Today, our 2020 Prospect Opportunities series moves on to the Red Sox. Naturally, a strong team means fewer at risk players.

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05/26/20

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• 2020 Season Outlook

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Predicting hitter injuries has been a fool’s errand for me. Besides players with chronic injuries (e.g. Albert Pujols and Ryan Braun), others and myself have made little headway in the field. With few guidelines, many fantasy analysts and owners handle hitter injuries differently. Previously, I focused on a hitter’s recent injury history. This time I attempted a different approach and used the hitter’s career IL days. In the end, I found a useful and easy to remember injury threshold.

For the study, I examined hitters from the 2010 to 2018 seasons. I have IL data going back to 2002, so I hoped the preceding eight years of data would get most of the hitter’s 2010 career total. Additionally, I needed the next season (e.g. 2019) to compare results. Additionally, I set a minimum hitting threshold (100 PA) to include at least some semi-regulars. I know I may miss a hitter who is out the whole season, but the two-week callups were diluting the results. In all, I ended up with a sample of 2365 player seasons.
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If you follow me on Twitter, you’re aware of why last week’s article reviewing 2027 and updating on 2028 never got posted. Let’s take a quick look back at the ’27 season before diving deep into ’28.

2027 REVIEW

After an ugly 74-88 in 2026, we were demoted from Iron back to Stone and we took advantage of moving down a level with a robust 96-66 record. Unfortunately, it was only good for a 2nd place finish behind a 102-60 ballclub. In fact, the 96 wins would’ve only won one of the six divisions and not only did it fall a game short of the wildcard in my conference, but it would’ve been three games shy in the other conference, too!

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Today, our 2020 Prospect Opportunities series moves on to the Rays. As a reminder, I’m not listing every position or every possible replacement at the positions I do list. I’m only listing positions with players at risk of losing their job due to potential poor performance and replacements that have a chance of earning positive fantasy value. If there’s a potential replacement who could get a shot if the incumbent fails, but I expect him to stink up the joint, he won’t be included here.

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In this time of uncertainty, we have seen fantasy players do some unorthodox activities in order to scratch the itch of not having fantasy baseball in their lives. Whether it is KBO DFS, OOTP Baseball, Retro Drafts or MLB the Show, fantasy players are doing their best to fill time. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This article was written in two parts, with the first half being before the draft and the second half after completion.

Prep

Tonight, I’m participating in a 1999 retro with several other industry analysts. The premise is simple: the owner drafts a 5×5 roto team based on the 1999 season’s final player stats. That’s where the simplicity ends.

I knew these drafts were going on but as I was busy with other projects, I hadn’t dived into them. Then Fred Zinkie contacted me to do an idiot check on his valuations for the draft that happened last Wednesday. I’m a fan of using SGP (standings gain points) for my normal evaluations, but none were available for 1999. Instead, I had to break out a copy of The Process and create the player valuations based on the Z-score method. (Z-score looks at how much a player’s real or predicted stats are above or below the league average for the draftable player pool. It takes several passes to get the correct valuations since the final player pool is unknown. The z-score method is helpful when no league history exists.)

After I was done, we noticed two differences. Fred used a modified SGP for the season and was valuing stolen bases a little more. We aren’t sure of the cause, but he gave catcher and middle infield a little more of a bump. I think the difference was from the different stolen base values. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, our 2020 Prospect Opportunities series moves on to the Orioles. This is a team that lost 108 games last year, so you better believe there are opportunities galore. And wouldn’t you know it, their entire starting roster is actually listed below! Let’s dive in.

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About every month, podcast mate Rob Silver pours out his undying love and affection for the Rockies Charlie Blackmon. I’m not as much of Blackmon fan but this comment got me thinking.

To play devil’s advocate:

his barrel% went up.

His exit velocity went up.

His xBA and xSLG went up.

Hard hit% went up.

K% went down.

Prior to last year, he hit 28 HRs with 105 runs in his last 161 road games.

It’s possible last year’s road stats were just noise.

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) May 10, 2020

Blackmon definitely hit the ball harder last year but so did everyone else with MLB’s juiced ball. Even with noisy data, Rob was right and Blackmon exceeded expectations.
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