opponents. However, your pitchers are different. Your pitching staff is instead an orchestra. It is helpful to be aware...

The headline news in the bullpen this week comes from Texas where Eric Gagne was placed on the DL with a strained hip/glut. Akinori Otsuka returns to the closer role which he handled quite well last season, recording 32...

As you can see by yesterday's mailbag article by Lou, we get our fair share of email around here and we try our best to get to all of it and respond. Sometimes we'll respond back through email, through our...

This week we look at some of the hottest prospects around.    Tom Gorzelanny and Adam Lind are in the majors now but the rest of these guys can best be described by Dennis Leary’s first catch phrase …...

An abbreviated look at this week's Prospect Spreadsheet Updates: TOP 50 HITTING PROSPECTS From the AL: 1 Alex Gordon KC 3B A+ - Very slow start, but he did hit his first big-league home run. I don't see Triple-A in...

The big ninth-inning story in baseball right now plays out north of the border in Toronto where primary closer B.J. Ryan came up with an elbow injury.  Jason Frasor is the man for the Jays for now and he...

It's not as if we all need to wear name tags or anything, but there's a certain "getting to know you"atmosphere around most fantasy baseball teams this year. Of course, we know most of the names and the stat lines...

Prospect Central Week #3 Welcome to Prospect Central for Week #3. Today we will look at some players doing it … or not doing it … or sort of doing it, on the MLB level. Today it is a...

Lefty/Righty Match-Ups We all know about the advantage a pitcher has over a batter when the handedness is the same. It's usually tougher for a lefty hitter to hit off a lefty pitcher. The same thing goes for righties. But...

We talk about numbers all the time here ...   They are important to what we do. The key to this whole game we play is to determine which numbers more accurately indicate performance and which numbers more accurately...

Welcome to Prospect Central for Week #2! Today we look at a few prospects who earned a spot on the major league team's Opening Day roster and some that could have, and probably will before the summer is out....

There may be trouble brewing in Anaheim. Derek Zumsteg (www.zumsteg.net) has done a Zappruder-esque breakdown of some footage from Monday's game that seems to show K-Rod working with a foreign substance planted under the bill of his cap. The Rangers were on it too and have contacted the Commissioner's Office.

Like Curt Schilling before him on Monday, today's start for Josh Beckett allegedly unveils a revamped and revised edition of the pitcher for 2007.

Welcome to another season of Prospect Central! Here is where you find breakdowns of Insiderbaseball.com's Top 100 Prospects. Each week you can also check out our Prospect Central Spreadsheet with rankings and updates on our top 50 pitching and hitting prospects. Every Sunday we'll look at a few prospects and get behind the numbers a bit, telling what we think is ahead. During the year I'll be looking at minor leaguers who are making their MLB debuts or knocking on the door to help you get a jump on your fellow owners. Here on Opening day I have done that with NL Rookie of the Year Candidate Troy Tulowitzki however this morning I wanted to get out a little bigger zoom lens and look at the core of what is a great group young players collecting in the low minors.

The Masters of Inconsistency (Player Projections at Risk) Last week we introduced Consistency Factor and it's implications to both Head to Head leagues as well as all Fantasy leagues regardless of their scoring setup.

Runners Stranded Percentage: Measures the percentage of batters that reach base but do not score (more specifically, are not credited to a pitcher's Earned Runs). The average stranded percentage for starters is .71. Pitchers with Stranded Percentages of about .75 usually have successful ERA and Win totals.

Expected ERA (XERA) depicts a pitcher's "True ERA" as it bases its expectation on factors within a pitcher's control. These factors include Hits, Walks, Home Runs allowed and K's. When you consider the inequity with the ERA calculation, specifically related to errors and base runners inherited/left, many including myself consider XERA to be a more precise gauge of ability.