Week 5: What’s changed this year?

Dual picture day! The blogs may come few and far between this season, so let’s get two pictures in this one while the content is still almost fresh:

Max got married! It was a great day for a great guy. Max and Jessica just got back in town from their Honeymoon Cruise and now Max can get back to his very important fantasy baseball team that is very much in need of attention.

E3, Ellie Nordhielm Campbell, was born recently. Baby is home and doing well and is destined to be overperforming at school and swim class soon enough. 

YTD Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Carl	3.50	1	Michael	3.50	1	Carl	1.50
2	Keith	4.21	2	Keith	3.88	2	Brian/Josh	4.50
3	Michael	4.36	3	Dean	4.00	3	Keith	4.67
4	Brian/Josh	5.21	4	Dave	4.38	4	Cory	5.00
5	Dave	5.36	5	Carl	5.00	5	Paul	5.33
6	Dean	5.50	6	Brian/Josh	5.75	6	Michael	5.50
7	Cory	5.57	7	Cory	6.00	7	Arthur	6.00
8	Paul	5.79	8	Paul	6.13	8	Dave	6.67
9	Arthur	6.86	9	Arthur	7.50	9	Max	7.17
10	Max	7.64	10	Max	8.00	10	Dean	7.50

 

Carl announced his presence with a huge week this week launching him into a huge first place lead. Check out Carl’s pitching rank: 1.5. Carl averages being the 1^st or 2^nd best team in EVERY SINGLE pitching category right now. Stay out of that guy’s way. Outside of Carl, Keith and Michael are the only teams staying in touch with him, still in an upper tier. BJ, Dave, Dean, Cory, and Paul are all another step behind right now, but are very much within striking distance. Arthur and Max gained ground last week but will need to put a few good weeks together to get back into that middle tier.

So what’s been up with 2023?

One topic coming out of the draft were all the ‘shots’ being taken at the draft. From Anthony Volpe early, to Jared Kelenic late, each one has had varying levels of risk at the time. Injured-in-March players identified in the post-draft blog were: Jose Altuve, Carlos Rodon, Tyler Glasnow, and Bryce Harper. Bryce Harper appears to have vindicated an elevated price at the draft table whereas Rodon is getting close to droppable; the book is still out on Glasnow and Altuve.

Rookies were another big opportunity to take a shot at the draft. After the successes of last year’s rookie class including Bobby Witt Jr. and Julio Rodriguez, the appeal of names like Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, and Anthony Volpe was too much for many people to pass on. These…have mostly not gone well. Corbin Carroll, a 3^rd round pick this year, has been one of the few rookie draft pick standouts, so far backing up his steep draft price. On the other end of the spectrum 7^th round Henderson, 13^th round Volpe, 14^th round Jordan Walker, etc have largely not lived up to any hype. It’s early of course, but the price at the draft appears to have been too rich for many of these players.

Stat environment

If the rising tide lifts all boats, then who cares if we’re all riding the wave? I believe there are advantages to be had to keep a pulse on the league wide environment. If the league-wide ERA is up, then the value over replacement level of the stud SPs is higher, making them more valuable. This year there are three areas that have been notably trend-able, Stolen Bases, Home Runs, and Earned Run Average. I have data on these going back 12 years now, but for apples-to-apples comparison purposes, I’ll keep things consistent for when we changed rules, which for hitters was back around 2016 when we added the 4^th OF and 2^nd UTIL and again in 2019 when we replaced counting the Hits category with the SLG category, and for pitchers was in 2019 when we replaced the ER category with QS. The change last year to increase roster size didn’t change total IP that much (about 15% more IP were thrown last year than the year before), it just moved the players from the free agent wire, added via streaming, to our rosters full time.

League Wide Trends (*fantasy league totals per 162 games played)
	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016
SB rate*	9.60	6.10	5.97	6.07	5.58	6.02	6.40	6.27
HR rate*	15.37	14.13	16.19	18.13	18.04	14.38	15.86	14.43
ERA	3.94	3.61	3.78	3.88	3.97	-	-	-

 

What you see here is the Stolen Base rate appears to be way up…but not so fast my friend. After hitters were running wild the first two weeks, SBs per week are already back closer to 2022 levels. SBs are up, but not WAY up anymore. 2019 and 2020 were different home run environments, but things have settled in since then.

For Home Runs, 2022 is still appearing to be an outlier where MLB appears to have had a different and more ‘dead’ ball in play for the first few months of the year, offsetting any full-year analysis.

ERA is where things are interesting, yes ERA was way down last year in line with the suppressed Home Run rate…but now ERA is up even higher than 2021 levels even with a lower Home Run rate than 2021. This could be relevant to the combination of all the rule changes, or it could be a factor more complicated in nature. We’re only 35 games into the year so there is time for these statistics to change, but normally offense improves as the temperatures get hotter, so this ERA is more likely than not going to go up over the next 4 months. Hang onto those aces.

That’s it for now, I hope everyone enjoyed the blog as much I as let my work tasks back up to complete it!