Hitting for the Cycle #17
A Sunday Review - May 15, 2022
📖 What I’m Reading:
Unsolicited FAAB advice / a look into my brain - Vlad Sedler
This is a fantastic Twitter thread from the “FAAB Whisperer” Vlad Sedler. He breaks down his process of how to evaluate a player from the context of your fantasy category needs, fantasy roster build and real life baseball lineup. It’s not just the research, but the questions he asks himself every week for his own team FAAB preparation. It’s that type of analysis that Vlad provides to his readers in his weekly “Trust the Gut” FAAB article at FTN Fantasy. The thread is a good reminder that a key ingredient in doing anything well is discipline. Simple but not easy.
🎧 What I’m Hearing:
Catcher’s Corner: How Stable Are You? with Nicklaus Gaut
Catcher’s Corner hosts Eric Samulski and @Believe_Sami bring on Rotoballer’s Nicklaus Gaut to get his opinion on hitting stats that have begun to stabilize this season, and whether some of the current leaders are fact or fiction. Give this one a listen, and take note of the following hitting metrics that stabilize early in the season. They breakdown a great list of players for the following metrics:
Blast Rate% (referenced this metric in Hitting for the Cycle #15)
O-Swing% (described this metric in Hitting for the Cycle #16)
Exit Velocity on Fly-Balls and Line Drives
Contact Rate% (described this metric in Hitting for the Cycle #9)
Swinging Strike% (SwStr%) (described this metric in Hitting for the Cycle #6)
📊 Metric of the Week:
Pitch Velocity
The name of the metric says it all of how hard a pitcher is throwing an actual pitch. There is constant joy and concern from fantasy baseball players depending on how much a pitcher’s velocity is up or down in a given start compared to last year as well as to their previous starts in the current season. The reason is velocity stabilizes very quickly with only a handful of games at most providing the average velocity of a pitch rest of season. This Tweeter thread LINK from Mark Srebro provides a great step by step on how to find this info for each pitcher on Baseball Savant.
💬 Quote of the Week:
“Load up your mind with pictures capturing your preferred tomorrow. Put the remembrances of the past in a place where they won’t block your view.”
- Gary Carter