Contact Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 7: Buy or Sell?
Welcome to Contact Rate Risers and Fallers! Our premium tools allow us to get out ahead of trends in player performance, including contact rate. Every Wednesday, we'll be looking at some players that have seen an increase in contact rate and some that have seen it decline. Contact rate can foretell a player's batting average... Read More
Power Risers and Fallers for Week 7: Buy or Sell?
Welcome to Week 7 of the 2018 MLB season and a new week of our investigation into the steepest power trenders in baseball, whether those trends be positive or negative. As we power through the second half of May, the window of opportunity to snag a surging slugger or to deal a down-and-out disappointment grows... Read More
NL-Only Waiver Team of the Week: MLB Week 7
Every week in baseball, a significant player will hit the disabled list, slip into a slump, or get traded out of a good spot. How fantasy owners adapt to these situations can make or break the season as a whole. One lousy add might not hurt the long-term standing of a team, but failing to... Read More
Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 7)
Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week saw two 21-year-old rookies go into Coors Field and blank the Rockies. An uninspiring afterthought veteran also did something very... Read More
Strikeout Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 7: Buy or Sell?
Due to a combination of harder throwers and hitters focusing on hitting for power, strikeouts are at an all-time high in baseball. For pitchers, this is an ideal trend. The ability to generate swings and misses is the most important skill to possess, as it's the only true way to control what happens after the... Read More
Statcast Hitter Risers/Fallers - Barrels and Exit Velocity
As we enter the seventh week of the baseball season, there is a large enough sample size to rightfully pass judgment on a player's performance without expecting a sudden or dramatic change. While it's easy to glance at the HR leaderboard and determine that these players are tearing the cover off the ball, there are... Read More
Buy or Sell - Underowned and Overowned Players for Week 7
This must be the week when the action really starts. After a few minor deals here and there in April, I've seen a flurry of activity in many fantasy leagues and have made a couple of major transactions myself. We already have trade advice and strategy readily available, so I'll instead continue to focus on... Read More
Hitter Streamers (Week 7) - Head-to-Head Leagues
Welcome back to my hitting streamers column for Week 7, taking a look at hitters to add or stream off the waiver wire for this week's scheduled games. To keep things simple, I pick from players who are 50% owned or less and who play at least seven games in the week. If someone jumps... Read More
Making Moves - Fantasy Baseball Trade Advice for Week 6
We are now over a week into May of the 2018 fantasy baseball season. Now is the time that owners need to take a hard look at their roster to decide what areas they need to improve. The waiver wire has likely been picked clean of the obvious must-add players and the best option now... Read More
A Tale of Two Pitching Prospects - Bieber and Plutko
There has not been much for Cleveland fans to celebrate so far this year, which means most of the short-term attention has shifted to the minors and the next wave of prospects. This article will look to feature two of the more exciting names: Adam Plutko and Shane Bieber. Changes are coming to the Cleveland... Read More
Power Risers and Fallers for Week 6: Buy or Sell?
Welcome to Week 6 of the 2018 MLB season and a new week of our investigation into the steepest power trenders in baseball, whether those trends be positive or negative. As the season progresses further into the month of May, the window of opportunity to snag a surging slugger or to deal a down-and-out disappointment... Read More
AL-Only Waiver Wire Team of the Week for Week 6
Every week a significant player will hit the disabled list, start a slump, or a get traded out the division. How fantasy owners adapt to these situations can make or break the season as a whole. One lousy add might not hurt the long terms standings of a team, but failing to take advantage of... Read More
Chasing Barrels: Hard-Hitting Early Statcast Leaders
When looking to confirm or refute fast starts, we can quickly turn to Statcast Leaderboards for information. While we could fill out a full search, the leaderboards are a quick way to see which hitters are barreling up balls in 2018. While sabermetrics don't always translate to fantasy leaders, they are often a great indicator of... Read More
Contact Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 6: Buy or Sell?
Welcome to Contact Rate Risers and Fallers! Our premium tools allow us to get out ahead of trends in player performance, including contact rate. Every Wednesday, we'll be looking at some players that have seen an increase in contact rate and some that have seen it decline. Contact rate can foretell a player's batting average... Read More
2018 Prospects: Top 30 Impact Rookies for Fantasy Leagues (Week 6)
Hello everyone, and welcome to my weekly Top-30 Fantasy Rankings for Impact Rookies! In this series, I will be going over the top prospects in baseball and discussing which ones figure to have an impact for the rest of this fantasy baseball season. At this point, it’s only a matter of time until this list... Read More
Statcast Pitcher Risers/Fallers - Two-Strike xBA (Week 6)
Welcome back to Rotoballer's series using Statcast to extrapolate, dig into, and commiserate over data to examine pitching performances. The weekly series will be dynamic as we fine-tune our findings and I enlighten myself on the information and tools at my disposal. For Week 6, we'll continue our theme from last week arguing that by... Read More
Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 6)
Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. With all the exciting young pitching prospects being called up and doing well and some veterans surprising us it was hard to... Read More
Strikeout Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 6: Buy or Sell?
