Breakout Arms – 2015

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Mike Fiers

Caveball’s “breakouts” combine pitchers with upside, who are generally under the key age of 27 and displayed better numbers in the second half of 2014, with the highly touted elite arms who will have their innings limit removed for the coming year. 

2014 produced a league average WHIP of 1.28, the lowest since 1972.
Major league pitchers may vary to a degree on when they begin to perform at their absolute optimum, but the big leap in their career, or “breakout”, generally occurs in their 3rd or 4th season.This is the year when their talent combines with their experience to create a kind of magic. The experience could be anything from learning how to hide their pitches better, to getting to know hitters’ weaknesses, to dealing with the pressure of being a major league pitcher both on and off the field, and so on.

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Busts – Bats

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Billy Hamilton - Bust

Okay, let’s be clear about what a bust is before we enrage all those Mariners’ and Marlins’ fans who have renewed hope for their respective teams. A bust is a player who will perform noticeably worse than his Average Draft Position. This does not necessarily mean recent acquisitions are poor moves for each club, but that each player may not perform as well as they did last season for any number of reasons.

In the Fantasy world we are constantly looking for value in underrated players, but we tend to ignore the equally important overvalued players. Here are Caveball’s overvalued position players for the upcoming season – Our Top 10 Bat Busts for 2015:

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Tiers for Outfielders – Fantasy Baseball 2015

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Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next 4 weeks Caveball will sort out the 8 tiers for all 8 Fantasy positions. The following week at the end of February we will release our unique “Chartfelt Tiers”, the ultimate Cheat-sheet for Fantasy Baseball – unique because it allows you to easily cross-reference players in different positions who have similar value.

During that same week we will offer up our General Draft Strategy, which will then be followed by a specific strategy for 2015, which you can use in tandem with our “Chartfelt Tiers”.

Here now are Caveball’s tiers for the Outfield position:

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Breakout Bats (2015): Using OPS like GPS

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Kole Calhoun - Breakout

As a kid, in my formative years, I quickly learned from my dad that RBI were the most important offensive stat in baseball. The category implies power and clutch hitting. Team RBI leaders usually hit third or clean-up – the most revered spots in the line-up.

OPS is baseball’s GPS

Years ago, soon after becoming a member of the second largest non-harmful cult in North America, fantasy baseball, my old favourite column, RBI,  has now been replaced by OPS. OPS has a beautiful uniqueness about it: you simply add OBP (on-base percentage) and SLG. (slugging percentage) together. It has become the first offensive stat I look at when perusing minor leaguers, and now I believe it is the most important. OPS is baseball’s GPS. 

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Tiers for Catchers – Fantasy Baseball 2015

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Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next 4 weeks Caveball will sort out the 8 tiers for all 8 Fantasy positions. The following week at the end of February we will release our unique “Chartfelt Tiers”, the ultimate Cheat-sheet for Fantasy Baseball – unique because it allows you to easily cross-reference players in different positions who have similar value.

During that same week we will offer up our General Draft Strategy, which will then be followed by a specific strategy for 2015, which you can use in tandem with our “Chartfelt Tiers”.

Here now are Caveball’s tiers for the always shallow catcher position:

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Sophomore’s Lumps

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Australians refer to it as the “Second Year Syndrome”
It must be a magical moment when a player gets the first call up to the majors. He has now officially made it. He is officially a professional. Right? Officially, yes. With an occasional exception (here’s looking at you Mike Trout), each player has his own mental clock for attaining “unofficial professionalism”. Even most young enthusiastic gamers take their lumps at some point. These lumps or slumps typically take place in the sophomore season. It’s not just a myth. Australians refer to it as the “Second Year Syndrome” when referring to their own professional sports.

Players who are becoming freshly acquainted with the rigors of a full year of almost any sport, but particularly baseball, will tend to slide in performance.Read More

Workhorses – Old Reliables are the New Targets

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The workhorses that can go deep into games and can handle 200+ innings, year after year, should be more highly valued then ever with the rash of injuries and subsequent season-ending surgeries to so many of the younger crop of pitchers.

In Wednesday’s post, Tommy John Prospects – Land Mines in the Making, we discussed how so many elite young pitchers end up requiring Tommy John surgery. Which led to my conclusion that I will never again use one of my top 3 picks on a 2nd or 3rd year pitcher.

Strikeout rates are exciting stats to look at, but can be deceiving.
Not all pitchers require Tommy John surgery. It just seems that way. There are still plenty of aces left that have yet to succumb to the procedure which is proving to be less full-proof than originally thought. In addition, there are a number of great arms out there for whom Tommy John has been successful, and have become workhorses in their own right. Let’s sort out who’s who in order to figure out which arms to target on Draft Day.

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