This will be the last Sabermetric Tuesday of the season. The rest of the Tuesdays will be dedicated to looking at keeper candidates as we start to think about 2009.
Its kind of sad, really. Of all of the Fantistics assignments throughout the long baseball season, Sabermetric Tuesdays are always a favorite for me. It is very rewarding to hypothesize a baseball theory, go through the long arduous process of analyzing the statistical data and then discover trends that help validate your original claim. I sat through an Applied Regression class this past spring during my graduate studies and thought of various ways to analyze the data. Hopefully I provided some unique insight into helping your team throughout the year. And many thanks for the feedback - I truly believe we have the best collection of subscribers, writers, and die-hard fans in the fantasy baseball world.
Now with all of that stuff behind us, let's start digging into the numbers. One of the stats I write about in just about every player spotlight post is the HR/AB rate. Since so much of fantasy baseball relies on the long-ball (since it contributes to four out of the five rotisserie categories of runs, RBIs, average, and of course HR), having a good idea of how often a player goes yard is a fantastic predictive tool.
As we recently saw with David Ortiz, a player's HR/AB rate isn't always perfect. After all, Ortiz went 20 games between hitting the long-ball while guys like Paul Konerko seem to hit them in bunches (with four dingers over the past week). But since it is truly a rate, long slumps without a long-ball should tend to predict a player who might be "due" to hit one.
The Home Run / Plate Appearances Delta
So, here's what I did. I downloaded every single player with 15 home runs or more this season and who have at least 80 plate appearances (PA) over the last 28 games (about 3.1 PA's per game).
From that universe, I calculated a yearly HR / PA rate. I used plate appearances instead of the traditional at-bat denominator to truly capture a player's likelihood of hitting a home run every time he walks to the plate. From this group of players, I also calculated HR/PA over the last 28 days. I took the difference between these two rates to come up with a list of players who are greatly off their normal rates of hitting home runs.
And of course, I include the master data.
The Results
The top-10 players who should be "due" to hit home runs given their yearly home-run rates versus their recent monthly performance are:
1. Torii Hunter
2. Chipper Jones
3. Bobby Abreu
4. Derek Lee
5. Nick Markakis
6. Jason Kubel
7. Chase Utley
8. Prince Fielder
9. Jhonny Peralta
10. Vlad Guerrero
And, the bottom of the list of players who are out-performing their yearly rates and who might see a slow-down in the next couple of weeks if the law of averages holds true:
1. Dustin Pedroia
2. Andre Ethier
3. Mark DeRosa
4. Nick Swisher
5. Paul Konerko
6. Casey Blake
7. Alexei Ramirez
8. Carlos Beltran
9. Vernon Wells
10. Ty Wigginton
Fantasy Implications
The fantasy implications of this list is pretty obviously. While there's always the strategy of playing the hot-hand and the streaky player, you can also try to time the slump reversal and go with the guys who are due for a break-out. Just another way to look at the data in an attempt to give you an advantage over the competition in the final few weeks of the season. Good luck and feel free to submit some Sabermetric Tuesday ideas throughout the off-season as baseball withdrawal sets-in. -- Joe
