Week 12, Wait, *is* Larry Bird Walking Through the Door?

 

Max and Michael's 20th High School Reunion was this weekend. They hung out with old friends and danced to Knuck If You Buck til 2 PM...because we're millennials so of course it at was brunch that we went hard

• Max had a truly Monster week, and he did it to Michael while also getting to see Michael in person having a fit over what was going on. What a fun week for Max and his benched pitchers and incomplete starting hitting roster. What a recipe for success that, of course, led to an 9.81 EWW (eyeroll)
• Paul also had a huge week and we truly have 9 teams that are somewhere between good enough and very good. Paul is in 9th in the Power Ranks but just had an over-8 EWW which is an excellent week. Paul's few-week slide are over
• Arthur's slide continued. Arthur's and Max's current roster construction look very similar with injuries everywhere and an incomplete hitting lineup. Arthur had 233 ABs last week, 34 behind Max and around 70 behind the rest of the league. It's very hard to keep up, offensively, with that few ABs.
• Michael enjoyed two and a half weeks of health but then the story of his 2026 happened again and 5 more players of his hit the IL in the last week. He pulled it together last week enough to post a 7.58 EWW but he'll need to find more diamonds on the free agent wire to keep up against a very competitive league right now.

Paul got me thinking last week. We were texting about fantasy baseball, as one does with their dad, and he was lamenting about his journey to find talent on the free agent wire, “only so many players to choose from,” he said. A lightbulb went off; it’s true, there are only *so* many players to choose from, but how many will actually be useful, when we look back on our adds and drops over the next few months?

Fortunately, with the data dive I did recently, I was part of the way to this answer. Looking back at 2023 to 2025, how many players that were free agents around this time of year, were helpful from that point onward. I compared players who were at or below $0 of year to date value (this loosely is who would have been on the free agent wire) and I compiled the stats from June 1 to the end of the season, found the fantasy value of those stats, and analyzed it. Here we go.

	among preseason top 100	among preseason 100-200	outside of preseason top 200
value greater than $0 from June 1 to EOS	81%	55%	26%
% of players above $0 at week 8	71%	54%	18%
value greater than $0 from June 1 to EOS if YTD value is above $0 at week 8	86%	64%	39%
value greater than $10 from June 1 to EOS if YTD value is above $0 at week 8	50%	31%	14%
% of players below $0 at week 8	29%	46%	82%
value greater than $0 from June 1 to EOS if YTD value is below $0 at week 8	59%	39%	18%
value greater than $10 from June 1 to EOS if YTD value is below $0 at week 8	41%	17%	6%

 

What we see here is that it’s really hard to find good help if the player isn’t greater than $0 of value by June 1. Larry Bird is indeed not walking through that door. But that’s just the headline, let’s keep going.

·        Predictably, the chances of finding a diamond in the rough are rare. If the person was ranked outside the top 200, and they are below $0 of value by June 1, then only 18% of the free agent wire among players from outside the top 200 will have positive value from June 1 to the end of the year.

·        That number drops to 6% when trying to find at least $10 of value which is around a 12^th round pick.

·        Top 200 preseason players are over twice as likely to be helpful, even if their June 1^st value is less than $0. You can reference the earlier blog on the subject of overperforming and underperforming from what you’ve done so far, this blog is about the free agent wire.

·        BUT, these numbers aren’t 0%. Even if only 6% of the free agent pool (around 1000 players) is helpful, that still means 60 players currently on the free agent wire will have $10 in value the rest of the way. Never Give Up, Never Surrender.

Ok but what should we look for to find those 60 players? I went back and looked at 2023-2025 data for metrics that have both luck and skill components as well as some statcast statistics. For hitters, this was wOBA, xwOBA, AVG, xBA, xwOBA-wOBA, xBA-AVG, Barrel%. For pitchers: ERA, xERA, SIERRA, ERA-xERA, ERA-SIERRA, Called Strikes plus Whiffs (CSW), Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP), K%-BB%. I then did a correlation analysis comparing this value to the dollar value from June 1 to end of season. I used all players with $0 earned by June 1 and at least $10 earned by end of season, no matter the draft position.

Hitting Stat	xwOBA-wOBA	xBA-AVG	Barrel%
Correlation	0.221	0.140	0.186

 

Pitching Stat	ERA-xERA	ERA-SIERRA	CSW	BABIP	K%-BB%
Correlation	0.169	0.543	0.161	0.420	0.277

 

What we see here are not strong correlations, to be honest. For hitting, xwOBA minus wOBA is the best correlation, but not by much. Most of the pitching correlations are stronger than all of the hitting correlations, but we’d most want to focus on SIERRA and BABIP. These point to bad luck having cost the pitcher a bad ERA and likely other fantasy categories up to June 1^st that likely improved afterwards.

So who are names among our current free agents in these categories that show well against this criteria?

Notable Free Agent (when the blog was written) Pitchers sorted by ERA-SIERRA:

Grant Taylor Mason Montgomery Keaton Winn Sean Newcomb Mason Fluharty Shane Drohan Antonio Senzatela Luis Severino Tyler Wells Coleman Crow Grayson Rodriguez Ian Seymour Tyler Mahle Adrian Houser Braydon Fisher Trevor Rogers Mitchell Parker Patrick Corbin Matthew Liberatore Chad Patrick Jake Irvin Jacob Lopez Bryan Hudson Brayan Bello Brad Lord Richard Lovelady Brandon Sproat Noah Schultz Slade Cecconi Jonah Tong Griffin Canning Kendry Rojas Brady Singer Lucas Giolito Simeon Woods Richardson Jose Quintana Robert Gasser Bailey Falter

 

Notable Free Agent  (when the blog was written) Hitters sorted by xwOBA-wOBA:

Marcus Semien

Marcell Ozuna

Cam Smith

Mark Vientos

Ezequiel Tovar

Blaze Alexander

Kyle Karros

Salvador Perez

Matt Vierling

Xander Bogaerts

Jeff McNeil

Vaughn Grissom

Cole Young

Adolis García

Caleb Durbin

Jesús Sánchez

Matt McLain

Ramón Laureano

Andrew Benintendi

Steven Kwan

Nathaniel Lowe

Josh Bell

Brett Baty

Dansby Swanson

Alec Bohm

Yes, it’s a lot of names. I did this to both be a list we can look back on but also to show that there’s a lot of players with upside still available.  Maybe we won’t find Larry Bird, but maybe we can find OG Anunoby.