For many in my generation, when one thinks of starting pitching, the focus immediately turns to Atlanta. It’s been an overwhelming constant for the Braves, whether we’re talking Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Tim Hudson or (at least last year) Mike Minor. In fact, since The Strike, the Atlanta Braves have enjoyed the best starting pitching in Major League Baseball. Their cumulative 3.73 ERA is well-ahead of the pack, with the Los Angeles Dodgers being the only other team with a sub-4.00 ERA from their starters since the 1995 season.

Thus, it’s not surprising the Braves trotted out yet another effective rotation last year. Even without the injured Brandon Beachy, their rotation featured three top-30 fantasy starters in Mike Minor, Julio Teheran and Kris Medlen. The trio are poised to headline the rotation once again in 2014, so in terms of a fantasy outlook, there’s plenty to like.

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Using Razzball’s early 2014 auction values, the Cleveland infield comes in a tie for tenth for the most valuable fantasy infield. Four of their infielders are easily fantasy relevant, and they have a fifth that makes for an interesting late sleeper option at his position.

Jason Kipnis is responsible for about half of the fantasy dollars projected to be spent on Indian infielders ($26). Kipnis was the second most valuable second baseman last year according to both Zach Sanders’ end of season valuations and ESPN’s player rater. Sanders’ values had him as the 37th most valuable player overall, and he was 20th overall on the player rater. In his second full season, he stole 30+ bases again and had the exact same run total (86). He hit a few more home runs (17 from 14) and upped his RBI total (84 from 76). But the biggest improvement came in his batting average, which jumped from .257 to .284.

The thing that jumps off the page when considering Kipnis’ improved batting average is that it was accompanied by a 50+ point spike in BABIP (.345 from .291). But thanks to a BABIP-friendly batted ball profile led by a top 20 line drive rate (24.7%), Kipnis’ xBABIP was .352 last year. Automatically assuming Kipnis’ batting average will regress because of a high BABIP is a mistake. He has a career line drive rate of 23.5% and a career xBABIP of .341. A little bit of line drive and BABIP regression may be in order, but it should only result in a slightly lower average.

Another reason to potentially fear batting average regression is the rise in Kipnis’ strikeout rate (21.7% from 16.2%). The main culprits were a 6.3% drop in O-Contact% and being a bit too selective with the fourth lowest swing percentage and a 1.6% drop in his Z-Swing%. More strikeouts tend to make you think the batting average should drop, but the batted ball profile seems to be more determinant of batting average. Below is a list I somewhat arbitrarily created of the hitters with a batted ball profile most similar to Kipnis’ last year. As you can see, all but one of the six players listed had a healthy line drive rate, and Kipnis had the lowest batting average of that subset. The one guy on the list with a bad line drive rate had an ugly batting average. Read the rest of this entry »

With the proliferation of analysis available to fantasy players, the gap between the worst and best owners has shrunk. It’s much more rare to see an owner put together a truly awful draft or auction today than it was even ten years ago, simply because it’s seemingly impossible to use the internet without stumbling across some scrap of fantasy analysis. Even Jimmy from accounting, who knows next-to-nothing about fantasy baseball, can print off a few cheat sheets and put together a team that isn’t a total abomination.

Much like its real-life counterpart, fantasy baseball is a game in which one must constantly be searching for new market inefficiencies. One theory that I’m a big proponent of is capitalizing on reactions to small samples, specifically bad ones. As it turns out, Travis d’Arnaud is just the example I was looking for.

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Over at our depth charts, we have 13 different relievers listed for the Mets. 13! And that doesn’t even include Kyle Farnsworth, but it does include Jose Valverde and Erik Goeddel and Steven Matz and Jeff Walters, and it’s okay if you want to admit now that you’ve never heard of two of those names. It’s not pretty, but for a Mets team that probably isn’t going to be contending for anything seriously in 2014, it makes sense. Throwing money at relievers at this point in the team’s development is often money wasted, and so Sandy Alderson and friends will instead try to go with what they’ve got.

But from a fantasy perspective, that makes it difficult. It’s hard to know for sure who is even going to be in this bullpen, much less contributing — I imagine it’ll be something of a revolving door all season long — and that limits fantasy utility. Still, someone has to get saves, and we can start with the likely closer and go from there.

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Having the flu is a nightmare. The sweats, the all-night restlessness, the purging of all sorts of disgustingness from the body, it’s awful. Some like to huddle up under the covers all day for comfort. Some like to sip on some warm chicken soup. You know what makes me feel better? That’s right — the Kansas City Royals bullpen. Last season’s darlings in powder blue collectively posted a 7.3 WAR (second in the majors), a 9.57 K/9 (first), and a collective 2.55 ERA (second) over 461.2 innings. It was a thing of beauty, and best of all, they’re all returning again this season. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last article, I went over the initial work for valuing players in a basic fantasy league (12 5×5 teams with 23 roster positions).  Each league has its own unique rules so the procedure may need to be adjusted accordingly. Today, I am going to finish the positional rankings and begin to come up with an overall ranking.

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While Matt Harvey’s Tommy John surgery has Mets fans looking ahead to 2015 for the next signs of competitive postseason baseball, fantasy owners needn’t wait so long, at least so far as New York’s infield is concerned. With a near-elite option holding down the hot corner and a couple of intriguing upside artists elsewhere, the Mets offer help at some typically hard-to-fill fantasy positions – at prices that may be bargains come draft day.

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The Miami Marlins have just $36.1 million in salary committed for 2014 at present, and a large chunk is being spent on relievers. Of course, that’s misleading since $4 million is money owed to the departed Heath Bell, but they’ll also pay Steve Cishek $3.8 million in his first arbitration year, pay Mike Dunn $1.4 million in the same situation and signed Carlos Marmol for $1.25 million. Chump change for any other squad, a surprising 29 percent of the budget for this “small-market” squad.

So does this mean you should expect a strong Marlins bullpen? Well, yeah, it kind of does, but not because of the money. A deep pen is necessary given that the bullpen ranked 10th in innings pitched in 2013 (11th in ERA, fourth in FIP) and there’s not really a sure bet for 200 innings in the rotation. There is a surprising amount of talent here, especially when it comes to piling up strikeouts. There’s hardly a safe, lock-down name, as good as Cishek’s been, but there’s nary a soft-tosser in the bunch.
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Coming off a 99-loss season, the White Sox made a pair of tremendous moves to add youth to their lineup. First, they traded reliever-turned-starter Hector Santiago to the Angels in a three-team deal that netted them Diamondbacks’ center fielder Adam Eaton. Next, they sent closer Addison Reed to the Diamondbacks for third base prospect Matt Davidson, who could easily become their Opening Day starter at the hot corner.

Turning relievers into pre-arbitration assets is Rebuilding 101 and seems especially likely to pay dividends for the White Sox, who have enjoyed a lot of success in building their pitching staff through their farm system in recent years. However, it does create some uncertainty in their bullpen, where a new closer will have the chance to replace Reed and his 40 saves.

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We are now heading into the third year of the LABR mixed league. In its inaugural 2012 season, I finished in the middle of the pack. Last year, I finished second. If you’re a fan of following trends, then clearly I’m going to finish somewhere in the negative mid-single digits this year. I think that’s good. On Tues night, I endured an exhausting nearly four hour online snake draft…in early February. Yup, LABR likes to draft early so the results could be published in the fantasy issue of USA Today Sports Weekly. Of course, that makes it extremely difficult to draft a real team with so many position battles yet to be fought.

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