Cain and Hamels

Amongst the rankings I have seen so far, there hasn't been a most improved list yet. By this, I am talking about the players who statistically will improve the most upon last year's totals. I feel the leaders amongst National League pitchers are going to be Matt Cain of the Giants and Cole Hamels of the Phillies. Cain is 22 years old, Hamels is 23. Last year, Cain spent the entire season as the number four starter for the Giants, which is where he will be again to start this season. Hamels spent last year splitting time between AAA and the bigs. It seems that Hamels may be a year behind Cain in overall progress despite being a year older. Is Cain going to be the better pitcher? We will have to wait and see, but February is a good month for speculation I suppose. Here are Cain's numbers in 2005, when he split time between the minors and the majors, pitted against Hamels' numbers last year.
Cain (2005): 12-6, 3.35 ERA, 9.5 k/9, 3.5 bb/9, 191 IP.
Hamels (2006): 11-8, 3.59 ERA, 10.2 k/9, 2.8 bb/9, 155 IP.
Just to clarify, that's a 3.6 CMD ratio for Hamels to Cain's 2.7 in 2005. Thing is, Cain's walk rate actually rose to 4.1 last year, his first full season in the majors. But I'm confident that at 22 years old, Cain has time to work out his control issues. Things could be a lot worse for sure. Hamels actually posted a behemoth 6.2 bb/9 in AA ball in 2005, which I have to assume was discrepency based on the small sample size (19 IP). Still, that's pretty strange. For now I'm going to leave this debate open.
Other rising stars: Scott Olsen (Marlins), Chuck James (Braves)

Blog Review: Fantasy Baseball Island

Sponsored by Fantasy Baseball Express, this blog here is mostly focused on the National League. No Dh's or fluff on this blog- just good looking rankings. The topics on Fantasy Baseball Island change between analysis of the hot/not players on NL teams and rankings of the top players at individual NL positions. There are no pictures here, but I like the format of this page. It's just a simple page with a white background and type in black, blue, and red. Easy on the eyes, just how I like it. This painting is called Alegoría de la Santa Eucaristía, and it was painted in 1750 by Miguel Cabrera, who happens to share a name with the current Florida Marlins 24 year old, who is featured on this blog as the number one fantasy third baseman in the National League this season.

Blog Review: MLB Front Office

This blog is for anyone who is interested in fantasy baseball but doesn't enjoy looking at lots of numbers and charts. Though the stats are here, this blog has more artistic value than most. One feature of this blog is a review of a mock draft that blog author Brad Stewart participated in. Even better is a countdown of the top 25 fantasy baseball players this year, complete with lengthy analysis. A great site for those who love rankings. Pictured here is Jimmy Rollins, #23 on the list.

Blog Review: Baseball Analysts

From the wonderful database of baseball blogs aptly titled baseblogs.net comes this blog called Baseball Analysts which is quite simply the closest thing to what I've been searching for so far. The most recent post is an interview with Nate Silver, the inventor of PECOTA - Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. This is great stuff for gritty numerical analysis. It doesn't provide much in aesthetic value though- were it my blog I would color it up a little bit, maybe add some more graphics or a background design. On the flip side, it's hard to argue with a plain white background when it comes time to intensely pore over some information.

Preparing for The Season: Initial Steps

The fantasy season started for me last year on Christmas when I unwrapped a hardback copy of Fantasyland by Sam Walker, which was a present from my father. In the book, Wall Street Journal writer Walker is invited to play in an experts league called Tout Wars, a league founded by Ron Shandler. For more on Shandler, click here.