3/13 Spring Training News & Analysis

Spring K-BB% Leaders, Live Game Tracker, Main Event ADP thoughts, and more

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I am traveling back to Pittsburgh for a work thing and then for the home league draft. We all get together and do a slow draft on this sweet deck my buddy’s dad has. It’s a fantastic day. So the content won’t be there this weekend.

But honestly, I don’t really have much left to say. I feel like I’m letting people down without having much to offer in these final few days before the main draft weekend. But then I realize that I don’t think there’s a single person on earth who has written more fantasy baseball stuff this offseason than me. If you have anybody in mind who probably has me beat, let me know, but I don’t really see it.

It’s really something to have a place to write and a button to push and then to know that well more than a thousand people will read what you wrote. Mostly, it feels like nobody reads it because you don’t get much feedback, but what I do is just take that as a ringing endorsement from everybody who opens the email or clicks over to these pages.

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Spring Pitchers

I’m writing this sort of out of boredom and because it’s fun. So let’s look at some spring K-BB% leaders.

Gavin Williams has been talked about a lot, and I’m into it. I’d say you should start looking his way after your draft hits pick 200 or so. The MLB DW league is an auction draft, so it will be interesting to see the price he goes for there.

There’s nothing to see here with Landen Roupp. He’s almost 90% curveball and sinker and his sinker had a stupid low 1.9% SwStr% last year. It’s not going to work out as a starter for the guy.

Clay Holmes continues to get the job done, he’s right in that 180-220 range the same as Gavin Williams.

He is also going to be one of those guys that has RP eligibility, and that can be a big boost in certain league types. If that describes your league (say a points league where you can get his points from an RP spot where you usually wouldn’t get a ton of points from), then you’ll be looking to jump at him around pick 180 to make sure you lock him in. It’s no guarantee, but the upside is strong, especially in that situation I just described.

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Main Event Season

The NFBC Main Event is underway. If you’re unaware, that’s an $1800 buy-in league with a $100K overall top prize. It’s the biggest event in fantasy baseball these days.

I don’t talk about it much because I don’t and never will play in it. The idea of paying $1,800 to play fantasy baseball against a bunch of other people who are willing to pay $1,800 to play fantasy baseball sounds like a very foolish use of money to me.

The comment I have on it is this. And I know a lot of the players read this, so I’ll try not to rustle your jimmies too hard. At the same time, I’m pretty sure 90% of the high-stakes gamblers out there have pretty thick skin, so you can handle it.

I see people saying that the Main Event ADP is the best, the only one you should look at. These are people playing for big bucks, so they must be the best! The ADP must be the sharpest.

And there’s a lot of logic in that. The skin in the game idea is very real. It’s the very reason why our government is so bad at spending money, for example. Why would they be? It doesn’t matter to them what happens to it.

So, the general principle is fine. I just have seen many people who play in these leagues and gamble for huge money who clearly have very little idea what they’re doing. Just because you’re gambling with a ton of money does not mean you’re being smart about it.

But whatever, it’s a fine point, and most of the people in those leagues would beat me. I don’t think I’d have much of a chance in that thing, at least not at first until I got a few seasons of experience under my belt. But again, that will never happen because I have a wife, three kids, and a lawn to mow.

But yeah I’m watching the freaking ADP are you kidding me? I love monitoring those leagues. Maybe somebody I’ll get someone offering to sponsor me in one. They pay the fee, and I run the team and keep a little bit of the prize I don’t win.

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Live Game Tracker Update

Check out the live game tracker here next time games are going. It’s a Python app that is constantly scraping live game data and updating tables. I took a few hours today to get it looking decent. I’m guessing only a small percentage of people will find it useful. The way I’ll use it is just to have it open on my PC while I’m watching a game or working. There are four pages on it now.

Page 1: Scores & Box Score Data

You get your DraftKings points here, so that’s cool to check out if you’re a DFS bro. You also see the main stats there, including the full pitching lines. So that’s fun to watch. You can sort by HR or SB to see who has the bombs & bags for the day.

Page 2: Pitcher Detail

This gives you the advanced stats on starting pitchers. It’s sorted (by default) by whiffs. Always fun to watch a live whiff leaderboard!

Helpful context:

SwStr%: 10% is bad, 12% is average, 14% is great
Strike%: 45% is bad, 47% is average, 49% is good
Ball%: 38% is bad, 36% is average, 34% is good

And then obviously the further you go in either direction makes it better or worse.

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Page 3: Pitch Mix Detail

This lets you see the pitch mix each guy along with velo, whiffs, and our favorite stats to track at a per-start level.

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Page 4: Exit Velos

This isn’t really useful or interesting for fantasy purposes, but it’s there anyways. It shows you the exit velo of each homer hit, and then a table sorting the hardest hit balls of the day.

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I did it mostly for my own enjoyment in developing it, but I do think I’ll use it a good amount during the year. It’s pretty nice for tracking DFS stuff and player props. And I’ll probably be adding onto it as I get more ideas and learn how to refine things.

It’s pretty slow right now. Every time you change the page, it reloads the data, and that takes 5-10 seconds. It also won’t look all that great on mobile, but that’s your fault for using a mobile device for everything. Grow up.

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So that’s it. Wish me luck in the home league draft; I will be forcing updates down your throat on Twitter on Saturday. And then I’ll be back here writing early next week as we get these two Japan games going to open the regular season! What do we do for a week between those games and the actual Opening Day? No idea. I guess just pray that our players don’t get hurt.