Agenda
Bear with me for a bit as I venture down an unusual path for Rotographs.
I’m not much of an NBA fan. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve pretty much devoted my fandom to Major League Baseball, the NFL, and college football & basketball. I’ve watched about 10 minutes of my hometown Pistons this year. A couple weeks ago I caught a late night Warriors game so I could have the Steph Curry experience (nope, didn’t even tune in for #73).
Despite the NBA not being on my radar, about a week and a half ago I kept seeing mentions about the “Hinkie retirement letter” in my Twitter feed. A lot of them. As soon as I determined that “Hinkie” was Sam Hinkie, General Manager for the Philadelphia 76ers, I said to myself, “Don’t care, moving on now.”
Then the next night, as I was walking around the house getting my Fitbit steps in (#dadlife), I saw this tweet from Jonathan Bales:
I’ll stop now. In short, this might be the greatest thing I’ve ever read. Highly recommend if you want to be +EV at life.
— Jonathan Bales (@BalesFootball) April 7, 2016
If you’re not much of a DFS player, you may not know Bales. He’s the author of the DFS series “Fantasy Football for Smart People” and “Fantasy Baseball for Smart People” and has become quite well known for all of his work in the DFS arena.
You don’t have to be a DFS player to enjoy Bales’ work (this is not a DFS article). I don’t have much time to play DFS regularly, but I love his work and thought process. So I had to go down the rabbit hole to see what he was talking about…
And it was this darn “Hinkie retirement letter” again. The greatest thing he’s ever read? Now I have to check it out. Read the rest of this entry »
When it comes to fantasy baseball, not all prospects are created equally. In keeper leagues and dynasty leagues it’s important to have strategies around your prospects; you don’t want to just randomly grab a Top 10 or 20 prospect and hope for the best.
Along with skill, knowing a player’s ETA is key. Is the player advanced enough to help in 2016… or is he headed for a 2019 debut? Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a talented dude but he’s not likely to visit the Great White North until 2020. Chicago (AL) drafted Carson Fulmer in 2015 with the eighth overall pick but he’s considered advanced enough to perhaps help the club in ’17. And then there’s Colorado’s Trevor Story, who is likely to turn the Jose Reyes soap opera and a strong spring into a ’16 starting gig.
As a result, your strategy around acquiring prospects should vary. If you’re grabbing a guy earmarked to help in 2017 or later, you should look at them like a stock — an investment that you hope to see increase in value before you cash out (either by adding to your active roster or by trading for an opportunity to win sooner). You also have to consider if you’re truly committed to a long-range prospect and willing to commit a roster spot to someone who may not help for three or four years — if at all. Prospects with a ’16 or ’17 should be viewed as players that can be valuable (albeit potentially inconsistent) contributors to the current makeup of your roster at a reasonable cost.
The NL East is going to be a streaming pitcher haven all year, it looks like. We’ve mentioned this, and we’re still not even halfway to the point that team batting average, for example, begins stabilizing, but given our Bayesian prior for some of these teams, it’s time to start focusing on the Phillies, Braves, and Mets.
Those three teams entered Thursday’s action as the league’s three worst offenses by wRC+ at 68, 55, and 53, respectively, each with an above-average strikeout rate. Philadelphia scored three runs on four hits (three for extra bases), the Braves mustered two on five (and one), and the Mets mercifully had a day off. The Twins are your target in the AL.
Mark Lowe notched his third hold of the young season for the Tigers despite allowing an earned run on three hits in just over an inning of work. Then trusty “old” Francisco Rodriguez came in during the final frame to seal Detroit’s victory for his second save of the season and 388th of his career. He needed just 22 pitches (17 strikes – zero swinging) to close out the Pirates. At just 34 years of age, KRod keeps climbing the all-time saves leaders list and appears to be on his way to a top four or five finish if health and father time is on his side.
Read the rest of this entry »
Intro
Towards the end of last season, FanGraphs partnered up with SaberSim, a site that provides daily baseball (and hockey) projections fueled by a game simulator. While the raw projections available on FanGraphs and the SaberSim site itself are helpful in their own right, digging into some of the player and game projections, both for the current day and next, can help illuminate players to target for your season-long and DFS lineups.
If you’ve listened to the podcast or follow me on Twitter, you know I play in a lot of (read: way too many) fantasy leagues. I’ve gotten better in that I haven’t added to the raw count in the last couple of years and I’m under 20. Obviously, you have to get some sort of routine going if you want to have any success in this number of leagues. I have my morning check of the MLB boxscores, then my fantasy boxscores, and then the fantasy news sites. I have three daily transaction leagues, but they’re all on the same site so that’s a one-stop-shop.
Sunday is a little tougher with many of the leagues FAAB bidding coming on that day, but it’s a weekend and in many of the leagues, I will put moves in throughout the week so it’s manageable. Meanwhile, a couple of the leagues have different FAAB days which actually helps so the Sunday workload isn’t so much. And the none of the league was a draft-and-hold with no trading, so I only have to check the lineup there.
I like to keep a spreadsheet of all the players I have and where I have them as it helps cut down the searching when something happens – skills change, injury, demotion/promotion. One of the first things people say when they learn I have so many leagues is “you must have everyone in the league!” It’s not true. At any moment, there are 750 players in the majors. I have a share of 241 players, though that includes minor leaguers, but either way that’s 32%. Let’s acknowledge that not every MLBer is fantasy-relevant and cut it to 500. That’s still only 48%. So I guess you can change your comment to “you must have half the league!”
I guess I can’t really deny that one.
I actively try to get a lot of the same guys across many teams, though. League formats dictate just how much I will do that, but I also play a lot of similar leagues (roto, 12-17 teams). I’m not trying to hedge and make sure I have every good thing that happens. I have the guys I believe in and I will gravitate toward them. This happens more in the mid- and late-tiers. Early on in drafts, you’re at the mercy of your draft slot. But once you push into the double-digit rounds, things really open up, particularly with pitching. We all evaluate pitchers different and so you see a tone of disparity as the draft opens up.
Agenda
Episode 135 – J-Dawg And The Brick
The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!
In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss the Orioles finally losing, Jerad Eickhoff and Nolan Arenado being awesome, Matt’s morning sports radio habit, more Adam LaRoche drama, Dae-Ho Lee’s walk-off homer, the weird split slates on Thursday, Jaime Garcia’s peculiar splits, Matt wanting to start a campaign to free Preston Tucker, and Gerrit Cole’s potentially solid matchup.
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