Collette Calls: Managing Second-Half Expectations

One thing many of us do during the off time around the break is assess where our fantasy teams are in the standings. In Tout Wars, I'm still hanging around the top third of the standings despite a lot of injuries and delays in getting the likes of John Jaso, Michael Saunders, Jed Lowrie, Andrew Miller and Derek Holland back from the disabled list. In Mixed LABR, it just isn't working out for Paul Sporer and I despite the fact our pitching staff now has both Clayton Kershaw and Felix Hernandez.

If you are doing the same thing with your teams, you really should pay attention to past history. Given that offense is on the decline in recent years, I strongly feel it is important to only focus on recent history since even 7-10 years ago is too far back to look for statistics.

Thankfully, the Baseball-Reference Play Index makes this easy for us to do. Let's take a look at some of the best second-half performances by category to help you try to judge how realistic your second-half comeback plans are. In short, if you're counting on Pitcher A or Batter B to be the linchpin to your second-half plan, what is a realistic projection for them to put up in the second half?

HOME RUNS

This is the list of batters who have hit at least 20 second-half home runs over the past six seasons:

RUNS BATTED IN

Driving in a lot of runs is tough to do as well.

When you are looking at who might be the RBI monster in the second half, it is critical to see who is in front of that player and how you think they will do the rest of the season. Look at Mark Teixeira this season. He already has 58 RBI, which is four fewer than he had all of last season. A monster year from Brett Gardner (called it!), the A-Rod comeback and Ellsbury's production before he went down has led to many RBI chances for Teixeira.

One tool I like to use when scouting RBI opportunities is the situational batting report from Baseball-Reference. It tells us that in 2015, the league-wide average for driving in runners is 14 percent (BRS%). Texeira is slightly above league average at 16 percent, but then you have players such as Wil Myers at 24 percent, Nolan Arenado, Ryan Braun and Paul Goldschmidt at 23 percent. Can they sustain production that far above the league average all season? Conversely, Yasiel Puig is at 8 percent, Adrian Beltre is at 10 percent, and Carlos Santana is at 11 percent. Again, with it being a player-dependent skill, it is more of a crapshoot than others, but I have found some success in trading off players performing well above the league average to get two that are underperforming.

RUNS

It's also hard to score runs.

The key to scoring that many runs is to get on base, so it make sense to target players with strong walk rates, even if they have contact issues. Nobody on that list above had an OBP below .340 and nobody with an OBP below .325 has scored more than 50 runs in a second half over the last six seasons.

While this is a player-dependent stat, it is a bit easier to narrow down your potential targets because we're looking for players in the top third of the lineup who can get on base. It's near impossible to score that many runs in the bottom half of the lineup, even if you get on base. If you don't have those top of the lineup batters and are trailing in runs, either fix the problem or punt the category and chase stats elsewhere.

STEALS

One thing that may hinder that this season is pitchers and catchers are doing a better job this season of controlling the running game. This season, batteries have been successful in foiling 30 percent of stolen base attempts, which is up from 27 percent in each of the previous two seasons and at its highest rate over the past six.

Much like home runs, I would project 20 steals for the best of the thieves and take everything else as gravy. Legs tire in the second half, so it isn't a wise move just to double a player's current stolen base total.

BATTING AVERAGE

Batting average is so tough to forecast because it is nearly impossible to predict when a guy will take off at the plate. One thing we can look at is players who are in extreme slumps, going with the theory that what goes down must come up. If we looked at the bottom of the barrel over the past 30 days, we find names such as Ian Desmond, Derek Norris, Steven Souza Jr., Carlos Santana, Matt Carpenter, and Joc Pederson. Again, hitters hit, and only the last three names on that list would get my attention now.

Wins

The big takeaway from the stat is noting that most pitchers had 15 or fewer starts on the list. If you are looking for 10 wins from a pitcher, that requires him to win two of every three starts he makes. If you want that to happen, get the guys without the leaky bullpens, since nobody throws complete games these days, and hope for the best while you wait for the win to be killed in fantasy baseball.

SAVES

Beggars cannot be choosers when it comes to chasing saves. If you need them, grab whoever is in the role and hope they don't completely destroy your ratios because you're chasing one stat while hoping to minimize the damage in the other three areas relievers affect.

STRIKEOUTS

None of the names on the list are terribly surprising outside of R.A. Dickey having the same total as David Price and doing better than Chris Sale has ever done in a second half. The names of the pitchers who have struck out at least 100 in a second half are rather recognizable, so unless you get one of them, you better stock up on a few of the next tier to make a dent in your strikeouts gap. You will get to a point in the coming weeks where you decide whether you need to chase wins and strikeouts or saves as it is tough to do both.

EARNED-RUN AVERAGE

Chasing ERA comes down to pitchers with good defense behind them, decent run support and, more importantly, good bullpen help. Pitchers can hand the ball off with a lead and then see the middle relief corps blow it up and stick earned runs on the starter. If you want to find this year's Joe Kelly or Ubaldo Jimenez, the ERA-FIP leaderboard is a quick and dirty place to start. Kluber and Carrasco are showing signs of repeating last year's success while Clay Buchholz quietly continues to lower his ERA this season.

WHIP

Again, use the break next weekend to lay out your battle plan for the rest of the season. Identify your statistical gaps and how realistic it is for you to close them. You are managing a battle on multiple fronts while you are also running out of time to win the war. The break is a great time to be proactive before you're forced to be more reactive in mid-August and begin taking bigger risks in hopes of any kind of reward.