Last week, I tried to provide insight on strategies for arbitration voting in ottoneu, but with almost four weeks left until votes are due, I thought I would add some color to that lecture with a couple examples. I’ve identified a couple teams from the original ottoneu league that I think include some pretty interesting arbitration cases.
We’ll start with this year’s champion: Last Years Leftovers.
I stated a while back that I will be working on a method to predict and evaluate player’s fantasy stats. I will be using both the player’s talent and outside factors and will also combine several data points to get the player’s final value. I will try to keep the explanation as simple as possible and let me know if you have any questions. Let’s start with hitters and once done with them, move onto the pitchers.
A classic “which player would you rather have?” scenario:
Player A: .299/.366/.541 with 37 HR, 105 R, 99 RBI, and 9 SB
Player B: .301/.412/.547 with 31 HR, 90 R, 94 RBI, and 2 SB
From a fantasy perspective, these two players are pretty close. B has a better slash line, while A has better counting stats and doesn’t lose the slash categories by a meaningful amount. If we’re looking at AVG instead of OBP, I’d rather have A, but if I’m stuck with B, I’m hardly rending my clothes in mourning. If we introduce opportunity cost into the equation, my preference is stronger: Player A likely wasn’t available to you unless you had the first overall pick in your draft, while Player B was probably on the wire until about mid-April. Give me B and a first-round pick. Read the rest of this entry »
At the end of each fantasy season, I always like to do what few fantasy sites/writers ever do for their readers. I like to hold myself accountable. You need to know whether you are getting sound advice and I need to know where I need to step up my game. So with that, I like to go back throughout the year, both spring and in-season, and see just how successful I was in offering up advice. When I saw Mike Podhorzer’s look back at his 20 Bold Predictions, I knew it was time to serve myself up as well.
In mid-March, I published an article espousing Braves starter Mike Minor as a good $1 option in your auction draft. I was a relatively big Minor fan and considered him an undervalued/sleeper breakout candidate. Then surprisingly, Brandon Beachy won the fifth spot in the rotation, something I thought Minor had pretty much already locked up. While Beachy ended up pitching very well and making the move look good, is Minor still worth watching?
Over the next week or two, I’ll be using my normal Waiver Wire slots to look back at the 2011 fantasy season from beginning to end by looking at how the top 200 drafted players performed over the course of the full season.
There is no one metric that correlates perfectly to fantasy value, in large part because there’s no one definition of fantasy value. WAR is commonly cited, but that’s a better measure of traditional value than fantasy-specific value. Very few leagues count defense and positional considerations are often made apart from generalized value, especially with players like Michael Cuddyer and Michael Young, who accrued most of their production in a corner, but had middle-infield eligibility.
With that in mind, the value calculations I’ve done for this series is simply the batting and base running components of WAR, which I’ll refer to as oRank for short — pitchers, of course, will have their own stat. It should capture at least a sense of what makes players valuable in a majority of leagues, though the individual slot-by-slot rankings will, of course, vary with your league’s idiosyncrasies. Read the rest of this entry »
Prior to the All-Star break, four RotoGraphs writers — Eno Sarris, Jeff Zimmerman, Howard Bender and me — engaged in the just-for-fun activity of drafting Pick Six-style teams, with the pool of players limited to those available in 10% or less in ESPN leagues (at the time of the draft).
Given those parameters, the exercise proved to be challenging, but if you paid attention to our picks, you may have managed to snag a useful fantasy player or three off the waiver wire — no matter what kind of league you play in.
I took the temperature of our picks back in August, but now that the season is finished, let’s tally up the scoring to get the final results. And while we’re at it, we’ll rank the players based on their fantasy impact in 2012.
Erik Hahmann pointed out a couple of gems in Ottoneu playoff pick six for Tuesday and I’d like to grab the baton and run with a few more, because looking over the names available, there are some real interesting opportunities today.
Jorge Posada ($1.00)
The ragged old backstop has been pretty much guaranteed to appear as DH throughout the Division Series and tonight he’ll face Rick Porcello. Posada has eleven at bats against Porcello and he’s 3-9 with a double and two walks. That’s not much of a sample size, but on the season, Posada was really quite solid against right handed pitching, posting a .269/.348/.466 triple slash and managed to hit 14 home runs in 279 at bats.
Porcello struggles versus lefties, giving up 14 home runs in just a little over 100 innings pitched this season. Against lefties, his FIP is 4.51 and his xFIP is 4.16, in part due to a HR/FB of 12.1% and BABIP of .347 vs. lefties, but he’s pretty well earned most of it as his xBABIP sits at about .320. Fully 13 of the 18 home runs he’s given up this season have either had plenty of distance or classified as no doubters by ESPN Home Run Tracker, so it’s not like he’s giving up cheapies either. I look for Posada to square the ball up pretty well this evening.
