Hitting for the Cycle #12
A Sunday Review - April 10, 2022
📖 What I’m Reading:
Main Event 2022: Statistical Targets and First FAAB - Todd Whitestone
Todd Whitestone is a great writer, and these weekly articles where he discusses the NFBC Main Event league trends and FAAB transactions are important to becoming a better player. You do not need to be playing in an NFBC Main Event league to derive some important information such as who is being added and dropped by some of the top players in the game. However, similar to analyzing the top DFS players, it’s not just about if I roster player X, I will be successful. It’s about understanding roster construction in a given contest. Similarly, with season long fantasy, it’s not only about you should be rostering player X, but how the top fantasy players are constructing their roster for the year and upcoming weeks. Just rostering a hitter/pitcher because a successful fantasy player likes them is like getting a jolt of sugar into your body. It can help in the short term, but you know eventually you will crash, and so will your fantasy baseball team. Todd’s article will help prevent those crashes, and start making you think of the why the most consistent successful players are rostering that player for the week.
🎧 What I’m Hearing:
Pull Hitter Fantasy Baseball Podcast Episode 99: Fantasy Baseball Goodness w/Fred Zinkie & Dalton Del Don
The Pull Hitter podcast back with another homer run episode. This one focused on unique roster construction for SP/RP that is employed by high-stakes player Dalton Del Don. Find out how you can build a successful team when your focus is primarily focused on pitching in those first few rounds of a draft. I understand that draft season is over, but again, it’s not just about picking specific players, but managing different roster constructions during the draft and also during the season. In addition, Fred Zinkie discusses his off-season process and player evaluations. Fred creates his own projections which on the surface may not be “better” than other publicly available projection systems, but what’s happening underneath that work is Fred’s ability to enhance his knowledge of the player pool. This can be an enormous help during the season because it provides direction for FAAB especially when you have that strongly supported knowledge base of players and teams which Fred does.
📊 Metric of the Week:
Hard-Hit Rate (HH%)
HH% shows the percentage of a hitter’s batted balls with exit velocities at 95mph or more over the total number batted balls. In general, HH% equates to better outcomes for a hitter. There have been studies showing that the once that exit velocity of greater than 95mph occurs the greater the probability of positive outcomes occurring for a hitter. Like everything in life, nothing is guaranteed, but a hitter puts themselves in a better position for more successful outcomes. HH% is linked to being a good leading indicator for HR/FB rate as well as BABIP. The 2021 league average HH% was 38.7%.
💬 Quote of the Week:
“You always get a special kick on opening day. You look forward to it like a birthday party as a kid.”
- Joe DiMaggio