Article:Fantasy Baseball: Beyond what we know and even what we think we know.

From www.thebaseballfix.com

Andrew Miller intrigues me as a fantasy owner. How a guy with an ERA north of five last season do this you ask? Good question, it is because while searching for potential sleepers for next year, he appeared to fit the criteria perfectly. Now I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start first with what I look for when seeking these sleepers. I want to look at a pitchers controllable skill set. These consist of his K/9, BB/9, K/BB and  GB/FB ratio. I want to see a K/9 over 6, and BB/9 3 or under, K/BB of at least 2/1 and a GB/FB ratio better then one in favor of GB. Once I have qualified these I look at how lucky verse unlucky the pitcher got. Now this is still not an exact science. However great strides have been made in recent years and there is enough information available to make a reasonable assumption. The stats I use for this process are FIP(Fielding independent pitching) his LOB% (Left on base) and his BABIP(batting average on balls in play). If there is a large discrepancy between pitchers FIP and his ERA it is usually an indication that pitcher has luck play a large role in his season one way or another. Now the league averages are 73% for LOB% and .300 for BABIP. So we can also use these numbers to gauge how “lucky/Unlucky” a pitcher has been. I have used all of these measurements with good success over the past few seasons. So I am inclined to agree with qualifying pitchers based on these measures. 

This leads me back to Andrew Miller and the title of this article. Miller had a K/9 over 7 and GB/FB ratio of 1.4/1. His BB/9 and K/BB were not spectacular but his FIP was actually 4 flat verse and ERA of 5.87, why such a large discrepancy? Well my eyes went immediately to his LOB% and BABIP. Both were well below league average (59% and .346 respectively) and this is when I thought I had discovered a gem for next season. Then I thought about something beyond the numbers, something to consider that tells an often over looked part of the story. We will call this the remaining factors. Miller pitches in the NL which is positive. He also pitches in what is largely considered a pitchers ball park. He gets a lot of swings and misses which is what we are looking for, he also induces a good number of ground balls which is another positive, or is it? I started to consider the defense behind him. Sure his rates were high, I am also more then confident they will come down, but how much? Jorge Cantu is expected back at third base and he ranked dead last in +/- rankings. Hanley Ramirez will be back at short stop and this was his best season in +/- rankings and he was still middle of the pack, as well as being near dead last the previous two seasons. Uggla ranked middle of the pack and he will be back at second base. Mike Jacobs was the worst fielding first baseman, so whoever he is replaced by will be an upgrade, but by how much we won’t know. Either way Florida’s pitching staff can not be thrilled with this group, especially ground ball pitchers like Miller. Now I will still target him and see how it turns out, however my initial reaction has been tampered down due to the poor D behind him. It just goes to show that sometimes we need to go one step further then we ever thought in evaluating. I hope this information proves helpful and good luck in the upcoming season.