It’s a good thing readers aren’t able to leave comments on the Fangraphs+ blurbs because I botched the blurb I wrote on Washington’s closer, Rafael Soriano. In that blurb I stated that Soriano is “a lock to be drafted as a top five closer.” As it turns out, not so much. Soriano is currently going 13th among closers in NFBC drafts. I either underestimated the ability of drafters to see some of the red flags, or I forgot that ADP is heavily influenced by the order in which players are listed in draft rooms and that the people doing the listing would see his red flags.

What are those red flags? In reality, all the peripheral numbers that declined last year for Soriano are all tied to his ability to miss bats. His velocity was down which helped hitters make more contact on pitches in the zone than ever before which led to his swing strike rate dropping which obviously led to fewer strikeouts. To be exact, his strikeout rate fell 6.3%. If you’re looking for a positive sign, his fastball velocity got back close to his normal speed after April and May.

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I have heard from a handful of ottoneu players who have already auctioned, but for most of you, auction season is just kicking off, myself included. We are just a few weeks from Opening Day and Tuesday evening I’ll be sitting down to my first auction of the year.

And when I sit down, I’ll be organized. I’ll have two computers open (probably overkill, but it makes things easier). I’ll have almost everything closed down – no extra browser windows, no chat windows, maybe Twitter (but only so I can post updates and keep you all in the know). What I will have with me is five excel spreadsheets, four browser windows, and some snacks.

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The Phillies appear pretty set in the outfield, with no exciting position battles looking to take place, even on their bench. That makes it much easier for forecasters like me to project playing time! The outfield enjoys an interesting mix of power, speed, upside and downside potential.

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I’m always talking about how good a pitch’s peripherals are, on our podcast, or on the radio, or on twitter, so I thought I’d help you get a sense of makes a good off-speed pitch, when it comes to whiff percentages. Since some of the listings in different places are whiff per swing (more here), and yet our site uses swinging strike rate (swSTR%), I thought I’d make the benchmarks in swinging strikes. You can see the whiff benchmarks in this oft-linked post here. You’ll also get ground-ball rates there, which is an important pitch peripheral that I won’t talk about much today.

So what makes a good pitch, swinging strike wise?
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Episode 94

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris to preview the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music

Approximately 72 min of joyous analysis.

ADP results from NFBC

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Sleepers are the holy grail of fantasy analysis. Everybody has players they like more than others and sleepers are those special someones who offer tantalizing upside at a piddling price. Sometimes, they’re just overlooked, small market players who have been good all along while other times they are players predicted to have a break out season.

It’s good to have sleepers. It’s good to acquire them on draft day, assuming you have some skill at parsing the mountains of data available on the internet. It can even be good to throw an extra dollar at your favorite targets in the auction. Where owners run into trouble is when they convince themselves that they must acquire their sleepers.

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The Twins infield will not have a drastically different look personnel-wise from last year, but that isn’t to say there hasn’t been some shuffling of the deck chairs.

Quasi-catcher Ryan Doumit was shipped off to the Braves, and Justin Morneau signed with the Rockies after an August deal sent him to the Pirates. Infield mainstay Joe Mauer is shifting over to first, and the latest reports seem to suggest that newcomer Kurt Suzuki will get the first crack at reps behind the plate catching a largely re-made rotation.

Given this, here’s a peek at the Twins infield situation heading into the 2014 campaign:

The Givens

1B Joe Mauer (2014 Steamer Projection .297/.388/.439 | .361 wOBA) Read the rest of this entry »

I am going to finish my fantasy ranking series today (Part 1 and Part 2). Today, I am going to look at how I set up my draft ranking.  It is a little unique, but indispensable for finding draft day values, but I first need to clear up one issue from yesterday.

I am going to go over one problem people are noticing which is how high catchers are in my rankings and the lack of Robinson Cano. Well here are my projections for each. If you disagree, that is a different discussion, I am just looking at the difference in replacement level values:

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If you’re a Miami Marlin fan, you have a few things to cheer about. You have Jose Fernandez. You have Giancarlo Stanton. You don’t need to pretend to care about what Logan Morrison thinks anymore. And heck, your team is supposed to finish higher in the standings than at least one other team in the division, which is progress. But from a fantasy baseball perspective, there are actually a few other players to keep an eye on, which makes this Marlin team even more interesting.

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There’s no sense beating around the bush here: the 2014 White Sox don’t look like they’ll be very good. In fact, they figure to be downright unwatchable most of the time. That is, except for roughly 30 games.

The ones Chris Sale starts, specifically.

Chicago finished last season with the second worst record in the American League, ahead of only the lowly Astros. The team’s record (63-99) was barely worse than its Pythagorean record (67-95). It has also recently concluded an offseason in which its big acquisitions were Jose Abreu (a slugging Cuban import who may or may not be awesome) and Adam Eaton (a solid outfield prospect who has played exactly 88 games in the major leagues, for which he has accrued exactly 0.2 wins above replacement).

So, yeah, Chris Sale. Let’s start with him as we consider expectations for the White Sox rotation in 2014.

*I swear this will be the only terrible Sale-related pun in this post. Honest.

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