Life isn’t all about rainbows and butterflies. With that in mind, my bold predictions include some positive outlooks for a pair of post-hype sleepers, some young hurlers, a sophomore everyone is in love with and a veteran second baseman. However, they also feature some less than rosy prognostications for a speedy second baseman, a late-blooming multi-position eligible Pirate and a pitcher trading homer-friendly Great American Ballpark for the homer-suppressing Marlins Park. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written at length about my Scoresheet team, and with us now nearly on the eve of the season, drafting has ceased and rosters are set. Today, I’d like to share my completed roster to be ripped apart by readers. How’s that sound?

If you haven’t tuned in before — and believe me, I get that — Scoresheet is basically a real-life based simulation where you put together an entire roster — up to 30 active players at a time — including utility players, relievers, and a few minor leaguers if you so desire. There’s no limit of how many guys you can roster, but the keeper rules exist to keep that number pretty low.

Any player you keep — up to 10 — that qualifies as a major leaguer based on service time costs you a pick up front. Any minor leaguer you keep costs you a pick counting back from round 35. There are supplementals during the year to fill rosters more fully as well as to disperse recently drafted players, and there are also dispersal drafts in the offseason when teams drop out and new ones join so that newcomers get a relatively fair shake.

I had a very strong keeper list, and for some reason nobody was all that interested in trading me much for guys I couldn’t otherwise keep. Also keep in mind, a number of these guys were healthy when I submitted my keeper list a couple months ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the RotoGraphs Staff Picks for the 2015 season. Because we like to pick things! We collected all preferred players (and busts) and assembled them in one place for your reference and viewing pleasure.

Last year, we posted staff picks a couple of weeks earlier in the month as a complement to your draft planning. It’s a little late now, unless you’re drafting right before Opening Day, but hey! You can still use it as an in-season waiver wire tool and additional reasons to praise or ridicule us, if that’s your thing.

The categories are fairly self-explanatory, but I’ll try to illuminate the ones that are less clear. A sleeper is an undervalued standard mixed-leaguer, whereas a deep sleeper is a player who maybe isn’t drafted in mixed leagues but eventually succeeds, if not excels, in a starting role. Best flyers are players typically undrafted in most leagues but end up being great waiver wire additions mid-year.

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Playing time is the currency of today’s fantasy game. The more at-bats you can find, the better you’re going to do which is pretty obvious with four of the five categories in a standard being counting categories. The difference these days is that guys just don’t play as much as they used to due in large part to injuries, but also because teams are more willing to platoon guys perhaps in response to sharply declining offense.

Since 2000, an average of 87 players have logged at least 600 PA, but the league hasn’t reached or exceeded that average since 2010 (89). The following season saw just 68 players reach that mark, a 15-year low. From 2000-2009, the average was 92, but in the last five years it has tumbled to 78. This places an even bigger premium on the handful of stars who have shown stability year-to-year with their playing time.

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I can’t really remember the first fantasy baseball league I was in. One of the first ones I was in was hand-scored. I remember, after I had been playing for a few years, I was hosting a draft at my mom’s house and, in the eighth round, someone asked if Pedro Martinez was still available. Nothing more hilarious had ever been asked.

I can’t really remember at which point fantasy baseball developed into an obsession, either. I guess it was a slow growth, slow enough that I didn’t feel it until I woke up one morning earlier this spring and realized I was in ten leagues. (Is that a lot? You tell me. To me, it feels like a lot. Too many, but not too much.) I lay in bed and literally counted them on my fingers; getting to that last pinky, I kinda felt a little gross. And then I got up and started preparing for my next draft.

I don’t think I would be in so many leagues if they were didn’t comprise wondrous variety. I’m now in three ottoneu leagues that have the same scoring system (FanGraphs points), but other than that, each league is different—so, eight different formats.

Also, I don’t think I’d be in so many leagues—or in any leagues at all for that matter—if I didn’t feel like fantasy baseball enhanced my enjoyment of the game. The different scoring settings help me to evaluate players in new ways; the deeper leagues cause me to broaden my knowledge of the player pool; dynasty leagues lead me to learn about minor leaguers and teams’ future outlooks. Being in so many leagues assures that that I can have all my favorite players in at least one league; it increases my chances of winning at least one league (it could also cause me to lose focus and do a half-assed in all of them, I suppose); it keeps me sharp and organized. So, despite the time suck, it has its benefits.

I’m sure many of you know the glory that is ottoneu, so I won’t talk about those leagues here (though the league that started from scratch this year has progressed in a very interesting way so far). But I wanted to highlight the specs of some of more unique leagues that I am in.

I invite you all to share the same in the comments. What are your favorite leagues? What have you learned from them or done differently to exploit their idiosyncrasies?

League Name: sneeze
Platform: Yahoo
# of Teams: 20
Scoring Type: Points
Draft Type: Slow Draft (no snaking)
Keepers: Can keep any players 26 or younger for free; keep up to ten “old” players at the cost of a draft pick
Positions: 2xC, 3B, 2xSS, 2xMI, 2xCF, 2xOF, 3xUtil, 5xSP, 5xP

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Faced with the dejecting reality that it’s been two weeks and my Bold Predictions are already falling apart at the seams, I stand at a crossroads. Play it safe and hope the internet simply forgets about the aforementioned Bold Predictions (and perhaps stop linking to them), or perch myself squarely out on several more limbs. Obviously I’m heading out on more limbs.

Really this is a combination of two factors. One, most of you have drafted at this point because baseball is two days (!) away. Two, it’s not very thought-provoking to say Giancarlo Stanton will lead the NL in home runs. Thus the non-obvious hitting league leaders was born, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. I’ll predict the league leader for each category, discounting what I deem to be the most obvious pick or picks.
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We’re gathered here today to witness the union of my myriad rosters into one spreadsheet. I’ve included only my eight most “normal” leagues, which range in depth from a 12-team, three outfielder format to an ottoneu roster. Half of these leagues were auctions. Four were keeper leagues. Two are H2H. Several have quirky rules that allow me stash certain players.

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It’s almost the weekend, which means it’s almost Opening Day! If you and your friends are anything like me, you have a draft tomorrow because scheduling is hard. Some slow drafts — including one of mine — figure to wrap up Sunday. I hope.

On today’s agenda:
1. Rusney Castillo to the minors
2. Coco Crisp to the disabled list
3. Thoughts on Nate Karns
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Episode 212

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris have news about Curtis Granderson, Coco Crisp, Justin Verlander, and Rusney Castillo. Then they play a little game that essentially tries to identify some sleeper-types who could bust out in a big way.

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• No velocity reports again today. Instead, I will go over the past two weeks of available Pitchf/x data and report them in my Quick Takes slot tomorrow afternoon.

• Early this offseason, I notice the Orioles have seen a huge drop in elbow and shoulder related injuries since 2009. Brittany Ghirolli at MLB.com just wrote a nice article on the subject. One key for the Orioles is more rest between starts.

The Orioles, who haven’t had a player on the 25-man roster undergo Tommy John ligament-replacement surgery since manager Buck Showalter took the helm in late 2010, aren’t on to anything new. But perhaps what sets them apart from other organizations is that they are unrelenting in keeping their guys out of harm’s way. The biggest complaint Showalter heard while serving as an ESPN analyst was about the way bullpen guys were managed. To that end, every pitch an O’s reliever throws — be it in warmups or in the game — is tracked by the team, their workouts and exercises adjusted by the trainers based off of that.

• I am a guest on today’s Effectively Wild podcast by Baseball-Prospectus doing an anti-Tommy John surgery draft. Good stuff all around except maybe Sam’s picks.

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