Chris Davis was the bane of my fantasy teams for a couple of years. After breaking out in 2008 with 17 home runs in 80 games, he was my ace-in-the-hole of draft/auction day. The results were horrible. Once I finally swore to never pick him up again, he had a comeback season with the Orioles. With such an uneven past, it will be tough to get a read on his potential 2013 season.

The fantasy value of Chris Davis lives of the edge of relevancy because of three traits, a high number strikeouts, good power and a high BABIP. In some seasons, one or more of these traits destroyed his value. In his first season (2008), none were an issue and he thrived. In 2009, the strikeout rate jumped and his batting average plummeted. In 2010, both his power and BABIP dropped. In 2011 his power was down. Finally in 2012, all three aligned again and he had a decent season. I am going to look into each of these three areas and see what benchmarks he needs to reach category for a repeat of 2012.

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Scroll a little more than halfway down Zach Sanders’ End of Season First Base Rankings, and there at number 31 you’ll find Kansas City Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer with a measly $1 value attached. If you stood by Hosmer this past season, you probably think that Zach was a little too generous with that ranking and perhaps that dollar value is a bit much. After all, as far as disastrous seasons go for over-hyped players, this one may not take the cake, but it definitely ranks up there. Read the rest of this entry »

ottoneu is now officially ready to provide you with something baseball-related to do on post-season off-days or less-than-tense games. You may have noticed in the last 24 hours or so that ottoneu arbitration has begun. Every league homepage has an arbitration tab (some say “Arbitration Allocations” and some say “Arbitration Voting”) and owners are now free to go in and allocate or vote.

I’ve provided some details on these processes in the past (an outline of the new allocation rules, strategies for arbitration voting, a look at the process I used to determine my votes), but there are two things I haven’t covered yet: How the Arbitration Allocations tool works and strategies for how to handle your allocations.

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Identifying post-hype sleepers can be one of the best ways to find breakout players during your draft. Post-hype players are typically former prospects that don’t initially live up to expectations. This drives down their value in fantasy leagues the following season, making them excellent late-round targets. Yonder Alonso and Anthony Rizzo don’t fit the bill exactly, as neither player was hyped as a fantasy superstar. But both were considered decent prospects heading into the season, and owners that drafted them may not have been fully satisfied with their performances. Both players did show some promise during their first full year in the majors, and will be looking to build on that during their sophomore season.

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It was largely a forgettable season for Kevin Youkilis in 2012, and certainly forgettable for fantasy owners who expected anything close to his typical performance. He was frequently injured, run out of Boston by a rookie, and ultimately never resembled the Youkilis of old. Looking at his end of season value, Zach Sanders puts him basically at replacement level with a zero dollar value, and ranked 36th overall. Yeeks.

What went wrong? Pretty much everything.

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On Monday, I took a look back at the hitters who I boldly predicted would lead the league in each of the 5×5 fantasy categories. Well, I made those same predictions for pitchers as well in the pre-season. So, let’s see if I did just as poorly or had some better luck.

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Going into the season, Davey Johnson, Mike Rizzo, and the rest of the Washington Nationals’ decision makers certainly expected to get strong production from their first basemen and that’s exactly what happened. Nationals’ first basemen combined to hit .285/.355/.547 with 40 HR, 118 RBI, and even a single, solitary stolen base. That .902 OPS was the third highest mark in baseball behind the Tigers — the honorable Prince Fielder presiding — and the Reds pair of Joey Votto and Todd Frazier, though the Nationals were the only team to break the 40 home run barrier. So all went exactly according to plan as Washington changed the old saying around to “first in war, first in peace, first in the NL East.”

Except it wasn’t nearly so simple as that. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me apologize for making this title seem like a bigger deal. In reality, I’ll only be examining one particular team’s 2012 first base situation. That being said, this team’s first base .354 wOBA was good for eighth in all of MLB. If you prefer park adjusted numbers, then said team’s first base was responsible for a 127 wRC+, ranking at an astonishing fourth.

Without looking it up, could you guess the fourth most effective first basemen? I know I couldn’t have. Well, okay, I could have guessed, but it would have been an incorrect guess.
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You’d be hard-pressed to find many guys listed on more “sleeper” lists last spring than Ike Davis. The 25 year-old Mets first baseman showed signs of breaking out in 2011, putting up an impressive .302/.383/.543 slash with seven homers and 25 RBI in a season eventually cut short (149 PA) by a left ankle injury. After multiple setbacks late in the season, he proclaimed himself ready to go early in 2012, and with that, the fantasy hype train started rolling. A healthy Davis was locked in as a middle-of-the-order hitter and his 2011 projected full season rates (23 HR, 85 RBI) were set to get a nice boost with the fences at Citi Field being moved in a bit, too. Many owners who passed on elite first basemen like Joey Votto, Albert Pujols, and Miguel Cabrera were skipping past the Freddie Freeman‘s, Paul Konerko‘s, and Billy Butler’s of the world and hoping to snag Davis in the later rounds.

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Nothing better than a piping hot Country Breakfast, loaded with OPS and smothered and covered in rich, delicious stat lines, to help you win your fantasy championship…

After a breakout season in 2012, added position eligibility and arguably one of the best nicknames in baseball right now, Billy Butler is headed towards being one of the sexier picks in fantasy drafts next season. Batting .313 with 29 home runs and 107 RBI while amassing 20 games played at the position this past season, Butler is no longer just a DH and will garner some serious attention in the future. Though accidentally omitted in Zach Sanders’ End of Season First Base Rankings, Butler should be slotted sixth with a value of $19 and while that may not be enough to land him “elite status,” it certainly made him one of the better value picks at the position this past year. Read the rest of this entry »