Week 2: Yup, still different…but this time with fewer Home Runs

 

Arthur hung out with former Met and current TV Analyst, Ron Darling, recently. With the Jupiter Lighthouse and Inlet in the background there is at least some truth to the rumor that Paul was driving by on his boat trying to get their attention.

2022 Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Dean	3.93	1	Dean	3.25	1	Brian/Josh	2.50		Michael	G and RE
2	Brian/Josh	3.93	2	Cory	3.88	2	Arthur	3.00		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
3	Carl	4.00	3	Max	4.13	3	Carl	3.33		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
4	Arthur	4.79	4	Carl	4.50	4	Dave	3.50		Dean	Benchwarmers
5	Cory	5.57	5	Brian/Josh	5.00	5	Dean	4.83		Arthur	[ALL CAPS TEAM]
6	Max	5.79	6	Michael	5.63	6	Keith	6.33		Carl	Boston Running Sox
7	Dave	5.86	7	Arthur	6.13	7	Paul	6.67		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
8	Michael	6.21	8	Keith	6.25	8	Michael	7.00		Max	Pancake Nips
9	Keith	6.29	9	Paul	6.63	9	Cory	7.83		Paul	2nd Act
10	Paul	6.64	10	Dave	7.63	10	Max	8.00		BJ	Smoak That Ish

 

After two weeks we’re all still trying to figure this thing out. Very few of the teams that were good in week 1 were good again in week 2, leading to a tightening of the Power Ranks instead of someone pulling away.

There’s still too many league-wide observations going on that I wanted to get into, so matchup discussions will have to wait a week. It’s too bad, I really wanted to vent about how I had my worst management week of my fantasy career last week: bench the pitchers, start the pitchers, oh cool, Cory hit 5 Home Runs on Sunday too. Cool cool. I digress…

Home runs are way down across baseball. Derek Carty (of THE BAT projections and former ESPN contributor) put some data out last week that we’re off to a very low rate of Home Runs per plate appearance this year, even after adjusting for weather and park factors.  We’re certainly seeing this in our league (other than Cory’s 5 Home Runs on Sunday). We have 221 Home Runs so far in our 18 day year, last year we had 253, (ignoring 2020 because the game days were different), and in 2019 we had 290, you get the idea. So, pitching should be standing out then too, right? Eh. So far league wide ERA is around 3.4 (3.03 last week) and we have 67 quality starts. In 2021, league wide ERA through two weeks was…3.4 with 93 quality starts. 2019 was worse with a 3.9 ERA, but 75 quality starts.

Through two fantasy weeks (about 18 game days):

Year	Home Runs	ERA	Quality Starts
2019	290	3.90	75
2021	253	3.4	93
2022	221	3.4	67

 

So what do we do with this information?

Well for one, it’s still early. Rob Arthur (baseball prospectus and one of the leading researchers that uncovered MLB deadening the ball a few years ago) is again researching this data and elevating that MLB may still be messing with the ball…but again, lot of data still to come in.

Let’s just say that the home run environment is tighter this year leading to fewer total home runs and fewer home runs on our fantasy teams. Some might think that this would mean to shy away from home run hitters to focus on the other categories, but I would argue that a deadened ball hurts the moderate power hitters more (think: Trea Turner and Ozzie Albies types), so there is an advantage to be had with the players that hit the ball the hardest and can overcome a deadened ball (think: Giancarlo Stanton and Vlad Guerrero and…idk…Adam Duvall types).

There’s one other thing I wanted to point out in the above table, the decrease in home runs has NOT led to a decrease in fantasy team ERA (granted, only been two weeks) or an increase in quality starts this year. Week 2 this year actually had the same number of quality starts as week 2 in 2021 (39), but remember that league ERA was way better this week this year which one would have expected to lead to more quality starts…but it did not. It looks like MLB managers are continuing to pull pitchers early making quality starts harder to get and more valuable. Piggyback  starting pitchers (piggybacking is when two pitchers on one team throw three to four innings each in tandem) are becoming more and more common, though unfortunately some of the good piggyback followers from the first 10 days actually started games last week instead of being the second pitcher to throw, but they still only went their four-ish innings and didn't qualify for the win (see: Garrett Whitlock and Tyler Anderson). Piggyback follower starting pitchers aren't great fantasy values yet, by and large, but if only the top end starters are getting Quality Starts, the mid and low level pitchers would be better served in a following role than a starting one to get Net Wins; which, as we learned last week, are gold.

That’s enough for one week. Next week we’ll talk about what categories the best fantasy teams have been good at over the years. Sneak preview: be good at SLG and hitting BB/K rate.