Episode 296
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
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Welcome to the annual series: ‘A Minor (League) Review of 2015.” This series is a great way to receive a quick recap of the ’15 minor league season for your favorite club(s), while also receiving a brief look toward the 2016 season and beyond. It can also be a handy feature for fantasy baseball players in keeper and Dynasty leagues.
The Graduate: Carlos Rodon, LHP: The third overall selection in the 2014 amateur draft, Rodon needed just 34.2 minor league innings of polish before reaching the Majors. He then threw the fifth most innings among any starter in 2015 at 139.1. The young lefty struck out one batter per inning in his freshman season while flashing enough “stuff” to suggest that he could eventually sit atop the Sox starting rotation — should Chris Sale ever relinquish his ace title. Rodon, 23, may continue to have some sophomore hiccups in 2016 as he works his way through command/control issues — which combined to see him walk 71 batters last year.
Episode 295
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris are back for 2016! It’s the first episode of the year and the guys have a few signings to discuss including Kenta Maeda, Scott Kazmir, and Alex Gordon. They also talk about two recent pieces from Eno:
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• Kenta Maeda was recently signed by the Dodgers and looks to have some major elbow issues which will eventually cost him some playing time.
The sides agreed to a deal before the new year, but a source told Crasnick that concerns arose over he pitcher’s elbow during a physical. A source told ESPN’s Jim Bowden that the Dodgers also see an issue with Maeda’s shoulder and that a ligament in his elbow is indeed compromised. However, the 27-year-old has been pitching with both issues.
According to a source, the Dodgers know that Maeda will require surgery at some point but feel that signing him is still worth it if they can get three or four useful years out of him.
I have no clue where I am going to value him right now. I have heard his production and arsenal are similar to what Kuroda had which isn’t great. I think the buzz and unknown nature will get him overvalued.
I’d like to thank everybody who participated in Monday’s Your Keeper Questions, Answered. As of now, the post has received 422 comments, about 150 of which are me responding to questions. After a jet lag fueled marathon session from 1 to 7 am on Tuesday morning, I’m about tapped out on keeper advice. Feel free to ping me on Twitter (@BaseballATeam) if I didn’t get to your keeper conundrum.
Today, let’s chat about a common keeper option. On the whole, FanGraphs readers appear to have been very likely to acquire certain fresh breakout stars like Mookie Betts, Kris Bryant, Jacob deGrom, and Jake Arrieta. One player who seemed to appear in every question was Kyle Schwarber.
The ottoneu Slack community continues to be a great place to discuss strategy, get feedback, and more. One of the more active channels is Trade Review, where you can talk about ongoing trade discussions and get feedback from the crowd, and on that channel, there tend to be two camps in this off-season window – those who only care about player values and those who care about roster construction.
The Nationals have been attached to rumors for a variety of the top free agent starters this offseason, most recently with both Mike Leake and Scott Kazmir. Perhaps those rumors come from a genuine interest, but I speculate that at least a part of them stems from the star power that already exists at the top of their rotation. Last offseason, the Nationals had four excellent starters with Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Zimmermann, and Doug Fister, and then they added Max Scherzer on top of them. That rotation and not Bryce Harper was the reason most analysts believed the Nationals would win the NL East. If the rich could get richer last year, perhaps they could again this year.
Bored yet? Oh c’monnnnn, you love making us accountable for everything we say! This is my last review of our 2015 preseason rankings. We continue the look at those players we disagreed on most that we ranked outside the top 100, and we finish off with the starting pitchers. Once again, actual ranks are courtesy of Zach’s calculation wizardry.
That headline is not the slogan for Twitter, but it could be!
I got home from softball last night and really wanted to draft a baseball team. I wasn’t sure if anyone else was feeling the same, but figured I’d see if Twitter could fill up a mock draft over at CouchManagers and I was surprised when it filled in minutes. I was just doing their default setup which I didn’t realize was a non-standard roster construction of 18 rounds: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, UT, P, P, P, P, P, and Bench x4. To be honest I was a little bummed by that because I don’t play in any leagues with that format making it tough to draw much from the exercise.
So I decided to set up a second draft to run concurrently that ran a standard 23 rounds with the usual C, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, UT, P x9. I figured the first draft would be just a feeling out of where players are going very generally while the other draft would offer a better idea of team construction and give a bit more info about the market. By the way, I’ll be doing more evening (and even some midday) mocks over at CouchManagers during the winter so stay tuned on Twitter for info.
If you don’t have an issue with position scarcity adjustments, then I already furnished 2016 Fantasy Baseball Rankings with Steamer Projections and highlighted sleepers last week.
Naturally, position scarcity remains an argument, but there is one solid way around the argument: find the best value (projections relative to average draft position) within the scarcer positions and prebuild a roster with options heading into the draft; then you can focus on best available value and not position scarcity. I will explain and provide options below.
Below, is an embedded file of updated (1.5.2016) NESN NFBC Average Draft Position and Rotochamp Composite projections (Rotochamp & Steamer). This time, I did not adjust the rankings for position scarcity. Everyone is ranked simply by their relative value (hitters to all other hitters and pitchers to all other pitchers). That value is then compared to ADP. I also included the sorting capability so that you can manipulate the file: