After a brief Holiday respite, Zach Sanders continued his end-of-season positional rankings by posting his OF rankings on Monday. With far more players than at any other position (103 players qualified for the OF rankings) the differences between where a player falls in 5×5 vs. linear weights can be more drastic.

In fact, instead of talking a few spots here or there, there were six players who “fell” at least 20 spots when we shifted to linear weights, and six who “rose” at least 20. We’ll see a couple old friends on this list and once again OBP and SB go a long way towards explaining the differences.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Trout exceeded all expectations in 2012 and produced one of the greatest seasons ever. The hardest part of getting an idea of a reasonable projection for him is that there is basically no one to compare to the 21-year-old. I will give it an attempt today.

Read the rest of this entry »

For a 31-year-old outfielder, we have surprisingly little information about Josh Hamilton. 3000 or so plate appearances, three full seasons, and he’s already on the long side of thirty. We all know the reasons why, but it leaves us looking at his different peripheral metrics — all oscillating — and wondering which number should get our focus. None of it might matter as much as his age, on the other hand.

It’s not all bad. Hamilton set career highs in isolated slugging percentage (.292), home runs (43), runs (105), and full season walk rate (9.4%). He hit more home runs per fly ball than he ever had (25.6%), and his line drive rate remained above-average (and above 21%), as it has every year he’s played in the big leagues. We shouldn’t get too wrapped up in his September / October failure (a “terrible” .245/.330/.543) if he’s going to continue being a high-average slugger with center-field eligibility, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Through six major league seasons, we still don’t know what to make of Justin Upton. He’s looked like a budding superstar in 2009 and 2011, and merely an adequate outfielder in 2010 and 2012. A number of fantasy teams invested a high draft pick in Upton last season only to be left disappointed by his production. Coming off another down season, by his standards, Upton now faces a similar predicament. Can he emerge as a superstar player again?

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello everyone and welcome back to our positional review of the 2012 season. Hope you enjoyed your turkey, but now it’s back to business. This morning, Zach Sanders published the final season values for outfielders. Sitting at number 53 and earning $6 is perennial breakout candidate Dexter Fowler. But while the absolute ranking and dollar value don’t suggest he outperformed projections, he actually did. And now the question of course is whether these new skills are repeatable.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2012 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. This week focuses on outfielders.

The players were ranked based on their 2012 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. To keep things manageable and avoid skewing the numbers, players were only considered if they amassed 350 plate appearances over the course of the year. The replacement level was also adjusted to account for players eligible at multiple positions. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and traditional 5×5 roto fantasy leagues.

One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth.

These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. So, a player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, I dove into the recently published Bill James projections and examined how they compared with the actual performances of some of this past season’s biggest surprises on the hitting side. Today I check into some of the most surprising starting pitchers of the year.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, I looked at the top hitters according to the recently added Bill James Handbook Projections. Today, I will see how the projection system sees the pitchers performing this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2009, Ricky Nolasco was the poster boy for performing well below your predictors. His ERA ended at 5.06 while his FIP suggested 3.35. This disparity was in large part due to his high strikeouts and modest walk rate which collided with an abnormally low strand rate and piles of hits allowed. He was a classic buy low kind of guy in fantasy circles, with most expecting a major improvement in 2010.

Nolasco did improve, but not by a whole lot. And what’s happened since then is he has continued to underperform his FIP, and yet he has very much declined in performance. This can be summed up pretty quickly:

Read the rest of this entry »

There are plenty of things that I am thankful for this year. Adam Jones’ breakout and Melky Cabrera’s PEDs bust which proved his 2011 was indeed unsustainable without a little illegal assistance — two articles and a bold prediction (found here, here and here) I took a mess of heat for in the comments section that still have me smiling at the haters — are two such examples. But what I am most thankful for in the fantasy baseball world is the mess of young, raw talent I own in my primary keeper league that has no contracts and a keeper structure that has a minimal inflation rate. Mike Trout, Brett Lawrie, Jason Kipnis, Jason Heyward, just to name a few. But I can’t keep them all and at first base I am left with a tough choice that I will turn to you for some thoughts: Would you rather keep Paul Goldschmidt or Anthony Rizzo? Read the rest of this entry »