Injury is perhaps the greatest vehicle of luck in sports. The haphazard bounce of the ball, twinge of the tendon, strain of the muscle — these things not only rob the player of playing time, but they also keep them from performing at 100%. And though we’ve had some success predicting injury, mostly on the basis of past injury, we haven’t come that far. Even the most basic advice with respect to injury wouldn’t have helped us avoid this trio of injured backstops, anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember this site? Of course you do. This was one of the many “facts” we learned about Matt Wieters:

Before reporting to Camden Yards, Matt Wieters traveled through the time-space continuum and righted all the wrongs in Orioles history: He wiped Cleon Jones’ shoe polish off the ball, settled the 1981 baseball strike so they could win the division, straight-jacketed Jeffrey Maier, and intercepted Roberto Alomar’s loogie before it hit its mark.

After crushing minor league pitching in 2008, Wieters was all the rage. And that hype train was what spawned this hilarious-at-the-time page. Now, it looks silly in hindsight.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to call J.T. Realmuto under the radar when he appeared here on FanGraphs’ Top 200 preseason, Baseball America’s Top-100 and Keith Law’s Top-100 (Insider required), yet here we are. Realmuto finished as the ninth best catcher among according to our End of Season Rankings despite ranking a modest 21st in our Mid Season Update. His .259/.290/.406 line translates to an 86 wRC+, though he still managed to be fantasy relevant in a fair amount of leagues. Realmuto smacked 10 home runs and even stole eight bags in his 467 plate appearances, with the steals leading all catchers with at least 300 PAs. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, there are only so many things that can be said about something. On the topic of ottoneu arbitration, that amounts to about 10,000 words. Below, I have republished (with some embellishment) the omnibus I created last year on this wonderful topic. But first, some background.

Perhaps I jumped too quickly into the details. Ottoneu is the award-eligible* fantasy platform hosted by FanGraphs. Think of it as dynasty-lite. You get a 40-man roster, a $400 payroll, and way too much freedom to manage your team your way.

Over the offseason, the price of every major league player increases by $2. Minor leaguers increase by $1. Then there is an arbitration process that can be done one of two ways. Most leagues use the allocation process which ultimately adds an additional $11 to $33 per team. This omnibus is dedicated to both forms of arbitration, but the allocation process does open more possibilities for strategery and thus has more words dedicated to it.

As I mentioned, there are two systems of arbitration: voting and allocation. An asterisk indicates that the article is intending for voting leagues. I’ve organized the omnibus into sections: intro, intermediate, and advanced.

*This particular asterisk does not indicate an article about voting leagues. I’m just noting that I can’t claim credit for this wonderful phrase.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Vogt was a nice sleeper coming into 2015, especially since the Athletics stated they were going to use him as a regular catcher. He quickly got catcher eligibility in mid-April and his value jump some. His value skyrocketed in early May when he hit 5 home runs in nine days and was producing at a league leading level. This production didn’t continue and he saw quite a bit of drop off over the season’s second half. Going into 2016, Vogt’s projected production should probably be about the same as his overall 2015 production.

The 30-year-olf Vogt came into the season as a catcher play in deeper leagues without much major league experience. He seemed to perform decently in 287 PA in 2014 with 9 HR and a .279 AVG. He was mainly a platoon option but was looking at more playing time between catching and playing first base. Here are David Wiers preseason thoughts on Vogt.

Best used as a platoon player against right-handed pitchers, Vogt does offer value in that role. Don’t make the mistake of simply extrapolating and nearly doubling his 2014 counting production, but Vogt could be a sneaky pickup late in the draft or off of the waiver wire.

Read the rest of this entry »

Even though I owned Nick Hundley in a league this year, I was still surprised to see that he finished 2015 as fantasy’s No. 7 catcher. Despite receiving far fewer plate appearances than any of the other top-ten backstops, Hundley’s robust .301/.339/.467 slash line was enough to place him comfortably within those ranks. In his age-31 year, Hundley had the second double-digit homer season of his career, and his .301 AVG was well above his career average of .249.

Hundley got 389 PA this year, and that was actually just 19 shy of his career high (408 in 2013). There are two reasons he’s only surpassed the 400-PA mark once. For one, he has some significant injuries in his past, losing parts of three previous seasons to various maladies (wrist [2009], elbow/oblique [2011], knee [2012]). This year, a cervical neck strain ended his season in early September, but should be a non-issue for 2016. The bright side of his injury history is that none of his ailments have been related to one another.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past season may end up going down as the year of the prospect. So many good rookies got their promotion to the majors like Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa, Noah Syndergaard, and Lance McCullers. It is time to look at finding the next batch of rookies. By using just a handful of minor league stats, I have created basic prospect rankings for 2016.

I have played around with prospect rankings for a while and just recently publish my 2015 ZOBRIST rankings which looked at older potential hitter breakouts. I have had some personal player rankings using just the player’s stats, but nothing worth publishing. Well, I finally took the few step forward by stealing some ideas from a couple of my fellow writers. First, I was able to add position values to the rankings after helping Carson Cistulli work on his minor league WAR values. The final piece came after reading a recent article by Tony Blengino at ESPN where he gives credit to the player’s age compared to the level’s average age.

Read the rest of this entry »

In or around last year’s holiday season I wrote a piece for FanGraphs+ that ranked the Top 50 Fantasy Prospects for 2015 by position. Because it’s in the middle of the offseason, it’s often an exercise in futility to properly project playing time for rookies — especially considering the large number of free agent signings and trades that have yet to take place. It’s quite fun, nonetheless, and still serves as a good starting point for understanding who might be turn into a unexpectedly valuable fantasy player for the coming year.

And with every preview, must come a review. With the regular season now behind us and the heart of the postseason underway, I present to you a review of the projected Top 50 Fantasy Prospects for 2015 — starting at the catcher’s position.

Marc’s Top 5
1. Andrew Susac, Giants
2. Jorge Alfaro, Rangers
3. Christian Bethancourt, Braves
4. Blake Swihart, Red Sox
5. Austin Barnes, Dodgers

Honorable Mentions:
Kevin Plawecki, Mets
Austin Hedges, Padres
James McCann, Tigers

Actual Weighted Runs Created (wRC+) Results
110 — Roberto Perez, Indians
99 — J.R. Murphy, Yankees
91 — Blake Swihart, Red Sox
91 — Andrew Susac, Giants
86 — J.T. Realmuto, Marlins
85 — James McCann, Tigers

Read the rest of this entry »

For the next few weeks, the RotoGraphs staff will devote entire weeks to each defensive position, including spotlights on particular players as well as trends throughout the 2015 season. This week, we’re highlighting catchers.

I don’t claim to be a Tableau (or data visualization) whiz by any means, but I thought it would be cool to visually represent the landscape of all catchers in 2015 — with some analysis sprinkled in.

Steamer and ZiPS represent premier player projection systems; FanGraphs’ Depth Charts combines the two, and the writing staff allocate playing time accordingly. The playing time part is less important relative to the combined projections, as aggregated projections tend to perform better than standalones.

I compared projected WAR (wins above replacement) from the preseason to actual WAR (1) by team and (2) by player within team. I scaled the expected WAR by playing time to correct for injuries, trades, call-ups, etc. Ideally, it’ll be a little more accurate and, perhaps, fairer than comparing actual results to projections straight-up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Review season continues and today I’ll recap the starting pitchers whose spring training strikeout rates were significantly above their Steamer projected K% marks. As a reminder, with the help of Matt Swartz, I found that spring strikeout rates do provide meaning with regards to regular season performance, something that Dan Rosenheck validated as true more recently.

Read the rest of this entry »