One of us happens to live hard by a Goodwill Super Store, and he occasionally drops in just to see what people are giving away. All right, he sometimes buys stuff too, but it’s nice stuff, and the price is right. And we like to think of ourselves as the Goodwill Store of Fantasy Baseball, setting out a rack of bargains for you while others urge you to pay full price for name brands.

Hence our annual feature: not the humdrum Ten Bold Predictions you might find elsewhere, though of course never on Rotographs. Rather they are the outre, gauche, and louche Ten Bold Predictions in which we specialize. This year, we’ve tried to concentrate on players that you might take, either for a dollar or in the reserve rounds, in even a relatively shallow draft—say the 30-player NFBC Main Event. But we wouldn’t be the Birchwood Brothers if we didn’t offer at least one Ouija Board longshot, and since we are in fact the Birchwood Brothers, we did. And, as always, we add an eleventh Bold Prediction, about a guy who’ll cost considerably more than a dollar. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I identified and discussed 13 starting pitchers the 2019 Pod Projections forecasted a significantly lower ERA than Steamer. Today, I’ll take on the other group — those the Pod Projections are more bearish on than Steamer in ERA. I’ll only discuss those pitchers you truly care about.

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Bat Flips Are Back!

Tim Beckham comes correct with the first bat flip of the season!!!! pic.twitter.com/yP9iWQW7jx

— Paul Sporer (@sporer) March 20, 2019

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Spring is the time for optimism. That’s why you see a lot more articles about breakouts and sleepers than busts. It’s easier to see the good in a player and how things can go right. But not today. It’s time to journey over to the dark side.

The truth of it is that many flops have some sort of injury component tied to them. The obvious ones are where they miss a ton of time and don’t really perform once they return. But then there’s ones like Brian Dozier’s 2018. We didn’t learn until late in 2018 that played most of the season with a deep bone bruise that undoubtedly played a role in his 90 wRC+, a six-year low. Sometimes a player just falls back and fails to meet expectations, though.

I’ve identified 10 players within the top 100 that I’m fading. Cost plays a major role here as I could see myself buying some of them if they became available several rounds later. In addition to their draft cost, I’m going to focus on their skills profile for reasons why I’m fading them and not just lean on potential injury.

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Once upon a time, Matt Harvey was good. Awesome, in fact! Then the Mets overused him. Harvey suffered through Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome, and just general ineffectiveness before the former draft day darling was essentially forgotten this year. Right now, the erstwhile Dark Knight of Gotham is being drafted outside the top 120 pitchers and top 400 players. That’s for good reason; last year’s 4.94 ERA and 4.57 FIP don’t inspire much confidence. But it also makes the Dark Knight someone who makes a remarkably good sleeper, especially in a traditionally starting pitching class. Harvey might have the most upside of any undrafted pitcher this year – because we know what he can do at his best, and that’s a top-5 pitcher in baseball.

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I decided to dive into the latest Spring Training lineups to see if any possible trends are emerging. Today, I’ll start with the National League.

Note: I just looked through the lineups and didn’t read up on each team. There is probably a good chance the manager has stated a different plan during the season.

Arizona

• It’s tough to really get a good read on a set lineup but Wilmer Flores, Ketel Marte, Eduardo Escobar, Steven Souza Jr., David Peralta, and Jake Lamb are in the top-six spots in random order.
• Ildemaro Vargas looks to be the team’s Utility player and is probably relevant in 20-team or deeper leagues with a 10/10/.270 projection if playing a full season.

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Consensuses make me nervous. When everybody agrees, there’s usually a way to profit with a contrarian approach. This season features perhaps the most monolithic consensus I’ve seen in the last decade. Ace starting pitchers are the key to life, liberty, the cosmos, and a rockin’ bikini bod. You can’t possibly contend without at least one ace. Multiple aces are preferred. This leads me to ask a question…

Is 2019 a LIMA year?

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Let’s continue our comparison of the 2019 Pod Projections (last year’s most accurate non-aggregate forecasting system!) and the Steamer projections. Today, we move on to pitchers, where I’ll compare our ERA projections. First, it’s worth noting that Steamer is far more pessimistic on ERA than Pod is, so there are more upside guys than downside. It’s not a big deal for fantasy baseball though, as value is driven by projected stats versus replacement. So whether the league ERA is projected at 11.00 and Chris Sale is at 9.50 or the league is at 4.50 and Sale is at 3.00, it doesn’t make a difference from a valuation perspective.

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Here is the chat transcript for the start of the game. If you are interested in me doing it again for the next game, please say so in the comment section.

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3/19/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – PRE-ORDERS AVAILABLE NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms for the March 22nd release! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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• @sporer – Host/Producer

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Late Hitters I Like

ADP (select Main Event in the second column)

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