Hitting for the Cycle #26
A Sunday Review - August 7, 2022
This is the FanGraphs mini-centric edition. I say mini because there is so much that this site and its writers have to offer. As I was assessing all the trade implications from this past week, I was using a few different sources to help me, and found that I was leaning on FanGraphs a lot. There was just such a volume of players moving around, and they did such a fantastic job summarizing and organizing all of it. I feel as if I haven’t referenced it as much in this weekly newsletter, so wanted to point a few things out. One quick thing is that Meg Rowley put together a great article HERE which summarizes all of the 2022 FanGraphs trade deadline analysis articles and podcasts. Though FanGraphs is technically free, it is worth getting an annual subscription to help support the multitude of tools they offer there. It’s a pretty substantial bargain in my opinion. You can check out their memberships HERE.
📖 What I’m Reading:
RosterResource Tools - Jason Martinez
Quick side note - I checked Twitter this Sunday morning before sitting down to write this newsletter, and saw that the On The Wire Podcast actually interviewed Jason Martinez for their latest episode. I am really going to chalk this coincidence up to great minds think alike as opposed to anyone hacking my brain of what I was thinking to write this week. Anyway, you should probably check out that podcast episode HERE as it’s probably better than this newsletter.)
I regularly interact with most of the RosterResource tools that Jason Martinez has created and improved upon over the years. The Depth Charts, Transition Tracker, and Lineup Tracker is what I mostly utilize for research and news, but that’s only part of the amazing tools that Jason has developed. Bookmark this tweet below, so that you can use it to jump to the various Roster Resource tools.
Jason R.R. Martinez@JasonRRMartinezToday was fun. Lots of teams look different than they did a couple days ago. Get caught up here ... Rosters/Depth Charts: fangraphs.com/roster-resourc… TransactionTracker: fangraphs.com/roster-resourc… Projected Payroll: fangraphs.com/roster-resourc… Closer Depth Chart: fangraphs.com/roster-resourc…
1:52 AM · Aug 3, 20222 Reposts · 8 LikesThese tools are a huge organizational undertaking, and though no one thing and no one is perfect, this is as close as it can get to providing such comprehensive information all in one place for FREE (you should really get a subscription though). Thank you to Jason for all the work you put into these tools.
🎧 What I’m Hearing:
The Sleeper and the Bust Podcast - Episode 1082: Trade Deadline Review
The long standing baseball/fantasy baseball podcast The Sleeper and the Bust, hosted by Paul Sporer and Justin Mason, goes into great depth of trade analysis team by team. I would recommend using this LINK as a guide for the podcast or YouTube stream if you want to jump around to specific teams and/or players in order. Paul and Justin analyze the playing time fallout for all the players on new teams as well as the leftovers (players still on the team). If you’re looking for their trade analysis on the Colorado Rockies, I have taken the liberty to provide that helpful information here for you:
COL
LOL
📊 Metric of the Week:
Wins Above Replacement (WAR)
So, your first thought might be why am I addressing WAR as a metric for fantasy baseball. Well, you’re right. It’s not a very good metric for assessing the overall fantasy skills of players. But, I wanted to keep things going with the FanGraphs theme, and highlight their Combined WAR Leaderboards tool which is linked HERE. WAR is trying to determine the value of a player to their team in terms of both offense and defense, and the number of wins that player would generate above a replacement player from the bench or minors. For most of our fantasy baseball leagues, we don’t care as much about the value of defensive statistics other than from the analysis of playing time. That probably comes more into play when you play in very deep mixed leagues or AL and NL only leagues.
💬 Quote of the Week:
“Good is not good enough when better is expected."
- Vin Scully