New Daily Resources on Pirates Prospects
Daily fantasy baseball trends and a Prospect Hotsheet.
The latest additions to the new PiratesProspects.com give Pirates fans daily resources to follow the entire system. Read about the newest updates below.
Prospect Hotsheet
The first resource is a Prospect Hotsheet.
Everyday, the Hotsheet shows the previous day’s top performers throughout the Pirates’ minor league system. This includes all home runs hit, hits leaders, strikeout leaders, and Statcast data for pitch velocities, whiffs, exit velocities, and hit distances.
The Hotsheet also shows which batters are hitting above an .800 OPS during 7/14/30 day stretches, which can be filtered by level, with a qualified system leaderboard. The Pitchers Hotsheet shows pitchers with an ERA under 3.50 across 7/14/30 day stretches, again filterable by level with a qualified system leaderboard.
The Prospect Hotsheet gives a quick rundown of who is performing well in the minor league system, with a daily recap and longer-term trends spanning from the last week to the last month.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Tools
The next addition is a page dedicated to Daily Fantasy Baseball Research.
Every day, this page will be updated with three important sections to help with your fantasy decisions on the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Batter vs Pitcher
First, there’s Batter vs Pitcher data, showing the history of the Pirates’ hitters against that night’s starter, and the history of their starter against opposing hitters.
There’s some debate over the value of batter vs pitcher trends. They deal in incredibly small sample sizes, which can be unreliable. There’s also the important rule that past results don’t predict future results.
That said, I do believe there is some psychological value when a player has success against another player. The more success a player has against a specific opponent, the more that player’s confidence grows, which gives some sort of edge for future encounters.
Pitch Count Tracker
The second set of metrics comes from a pitch count tracker. This keeps track of recent pitch counts for the bullpen and starting rotation, showing who could be fresh on a given night.
When I first tested this section on May 29th, Gregory Soto, Evan Sisk, and Wilber Dotel were showing as available. It was then no surprise that all three pitched in relief that night, with Dotel throwing three innings after having zero pitches the previous three days.
The May 30th trends show that the bullpen is a bit taxed, which could mean the bullpen debut of Carmen Mlodzinski to pick up multiple innings after Mitch Keller is finished.
Hot/Cold Streaks
Finally, there’s a Hot/Cold tracker, which measures the hitters and pitchers who are streaking in either direction over the last 7, 14, and 30 day stretches. The thresholds for hitters are <= .600 OPS and >= .800 OPS. For pitchers, it’s >= 5.00 ERA and <= 3.50 ERA. This is similar to the Prospect Hotsheet, only it is limited to MLB results, and includes Cold streaks.
What stands out to me here is that Pirates pitchers are on hot streaks lately, while there are a lot of hitters on cold streaks over the last two weeks.
On the hot streak side for hitters, last night’s hero Bryan Reynolds is one of the standouts. That’s not just for the last week, but for the last month. Reynolds has a 1.503 OPS the last 7 days, 1.032 over the last two weeks, and .951 over the last 30.
Other Updates
The Prospect Hotsheet and the Daily Fantasy Baseball Research can both be found under the Resources tab of the main menu on Pirates Prospects. Or, you can bookmark the links above for direct access to the daily updates.
There are other changes that have been made to the site over the last day. The biggest one is the addition of draft and international signing data to the player pages. Each player now shows when he was drafted, or the year and team that signed him on the international side.
This is part of a larger build to the site, which will eventually result in the addition of contract details (service time, options, salaries), key dates (Rule 5, minor league free agency), and other information that has been a staple on Pirates Prospects since 2009.
There’s also the addition of a Statcast leaderboard on the Stats page, showing the leaders throughout the system for some key advanced metrics. This information is sortable by level, and can be split between the MLB results and the entire minor league system.
Keep checking the new Pirates Prospects every day for the latest updates, and for full information on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their minor league system.
I’ll be taking some breaks over the next week from adding new features to write a few articles here on Pittsburgh Baseball Live.
Until the next time I go live…
-Tim Williams