Three phenomenal fantasy baseball resources

I've been getting a lot of great Goose Joak cards and Goose Joak contributions in the last few days. Can't wait to get these posted.

In the meantime, if you enjoy fantasy baseball, here are some great resources on starting pitchers and relievers. I found these yesterday at The Baseball Analysts. They've done a great job assigning weights to pitcher-specific outcomes (to help determine weighted value scores) as well as classifying pitchers by type classes (to help identify undervalued comps for overvalued pitchers).

1. Graph of K and GB rates for pitchers - with some awesome graphs for the visually inclined
   
2. Categorizing pitchers by K, BB and GB rates - a great way to categorize similar pitchers
   
3. Putting it all together with weighted z scores - putting a single, comparable value to each pitcher
   

The data isn't predictive for 2009 (it's a study on 2008 data), but you can get a lot of good ideas from it. Just amazing stuff. Can't wait to get carve out some time and play with it.

Some things that pop initially:

1. In predicting ERA, K rates were twice as important as walk rates and five times as important as groundball rates. So K:BB:GB importance is approximately 5:3:1. I've actually used very something similar on my own to rate pitchers in the past (K rate, B rate, HR rate), so it is a good confirmation that this approach works. I will probably fine tune my weights based on these findings.
   
2. Some great comps between players can be made. Daisuke Matsuzaka and Jonathan Sanchez for instance. While very similar players, Sanchez had a better K rate, BB rate and GB rate. Not that I'm keen on either guy, really.
3. Frank Francisco! Sixth highest weighted Z score among closers. That's my man. If I miss out on Mariano this year, you know I'll come knocking.

Two other personal observations that jumped out at me, when looking at the different categories of pitchers:

- I tend to categorically stay away from players in the K+ BB- GB+ group (good K rates, poor walk rates, good groundball rates).

Examples include: Volquez, Burnett, Billingsley, Kershaw, King Felix, Ubaldo, Brett Myers.

These are all guys I tend to value less than other fantasy owners, both in leagues and mock drafts.

- Conversely, I tend to categorically favor players in the K+ BB+ GB- group (good K rates, good walk rates, poor groundball rates).

Examples include: Wandy Rodriguez (pictured above), Zack Greinke, Ricky Nolasco, Jered Weaver, Randy Johnson, Kevin Slowey...these are all guys I tend to value more than other fantasy owners, both in leagues and mock drafts

Hope you enjoyed the link. If you can't get enough, here are a few other fantasy baseball sites I enjoy, for those interested. All of these come highly recommended:

Daily Reading
Fantasy Baseball 365
Fantasy Baseball Hot Stove

Other Great Resources
Fantasy Phenoms
The Waiver Wire
Bullpen Box Score
MLB.com Probable Pitchers
MLB.com's Fantasy 411