These predictions are specifically based on Ottoneu FGpt scoring. Perhaps “Bold” isn’t defined clearly enough, but my hope is that this is structured in such a way that my thought process can provide some benefit (even if the predictions seem a little extreme at face value.)

1. Domingo Santana will be a top 15 OF.

Nelson Cruz, Yasiel Puig, Carlos Gonzalez, Charlie Blackmon, Starling Marte, Adam Jones…  If you looked at our FGpt OF rankings, these are the 15-20^th ranked outfielders. Which is to say, I think Domingo Santana could be better than all of them (and the rest of those listed below him in our rankings) in 2016. The Brewers do not look like a good team (yet…) so – unless he gets injured – expect a full slate of playing time, a great home park, and lots of power (three things that are gold in linear weights scoring.) The obvious hole in his game is the strikeouts (34% in 2015), but if he can reign that in at all, the upside is tremendous.

2. John Jaso will be a viable 2nd OF

The obvious issue has been playing time (70, 99, 70 games played over the past 3 seasons), but given that he slated to play 1B, I feel fairly confident he will play more games than he has in any of the past 3 seasons.  If he does, he could easily produce value which is expected of many #2 OF in FGpts. The Pirates’ outfield is set, so don’t expect him to retain eligibility for 2017, but he should be incredibly useful for this season. Alex Gordon, Starling Marte, Adam Jones, Christian Yelich, Charlie Blackmon, and Yoenis Cespedes are all projected to be within 5 points of wOBA of Jaso. Those players will cost $18-$25 apiece. If he can stay on the field, Jaso has a good chance to be in that tier, and you can get him for about a third of that price.

Read the rest of this entry »

We blush with mortification when we contemplate how clueless we were as preadolescent stat geeks. This was back in the age of the glyptodons, of course, but even so, we lacked insight. As far as we were concerned, if Major League Baseball wasn’t measuring it, it didn’t exist. And since fielding statistics for catchers were essentially nonexistent then—really, all they had was fielding percentage (meaningless) and passed balls (the league leader was the catcher on whichever team had a knuckleballer, and everyone else was the same)—we knew and cared only about how catchers hit.

We thus well understand—indeed, as striplings we even played a variation of—a game described by Fred C. Harris and Brendan C. Boyd in their classic treatise of 1973, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book. Their game was called Lousy Catcher. Its play consisted of one guy’s naming a “lousy catcher”—in other words, a second-string catcher who hit say, .240 or less with, say, 5 home runs or fewer—and the next guy’s trying to name a yet “lousier” one. As we recall, the player who trumped all others in Harris and Boyd’s divertissement was Charlie Lau. For us, it was Danny Kravitz. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

Let’s rewind to spring training of 2015. It was one in which the hype became deafening for Taijuan Walker. He pitched 27 innings, allowing just two runs, for a microscopic 0.67 ERA. His underlying peripherals (ya know, the spring stats that might actually matter) were strong too, but it was most certainly that tiny ERA that took Walker from sleeper and breakout candidate into that risky territory in which he has to break out just to break even for his fantasy owners. So how were his new owners rewarded? With a luscious 4.56 ERA. Oops. His skills were excellent though and he managed to post a more respectable 3.69 SIERA. So is this the breakout year?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m always torn when setting a draft date for a fantasy league, particularly a redraft one. Most people I play with generally want the draft to be as close to the start of the regular season as possible, which makes sense – the longer you wait, the more information becomes available, and the more certainty players have, especially when it comes to playing-time estimates.

Depending on your level of risk-seeking, the depth of the league, and your confidence in finding early-season waiver-wire sleepers, an earlier draft might be your preference. It’s certainly mine. In those cases, I’m comfortable using picks in the later rounds on sleepers who may or may not make a team, trusting that if they wind up optioned to the minor leagues (or designated for assignment, as it were), I’ll be able to plug someone in out of the free-agent bin comparable to a “floor” pick I could have otherwise used that selection on.

The longer you wait to do your draft, the less opportunity there is to take those playing-time-uncertain fliers. Either those players will be deemed to be without a job, or others will have grown wise to their hold on a job, bidding the price up.

My favorite example to illustrate the impact of draft timing this year is Trea Turner, the No. 2 prospect of the potential NL East-champion Washington Nationals.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been batting over .300 on bold predictions for a while, and I’ve also been getting crap for not being bold enough. So, in the honor of So So Def, I’ll stop slacking on my pimping, and I’ll turn it up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite no longer truly being a part of the RotoGraphs family, Eno Sarris was kind foolish enough to allow me a guest spot among these lovely digital pages. That’s right folks, brought back by no-so-popular-demand, here are my 10 Bold Predictions for the 2016 Season! After posting dismal results in both 2013 and 2014, I came to life and nailed four of my 10 picks last year. Buckle up, because here comes the fun!

1. Jake Arrieta finishes the season outside the top-15 for SPs in 5×5
This isn’t a knock on Arrieta so much as it is a compliment to the other top arms. I think most would agree Kershaw is the clear No. 1, followed in some order by Sale, Scherzer, Arrieta, Mad-Bum, Greinke, Price, Cole, Harvey, deGrom, Kluber and Strasburg. After Kershaw, that is 11 excellent hurlers, and I didn’t even get to Thor, Archer, Carrasco, Felix, Cueto et al. I don’t see Arrieta repeating his historic second half, particularly the .205 BABIP and 88.2 percent LOB%. The defense behind him did get better with Addison Russell taking over shortstop duties from Starlin Castro in early August, yet that wouldn’t explain all of the BABIP difference, let alone Arrieta’s 0.17 HR/9 in the second half. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Arrieta in the 11-15 range come the end of the season, but he’s being drafted as the third or fourth best pitcher, in my opinion largely on the back of numbers no human could repeat. He still has a great swinging strike and K rates, however the top of the SP pyramid is awfully crowded. Of course, when the Cubs offense helps power him to 25 wins, feel free to make fun of this pick. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I compared hitters’ FANS projections to their Depth Charts projections in order to identify the biggest discrepancies between the two. For more information on why I’m doing this or what FANS and Depth Charts projection entail, I cordially invite you to click here.

I’m here to repeat the exercise but with pitchers instead. Focusing on playing time (as measured by innings pitched), K/9, BB/9 and saves. I’ll mix in starters and relievers at my discretion or where obviously necessary, like for saves. Like I did yesterday, I’ll try to limit each blurb to three sentences.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two nights, I completed another two drafts – the 12-team MLBTR League and the 14-team experimental Fire and Forget. The following is a collection of player picks and strategic advice for unique formats. Let’s start with the easy one…

Read the rest of this entry »

We are doing our March ranking updates. You can follow each position here:

• Outfielders
• Starting Pitchers
• First Base
• Shortstops
• Catchers

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league.  If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Zach Sanders
• Mike Podhorzer
• Dan Schwartz
• Paul Kastava
• Justin Mason

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for another (and perhaps final) comparison between my Pod Projections and Steamer. Today we’ll look at another starting pitcher who I am significantly more bullish on by ERA than Steamer.

Read the rest of this entry »