The RotoWire Blog has been retired.

These archives exist as a way for people to continue to view the content that had been posted on the blog over the years.

Articles will no longer be posted here, but you can view new fantasy articles from our writers on the main site.

Stats

On today's Sirius/XM show, I discussed the issues going on with Max Scherzer with Jeff Erickson and Dalton Del Don. One of my observations was that while he's had the strikeouts, Tuesday night's outing came with a bunch of walks. I mentioned that one stat I'd love to see is that when a pitcher walks a batter, how many times that happens on a 3-2 count? It would make a ton of sense to label a pitcher "wild" or "lacking control" if he's walking a ton of guys without getting to two strikes, right?

That brings on another topic, one I'd love to get thoughts on. What other stats should be tracked in the fantasy or the "real" baseball world to help improve the game? We've seen the amount of attention in recent years that BABIP, LD rate, GB rate, F/HR rate, contact rate, etc. has gotten to help give opinions on players. Is there anything else out there that we should be tracking to see if it's indicative of that current day's events or for future prognostications?

I'm not talking about weather, park, opposing pitcher or team, try and go deeper. And like any question, there is no wrong answer.

I'll start. With regards to pitching, who is umpiring that day? I'm sure that I'm not the first one to suggest it but outside of a little of research, this info isn't readily available. This is a bigger influence than one might think. For example, I watched every pitch of Zack Greinke's start Monday and Jonathan Lucroy was up nodding at Zack Greinke when he painted the outside corner before Andy Fletcher could signal a strike. Tim McClelland has a consistent strike zone. Does the ump have a bias towards rookies (who I've seen getting squeezed time and time again thus far) or for batters (I watched Jeter walk up to the plate tonight and exchange pleasantries with Brian Runge). I'll fully admit, my knowledge of umpiring is lacking but I think this is a legit interest for fantasy owners.

Should we chart heavily swinging strikes vs. called strikes? Figure out a ratio between the two? And if so what does that mean? There are both guys who can paint the corners and guys who can miss swinging bats. Generally you'd like to have a mix of both but in the end does the latter mean more?

Fire away, this is one of those blogs where I hope the comments will completely outweigh the subject material.