Hitting for the Cycle
A Sunday Review - February 13, 2022
📖 What I’m Reading:
Falling Asleep To Fake Baseball - Kevin Goldstein
For most of us missing baseball and fantasy baseball (with no certainty when the 2022 MLB season will begin), this is a very unique story covered by Kevin Goldstein of Fangraphs and the podcast Chin Music. Kevin interviews Mr. King the creator of sleepbaseball.com which is a podcast designed to purposely put you to sleep. The soothing voice of Mr. King is very relaxing and the energy level low for both the game and commercials as there is no yelling. The entire game, players, commercials and broadcast are entirely fictional. The sound production is impressive, and for me, brought me back to the days of listening to baseball on the radio on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I occasionally fall asleep to audiobooks, so this was a really nice alternative to get into that meditative sleepy state.
🎧 What I’m Hearing:
PitchCon 2022 - Pitcher List
For the past three years, I have really enjoyed PitchCon from the folks at Pitcher List. If you don’t know, PitchCon is a four day free online baseball conference put together by Nick Pollack and the Pitcher List staff. It is an annual fundraising benefit where 50% of the proceeds support the Pitcher List team and the other 50% are donated to benefit the charity Feeding America. During the four day event, over 80 analysts discuss a wide range of topics covering baseball and fantasy baseball. Viewers can also signup for free to win a variety of amazing prizes. It’s a really a win-win for all parties involved. After the event is over, all segments (approximately 45 videos) are put online to listen and/or watch at your leisure. Two segments I highly recommend are:
- How to Take Down the NFBC with Vlad Sedler, Jenny Butler and Scott Jenstad
- Our Strategies to Help Win Your Draft with Sammy Reid, Rudy Gamble and Derek VanRiper
Again, there are so many great segments and not just focused on fantasy baseball. You can check out all the PitchCon 2022 videos here along with more information of this past years event here. Though this event is over, it’s never too late to donate to Feeding America.
📊 Metric of the Week:
CSW%
Called-Strikes Plus Swinging Strike rate (CSW%) is a metric developed by Nick Pollack and Alex Fast at Pitcher List (a bit of a Pitcher List centric weekly review here). CSW% is calculated by taking called strikes plus whiffs divided by total pitches. CSW% has proven to be both a predictive and descriptive measure of a pitcher’s true skill with a strong correlation to a pitcher’s SIERA and K%. A CSW% over 30% for a starting pitcher is considered above-average with anything north of 35% as elite.
💬 Quote of the Week:
“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Vince Lombardi