Due to a combination of harder throwers and hitters focusing on hitting for power, strikeouts are at an all-time high in baseball. For pitchers, this is an ideal trend. The ability to generate swings and misses is the most important skill to possess, as it's the only true way to control what happens after the... Read More
NL-Only Waiver Wire Team of the Week for Week 6
Every week in baseball, a significant player will hit the disabled list, slip into a slump, or get traded out of a good spot. How fantasy owners adapt to these situations can make or break the season as a whole. One lousy add might not hurt the long-term standing of a team, but failing to... Read More
Hitter Streamers (Week 6) - Head-to-Head Leagues
Welcome back to my hitting streamers column for Week 6, taking a look at hitters to add or stream off the waiver wire for this week's scheduled games. To keep things simple, I pick from players who are 50% owned or less and who play at least seven games in the week. If someone jumps... Read More
Buy or Sell - Underowned and Overowned Players for Week 6
It was nice to see Drew Pomeranz toss a quality start (finally) and prove that he's not a carcass of a former Rockies pitcher like Jhoulys Chacin. This, however, is a disclaimer that some of these buy-low/sell-high candidates may not pan out right away. Or ever. I'm still hoping that as soon as Domingo Santana... Read More
Power Risers and Fallers for Week 5: Buy or Sell?
Welcome to Week 5 of the 2018 MLB season and the first week of our investigation into the steepest power trenders in baseball, whether those trends be positive or negative. As the season turns the corner into the month of May, the window of opportunity to snag a surging slugger or to deal a down-and-out... Read More
Finding Value on the Fringes: Roster Flexibility and Late Picks
The key to winning any fantasy league is finding value where others have not. Either this means buying in on the Matt Kemps of the world early and getting value late in a draft or using roster construction to maximize stat collection. Where players play matters as much as when and how they play for... Read More
Preseason Sleepers Yet to Awaken - Hitters
If you are going to win a championship in your fantasy baseball league, you typically need to hit on at least a couple of sleeper selections during your draft. Anyone who took a shot on Ozzie Albies, Gerrit Cole, or Patrick Corbin have an enormous advantage on the rest of their league due to the... Read More
Minor League Roundup - Who's Hot and Who's Not? (Week 5)
In last week’s edition of “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not”, I mentioned Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Soroka. After dominating Triple-A to start the season, Soroka was promoted to the Major Leagues on Tuesday, and made his big league debut. Soroka promptly dazzled with six innings of one-run ball. Dane Dunning was also mentioned in last week’s piece,... Read More
2018 Prospects: Top 30 Impact Rookies for Fantasy Leagues (Week 5)
Hello everyone, and welcome to my weekly Top-30 Fantasy Rankings for Impact Rookies! In this series, I will be going over the top prospects in baseball and discussing which ones figure to have an impact for the rest of this fantasy baseball season. The prospect promotions continue to roll in. First it was Gleyber Torres... Read More
Statcast Pitcher Risers/Fallers - wOBA - xwOBA (Week 5)
We continue our RotoBaller series using Statcast to extrapolate, dig into, and commiserate over data to examine pitching performances. The weekly series will be dynamic as we fine-tune our findings and I enlighten myself on the information and tools at my disposal. With a month of baseball in the books, most starting pitchers have logged... Read More
Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 5)
Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we've got a trio of youngsters to look at, two in the NL Central and one in the AL. Each... Read More
Hitter Streamers (Week 5) - Head-to-Head Leagues
Welcome back to my hitting streamers column for Week 5, taking a look at hitters to add or stream off the waiver wire for this week's scheduled games. To keep things simple, I pick from players who are 50% owned or less and who play at least seven games in the week. If someone jumps... Read More
Buy or Sell - Underowned and Overowned Players for Week 5
Stop the presses - Ronald Acuna has arrived! The presses have actually been kicking into overdrive since he amazed the baseball world with a wicked single and a couple of really, really long fly ball outs in his Major League debut. Oh, he hit a mammoth home run in his second game too. Like any... Read More