/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46754450/usa-today-8684857.0.jpg)
FanDuel One Day Fantasy Leagues
This Friday, FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball is hosting a few monster tournaments for $25 or under that have first place prizes up to $100,000. All you need to do is click on the link below and join a league:
FanDuel/SB Nation One Day Fantasy League
- League rosters lock at 7:05 pm
- In the $3 squeeze, the top 4927 rosters cash, and first place gets $7,000
- In the $25 Super Grand Slam, the top 4141 cash, and first place gets $100,000
- Click on the link above and enter your lineup.
Pitchers who have been toughest and easiest to square up
Last season, ESPN stat guru Mark Simon popularized a statistic called hard hit rate, which is the % of a player's at bats that end in a hard hit ball. Hard hit balls are classified by video trackers as batted balls with exit velocities of 90+ mph with strong trajectory and contact on the sweet spot of the barrel. This is a different stat than the new FanGraphs hard%, which does not use exit velocity. FG's hard% is also a percentage of balls in play rather than a percentage of at bats.
We want to target hitters with a high % of at bats ending with a hard hit ball and pitchers with a low % of at bats ending with a hard hit ball because the harder a ball is hit, the more likely strong offensive production occurs. The batting average on hard hit balls is over .700. Approximately 100% of home runs, 80% of triples and 70% of doubles are hard hit, while only 30% of singles are hard hit. For pitchers, limiting hard contact is a way to make run scoring less likely.
League average on this stat is about 15%.
These 20 starting pitchers have been hardest to square up (min. 1000 pitches):
1. Sonny Gray, 7.6%
2. Chris Sale, 8.9%
3. Brett Anderson, 9.1%
4. Noah Syndergaard, 9.1%
5. Clay Buchholz, 9.4%
6. Dallas Keuchel, 9.4%
7. Mike Bolsinger, 9.6%
8. Clayton Kershaw, 9.6%
9. Gerrit Cole, 9.7%
10. Francisco Liriano, 9.7%
11. Mike Pelfrey, 9.9%
12. Jake Arrieta, 10%
13. Jacob deGrom, 10%
14. Felix Hernandez, 10%
15. Ubaldo Jimenez, 10%
16. Tyson Ross, 10%
17. Gio Gonzalez, 10.3%
18. Cole Hamels, 10.4%
19. Shelby Miller, 10.4%
20. Yovani Gallardo, 11%
These 20 starting pitchers have been squared up most often (min. 1000 pitches):
1. Josh Collmenter, 26.6%
2. Ian Kennedy, 22.8%
3. Kyle Kendrick, 21.1%
4. Bud Norris, 20.9%
5. Kendall Graveman, 19.7%
6. Phil Hughes, 19.7%
7. Kyle Lohse, 18.8%
8. Mat Latos, 18.2%
9. Trevor May, 18%
10. Roberto Hernandez, 17.6%
11. Carlos Frias, 17.4%
12. Rubby de la Rosa, 17.3%
13. Danny Duffy, 17.2%
14. Chris Tillman, 17.1%
15. John Lackey, 17%
16. Michael Lorenzen, 17%
17. Alfredo Simon, 17%
18. Mark Buehrle, 16.9%
19. Dan Haren, 16.8%
20. Jered Weaver, 16.8%