Kuzul

These days fantasy baseball is loaded with crazy stats for everything you could possibly think of, from hits to Linear Weights Run Value . Some of them are completely worthless to most of us, and to be honest, if you have to go to something like Ultimate Zone Rating to decide between two players, you can probably just flip a coin.

But there are obscure stats that are important for fantasy baseball. Fielder Independent Pitching (FIP), Outside Zone Swing Rate (O-Swing%), Batting Average on Balls in Play (BaBIP) and Line Drive Percentage (LD%) are just a few of the endless numbers fantasy experts (and major league organizations) use to judge players. Thus knowing what these stats mean and where to find them can give you a huge leg up on the competition.

The very first thing you should do (after reading the rest of the article of course) is look at Fantasy University , where you can find explanations of everything related to dominating your fantasy league. There is a ton of valuable information there, try not to blow through it in one sitting.

So where do we find these stats? There are two main websites that I use, the first being Baseballreference.com . It’s basically a stat encyclopedia, very straightforward and simple to use. There are also reference sites for the other three major sports, along with college basketball and the Olympics. Great for when you want to know Dennis Rodman’s best single season rebounds per game average (18.7! Per game! Makes Superman look like Robin).

The best part is the game logs, which you can use to find a player’s stat line during any given number of games by clicking on the first and last games of the stretch you want to measure. It’s important when trying to identify trends and players starting to get hot. Use this to identify some guys who could get hot after the All-Star Break.

But this pales in comparison to the unquestioned king of fantasy stat sites: Fangraphs . Everything from Walks to WAR, Holds to Horizontal Pitch Movement, is presented in table or graph form. If you can’t find it on Fangraphs, you don’t need it. Take some time sorting through the site, but watch out because the more you dig, the more you discover you can dig for.

Hopefully that will keep you occupied and avoiding work for the next few weeks. Let’s hit some numbers.

47—Age of Jaime Moyer , who last week became the oldest pitcher to ever beat the Yankees. Amazing. He’s been in the majors longer than I’ve been alive, having played with six different teams over 23 seasons. Since 1996 he has failed to record double digit wins just once, including two 20-win campaigns with the Mariners. Obviously his skills have diminished but the fact that he still has enough in the tank to hold down a spot in a contender’s rotation is extraordinary. Respect your elders.

3—Home runs in the past eight games for Howie Kendrick , who after a slow start has an impressive .519 slugging percentage for the month of June to go with a .304 batting average. He had a good second half last year (33/6/36/.358) and now that he’s safely atop the Angels’ batting order with no competition for second base playing time, it looks like we could have a repeat performance. Those of you having trouble at the 2B spot definitely need to look into this guy.

.145—Jose Bautista’s batting average this month. Well we all saw that coming. Even worse are the two measly homers and five RBIs. I’m sorry but when a career .237 hitter who has never hit more than 20 home runs in a season randomly goes off for 16 in two months we call that an “enjoy it while it lasts” situation, and that situation look about over. Trade him for whatever you can get at this point.

Stop. Hammer Time .

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They did it! The Blackhawks finally got their Stanley Cup in one of the more bizarre endings you’ll see in a championship game.

My only regret is that they didn’t win it at home. The city was wild enough on a Wednesday during an away game, imagine what clinching on a Friday at home would have been. Oh well, guess we’ll have to wait for the Cubs to win the World Series before we get another Chicago Fire.

Oh yea, and there were some baseball games this week.

63%

Combined stolen base success rate for Elvis Andrus and Julio Borbon , which has led to Ron Washington’s decision to limit their attempts until they can improve their technique. It’s a huge blow to each of their values, though Borbon didn’t have much anyway.

I’m especially concerned about Andrus because not only has his batting average dipped in recent weeks, he stopped drawing walks. His BB:K rate has been an atrocious 5:14 so far in June, lowering his OBP to .377, down from his high of .431 just a month ago.

Let’s hope it’s simply a case of a young player needing to make an adjustment and not a trend that will continue.

.226

Batting average over the past 25 games for Ian Stewart , another young player poised for a breakout season who has fallen off the wagon in recent weeks. How close this is to his 2009 average (.228) is unsettling to say the least, but you knew you were getting somewhat of a batting average liability with him.

What’s more alarming is while the batting average is regressing to the norm, his power numbers have remained stagnant, with only one home run over that 25 game span. Looking at the numbers the culprit seems to be a severely decreased fly ball rate, which has turned into a bloated line drive rate (25%).

While this may sound great, it clearly hasn’t helped him recently. Plus, this number is unsustainable, so hopefully the line drives will turn back into fly balls and not grounders. I’m benching him until further notice.

Nine

Innings pitched by Zack Greinke in his last start, finally securing that ever elusive second win. We can all breathe a little easier now, the Zack Attack is back. He struck out 12 batters and walked zero, an unbelievable performance despite two solo jacks allowed to Joey Votto . Reportedly the performance was a result of an “adjustment,” always music to a fantasy owner’s ears and bodes well for future production.

Nevertheless, his struggles with keeping the ball in the park will keep him from repeating last year’s Cy Young numbers, but I’d still bet on a 3.3 ERA and over 200 K’s at the end of the season.

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