Free Agent Fantasy Team Update: Kevin Gregg's Success as a Cub

This week's Free Agent Fantasy Team Update contains a lot of roster moves:

Rick Ankiel was DFA'd and then released by Mets, so he is released from my team. I had missed that Dewayne Wise was on the DL, so I moved him to the inactive part of my roster. John Lannan will be back with the the Phillies to start on Monday, so I am putting him back on the big league roster. Shawn Camp was activated from the DL as well, so he moves to the active part of my roster. Thomas Neal was recalled by the Yankees, so he also moves from the minors/inactive part of the roster to the MLB part of the roster. Assuming that he is making league minimum, he is now owed $284,000. Chien Wang was also signed by Blue Jays, so I signed him to big league roster. He will also be owed 284,000 dollars. This puts my payroll at about 100.5 million dollars for the season. This also puts my big league roster at a full 24. It also means I had 2 spots open for my minor league/inactive team, so I signed J.C. Romero and Clay Rapada relievers who signed MiLB contracts in the past couple of weeks. Apparently Travis Ishikawa has exercised his opt-out clause, but that will probably take a couple of days to play itself out, so I am going to keep him on the inactive part of the roster as there was no update at the time of publishing. Now, let's see how my team is doing:

Since about 70 games have been played this season:

12.4 fWAR, 32.98 wins and 37.02 losses

13 rWAR, 33.58 wins and 36.42 losses

10.5 WARP, 32.9 wins and 37.1 losses

.4 WAA, 35.4 wins and 34.6 losses

So the three WARs have congregated to about as close as they have been all year. WAA continues to be the one that rates my team the highest, and I am only above .500 according to that measure.

Since all the roster moves made the post long, I just wanted to take a quick look at why Kevin Gregg may be having more success. My guess was location (as his 2013 stuff is nothing special), so here is his average locations from 2012 and 2013:

 He is keeping the ball lower on average this year, which could really play a role in his success so far. Let's break it down by pitch (MLBAM tags). 2012:

 

2013:

The fastball is clearly more arm side, rather than in the middle of the plate, while his sinker is more glove side. He is also locating the slider and splitter lower in the zone, which, along with moving to the NL Central from the AL East, is probably playing a big role in his success so far with the Cubs.