Obviously, we’d all like to do our fantasy drafts the day before the MLB season opens, but more often than not, someone in your league has some ill-timed commitment to fulfill and the league is then forced into some madcap, Keystone Kop-like struggle to try and settle on a draft date that works for everyone. Calendars are opened, spreadsheets are created and Google docs are distributed. Finally, after an annoying round of emails where you are forced to learn of children’s birthday parties, visits from in-laws and how some idiot in your league thinks that his life is more important than that of anyone else, you settle in on a date three weeks before Opening Day. The date, while convenient for everyone, is certainly not ideal. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for the second annual Top 100 Fantasy Rookies, a list of 100 prospects who should make an impact on the 2013 fantasy baseball season. Just how much impact? In some cases, a lot; but in others, it may be minimal — or even negligible. That’s the inherent risk in predicting and projecting not only prospects’ development curves but also how these players possibly fit into their big league teams’ plans during the upcoming season.

That’s why, much like with my Mining the Minors columns, I’ve incorporated both talent and opportunity into each prospect’s ranking. Sometimes, a player’s talent is so elite that it’s worth bumping him up the rankings even if his path to playing time isn’t all that clear (think: Mike Trout last year). But there are also plenty of players in these rankings who skew toward the opportunity side of the spectrum, because they’re (nearly) ready to be in the majors on Opening Day (read: David Phelps, 2012). Trying to weigh and balance these two aspects — talent and opportunity — is what makes a list like this so challenging. And so fluid. Which is to say, my mind could change on any of the players on the list between today and tomorrow. Or even today and later today.

Here’s the third batch, from Grant Green to Anthony Rendon.

Nos. 100-81
Nos 80-61

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In standard drafts, the late round flyers are some of my favorite picks because on the one hand they “cost” you extremely little and on the other, there’s always the chance that you’ve picked up a gem on the cheap. Position battles are perfect spots to look for hidden value because many managers aren’t willing to float a pick for someone without a regular gig. With that in mind, there are a few starting pitching battles which might actually feature arms worth rostering.

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The 2012 season proved to be disappointing for the Philadelphia Phillies, who finished in third place in the NL East, so it’s not a stretch to say the roster was littered with underperformers. The outfield was no different. The Phillies’ outfielders combined for a .320 wOBA, which was tied for 19th in Major League Baseball. Changes were needed.

The organization began its outfield shakeup last summer, when they traded both Shane Victorino and Hunter Pence to the NL West, and it continued this winter when they moved to acquire center fielder Ben Revere from the Minnesota Twins. Needless to say, Opening Day in 2013 will look very different in the outfield for the Phillies than it did a year previously.

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Because the standard roto format uses batting average, most analysis, rankings, and projections are based on that and the other standard roto categories. If your league uses additional categories or replaces traditional categories with new ones like average being replaced by OBP, you’re can’t just rely on the normal analysis and cheat sheets provided by fantasy sites. You’re going to have to do a little bit of extra work. The purpose of this post is to aid those playing in leagues in which OBP has replaced average as a category.

When  OBP replaces average, you can’t simply look at the guys who have the best OBPs to determine who gains an advantage in this format. What really matters is the difference between OBP and average. To determine when the difference becomes significant, I created a spreadsheet with all qualified hitters from the last three years with their OBP and average. Then I calculated the difference between those numbers,  the mean and the standard deviation for the differences. The mean was .068 and the standard deviation was .02. I then sorted the differences large to small and cut out all players that were within one standard deviation of the mean. Below are the lists of players who were more than one standard deviation from the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

Not a whole lot of doubt as to who we’ll be seeing in the Toronto outfield, is there? Melky Cabrera, Colby Rasmus, & Jose Bautista are the pretty obvious starting trio — with one potentially intriguing twist that we’ll get to in a second. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is a jerk. He (or she) is constantly running late. That is the last time I trust my weather report to a groundhog.

On today’s agenda:
1. Jordan Lyles to Triple-A
2. Mike Olt to Triple-A
3. The Brewers first base options
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Welcome to the first Bullpen Report of 2013! Starting Opening Day, we’ll be back on a nightly basis, discussing near real-time bullpen happenings and what those Heath Bell meltdowns mean for your fantasy squad (hint: not too much this year). To stay sharp, we figured we needed to get a couple side sessions in to make sure we’re ready so we’ll be popping in every few days for the next couple weeks to hopefully provide some assistance (at least do no harm) for your drafts and pre-season waiver moves.

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I will probably drop the fastball speeds from the report, but may make some notes of pitchers facing lingering velocity issues.

For some outstanding reading on the current state pitcher injury prevention, here is an article by Will Leitch of the New York Magazine.

Recent injury data

 • Derek Jeter may not be ready for opening day because of ankle pain. I figured he would play through the pain, so it must be pretty bad. I expect him to struggle until 100% healthy. Eduardo Nunez is the increase playing time beneficiary.

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Earlier this month we rolled out our consensus rankings, and now it’s time to pick them apart a bit and separate everyone into individual tiers. The individual player rankings slightly different from our consensus — I did disagree with some rankings and adjusted accordingly — but not a whole lot. In the past I excluded the catcher-eligible guys from the first base rankings because no one ever bothered to actually plug those guys into first base in their lineups, but I’m going to include them this year for the sake of completeness. Here are the tiers:

Tier One
Albert Pujols
Joey Votto
Prince Fielder

Despite offseason knee surgery and what is now a four-year decline in wRC+, Pujols remains in the top spot because he’s as much of a lock for .280/30/100 as any player in the game. At first base you need guaranteed production, and that’s exactly what Albert gives you. Votto is kinda coming off a knee injury of his own and would occupy the top spot in OBP leagues. Fielder mashes andI don’t think there would be much argument if he ranked ahead of the other two.

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