There’s a pretty good schedule of games tonight, let’s take a look at some of the better value plays for your daily Pick Six
Kelly Shoppach ($0.50)
Much of the ire Rays fans have toward Kelly Shoppach was greatly diminished in game one of the ALDS when the pudgy backstop hit two home runs and drove in five against C.J. Wilson. To the astute viewer it shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise, however. Despite his poor overall numbers – .176/.268/.339 – he hit well against left handed pitching, something he’s done over his whole career. His .788 OPS and .349 wOBA against southpaws this season were the lowest figures of his career, and they’re still above average. Today he’ll face Matt Harrison, another lefty. Harrison has a pretty pronounced platoon split for his career (4.56 FIP vs RHB, 3.98 vs LHB) but the number against right handed batters have improved dramatically this season (3.57 FIP). With a K/9 under 7 and a GB% of 47 he doesn’t have overpowering stuff. He’ll work low in the zone to try and induce weak contact and Shoppach will try to take advantage of any mistakes Harrison happens to make. For the low, low cost of $0.50 the reward outweighs the risk.
Yesterday, I looked at the batted ball data for full time hitters. Today, I moved onto the hitters that had between 150 and 400 PA in 2011. There are more outliers in these groups because the hitter’s batted ball data did not have a chance to stabilize.
HR/FB%
| Name | HR/FB | PA |
| Jason Giambi | 29.5% | 152 |
| Andruw Jones | 25.0% | 222 |
| Mark Reynolds | 22.9% |
No young players sneaking up onto this list. Just the 2 part time vets
LD%
| Name | LD% | PA |
| Nick Punto | 31.0% | 166 |
| Salvador Perez | 29.2% | 158 |
| Trayvon Robinson | 28.8% | 155 |
| Kyle Seager | 27.7% | 201 |
| J.D. Martinez | 27.6% | 226 |
| David Ross | 26.3% | 171 |
| Ruben Tejada | 25.7% | 376 |
| Willie Bloomquist | 25.2% | 381 |
| Bryan Petersen | 25.0% | 241 |
| Magglio Ordonez | 25.0% | 357 |
| Rob Johnson | 25.0% | 199 |
| Todd Helton | 24.9% |
Salvador Perez – Sal should see plenty of attention going into next season. A catcher that hits 0.300 will get noticed. He won’t continue to hit LD at a near 30% rate. Pitchers will find a weakness in his swing and the numbers will come down.
BABIP
| Name | BABIP | PA |
| Alejandro De Aza | 0.404 | 171 |
| Reed Johnson | 0.394 | 266 |
| Jimmy Paredes | 0.383 | 179 |
| Austin Jackson | 0.369 | |
| Carlos Quentin | 0.242 | |
| Mike McCoy | 0.240 | 228 |
| Rene Tosoni | 0.240 | 189 |
| Jason Michaels | 0.236 | 169 |
| Brian Roberts | 0.236 | 178 |
| Manny Burriss | 0.233 | 152 |
| Matt Tolbert | 0.233 | 226 |
| Jeff Mathis | 0.233 | 281 |
| Hank Conger | 0.231 | 197 |
| Brandon Crawford | 0.228 | 220 |
| Michael Martinez | 0.220 | 234 |
| Jorge Cantu | 0.216 | 155 |
| Chone Figgins | 0.215 | 313 |
| Chris Stewart | 0.213 | 183 |
| Kelly Shoppach | 0.212 | 253 |
| Michael Saunders | 0.212 | 179 |
| Dioner Navarro | 0.210 | 202 |
| Anthony Rizzo | 0.210 | 153 |
| Jayson Nix | 0.209 | 151 |
| Adam LaRoche | 0.205 | 177 |
| J.R. Towles | 0.200 | 165 |
| Craig Counsell | 0.197 | 187 |
| Drew Butera | 0.194 | 254 |
| Tyler Colvin | 0.175 | 222 |
Alejandro De Aza – He is getting mentioned as next year’s lead off hitter for the White Sox. The possible drop he may see in AVG could easily be made up with SB and Runs.
Hank Conger – He always had a BABIP over 0.300 in the minors. He can’t seem to get it over 0.250 in the majors. He needs to finally break through or he may have a long future as a journeyman catcher.
Brian Roberts – He was hitting bad before losing the season to a concussion. I like him as a buy low candidate in 2012. I would not have him as my first choice at 2B, but would take a late round flier on him.
Chone Figgins – I have no idea why the Mariners just haven’t cut the cord on him.
Anthony Rizzo – He was one of the players that came over in the Adrian Gonzalez trade. He is a long ball hitter with 20 or more HRs over the last 2 years in the minors. While with the MLB club, he hit only 1 HR. A low LD% (13.4%), high K% (30%) and fly balls that won’t leave the stadium (2.8% HR/FB) will lead to the 0.141 AVG. Hopefully he will have a better 2012. It almost can’t get any worse.
Tyler Colvin – Tyler looks like a home run hitter that can’t hit home run. After hitting 20 home runs with a HR/FB ratio of 19.4% in 2010, he only hit 6 HRs in 2011 with a 8.6% HR/FB ratio. I just don’t think he can hit good enough to make it in the majors.
