The Casual Sabermetrician – First Half 2011 analysis

Welcome back to the Casual Sabermetrician.  It’s July, Summer is in full swing, and we’re at the half way point of the season.  We again look back on our pre-season exercise  and First Quarter Analysis of looking at tERA vs. ERA to find out which pitchers are pitching above their heads and which have been unlucky so far.  For fantasy purposes this translates to who we can sell high on and conversely who we might be able to buy low on.

Again, our method involves extracting tERA and ERA stats from Fangraphs into a spreadsheet and creating a formula to view tERA-ERA.  We can also look and see if the guys we looked at 7 weeks ago have regressed to the mean or not.

The Casual Sabermetrician – First Quarter 2011 analysis

Welcome back to the Casual Sabermetrician.  It’s hard to believe, but after this weekend we’ll be at the Quarter poll of the season with all teams playing around 40 games and most (healthy) starting pitchers having made 8 starts out of their 32-33 for the year.  This affords us a great excuse to look back on our pre-season exercise of looking at tERA vs. ERA to find out which pitchers are pitching above their heads and which have been unlucky so far.  For fantasy purposes this translates to who we can sell high on and conversely who we might be able to buy low on.

Again, our method involves extracting tERA and ERA stats from Fangraphs into a spreadsheet and creating a formula to view tERA-ERA.  They already have this for ERA-FIP, I would imagine them adding ERA-xFIP and ERA-tERA in the near future as I believe these are a much more telling stat when evaluating who is do for regression.

2011 Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Gems – American League

This weekly column focuses on guys who are out there to be had for nothing in most leagues that can help your team even if only as a short-term fill in. Last week I mentioned that if you had injuries like mine, but this week I’ll go a different direction. If you have injuries like an owner who will go unnamed here, which includes Josh Hamilton, Matt Holliday, Zack Greinke, Ryan Zimmerman and Joe Mauer, and you have not quit yet, then these are some guys who may help to ease the pain.

David Murphy, OF Texas Rangers (39% owned in Yahoo, 13% in ESPN leagues)

Current Stat Line – .350 Avg/ 4 R/ 1 HR/ 4 RBI/ 4 SB

With Hamilton out for an extended time, we can expect to see a lot more of David Murphy. He looked good as a fill in last September and his start to this year would suggest it wasn’t a fluke.

Fantasy MLB Spot Starting: 04.17.11

Welcome to the 3rd edition of  Spot Starting, if you missed our first couple posts, read herefor the explanation of how this works.  We also now have results from my first picks from Friday night, I’ll be keeping tabs on how my picks worked at below, and so far so good.

For games on Sunday April 17th these selected pitchers might be had in your league (less than 50% owned in Yahoo) with percent owned, team, and opponent:

Michael Pineda 46% (SEA) @ KC

Alexi Ogando 45% (TEX) @ NYY

Chris Young 34% (NYM) @ ATL  Likely to be scratched

Clayton Richard 32% (SD) @ HOU

Mark Buerle 19% (CWS) vs. LAA

Brian Duensing 18% (MIN) vs. TB

Fausto Carmona 17% (CLE) vs. BAL

My Pick: Michael Pineda at the Royals

Alternate: none

2011 MLB Spring Training Review: Week of March 27th

SPRING TRAINING QUICK HITS

Nyjer Morgan was traded to the Brewers. How do you get cut by the Nationals? That is pretty bad. In Milwaukee, Nyjer will be bottling beer with Laverne and Shirley and hope to share playing time with Carlos Gomez, to form the *biting palm* Lenny and Squiggy Duo Part Deux. Avoid.

Here’s what else happened this week…