In what has become an annual tradition, today I will hold myself accountable to you the reader by publishing the results of my 2016 fantasy season.

In the 2015 version of this post, I decided I did too many leagues to give any the proper attention they deserved. Even though I whittled down my total commitments, an increase in dynasty-type formats meant I had needier children.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2016 preseason recaps continue and we’re going to move to hitting for the rest of this week. In late January, I used my xHR/FB rate equation (which is likely to get an overhaul this offseason) to identify five hitters with major HR/FB rate downside. Let’s find out how the group performed.

Read the rest of this entry »

10/16/16

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

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @paulkastava

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

• David Price crushed again in playoffs
• Josh Tomlin steps up
• Aaron Sanchez allows 6 ER in 5.7 IP, but only 3 H – ‘17 outlook?
• Does TOR keep one, none, or both of Edwin Encarnacion & Jose Bautista?
• Bautista crying foul?
• Saturday late-innings

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Earlier this week, I broke down the home run surge at catcher and first base, highlighting those who hit at least 20 homers and identifying some who could do the same in 2017. Today, I’ll be looking at second base and shortstop.

SECOND BASE

The keystone arguably experienced the most growth out of the power surge with an all-time high 15 players hitting at least 20 homers while qualifying at the positon. The previous high was 10 set in 2009 and if you add up the last four years combined, you only get 12. Yes, second base was where you could make power deficiencies from Giancarlo Stanton’s injury or Bryce Harper’s underperformance. It was kinda nuts. Here’s who did it:

Brian Dozier 42, Robinson Cano 39, Rougned Odor 33, Jedd Gyorko 30, Ian Kinsler 28, Daniel Murphy 25, Jonathan Schoop 25, Jose Altuve 24, Jason Kipnis 23, Neil Walker 23, Matt Carpenter 21, Starlin Castro 21, Jean Segura 20, Logan Forsythe 20, and Ryan Schimpf 20

Dozier and Cano were the only two to accomplish the feat last year. The last time more than four players hit 20+ HR at second base was 2011 when eight got it done. It’s not just that so many hit 20+, it’s that four were at 30+ and the aforementioned Dozier and Cano were 35+. The last time two second basemen went for 35+ in a season was 2003 when Bret Boone and Alfonso Soriano achieved the feat. Soriano was joined by Jeff Kent the year before, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Ottoneu respite is almost over! Arbitration starts tomorrow! While I’m sure most of us needed no vacation, someone who plays in 10 leagues probably needed a break. Anyways, the action is about to continue. Arbitration is one of my favorite times of the Ottoneu calendar but, for anyone who has not experience it before, can seem daunting. Today I wanted to run down my thoughts on arbitration as a whole. There have been several arbitration primers here on Rotographs in the past. Chad and Brad have each touched on it a couple of times and have talked about the tactics they like to employ in arbitration, but seeing as I’m not Chad or Brad, my tactics may be slightly different.

First lets start with the basics. Each of the 12 teams in your league will get $25 dollars to allocate to the other 11 teams. Each team may allocate a max of $3 and a minimum of $1 to the other teams. Allocations are blind (you can’t directly see who is allocating to you). Last year, nearly 450 players were allocated to in arbitration. That’s a lot. Certainly the heavy hitters were your big names going into 2016 offseason the offseason Correa, Bryan, Arrieta, etc. but there are always lesser known guys who get a dollar or two. On top of this, post arbitration leagues typically have between 120 and 140 surplus assets. With this in mind, lets talk through two schools of thought that I see applying to the vast majority of teams as they enter arbitration. I will be applying both of these over the next week.

Read the rest of this entry »

I will continue to help define how to value a prospect for fantasy purposes. Last week, I examined how major league position players’ production lines up with the standard scouting grades. Today, I go the other way and look at how graded prospects perform in the majors.

I believe I am making this study about two years too soon. I would love for there to be more MLB information after the player received his grades and his 4-5 year production. I don’t have that luxury right now. I feel any answer I come up with will be a nice anchoring point but will need to be adjusted later.

To do this study, I took the grades given by Baseball America (2011 to 2014) and MLB.com (2013 to 2014). With each of these players, I looked at those who had 300 plate appearances in their career. With this fairly encompassing group, I would only able to match of 118 seasons. In some of these cases, the same player was compared. For example, both BA and MLB had their own 2013 grades for Xander Boegaerts. Like I said, a person can shoot about 20 different holes in this study, but I am just working with what I have been given so far.

Read the rest of this entry »

I always enjoy making bold predictions prior to the season. The 10 Bold Predictions series represents the culmination of grinding through pre-season rankings and are published shortly before the regular season. This year, my predictions were published on March 18th, and you can view them here. With the regular season, and thus the fantasy season completed, I can now look back on those picks and assess whether they hit or missed. Overall, I was pleased with the results. Read the rest of this entry »

Ottoneu arbitration begins tomorrow and runs through November 15. This omnibus is a one stop shop for all the strategy and tactics you need to get through the next month. The following omnibus is a recreation of the one I published last season. While we’ll likely have a couple new articles on the topic, we’ve mostly said everything there is to say over the course of over 10,000 words. 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 intended for 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. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a little late to the party reviewing my bold predictions. Out of sheer cowardice (or a schedule crunch/things continually coming up). They are, as always, a mixed bag. I find 3/10 is the number you’re kind of aiming for, because any lower and you’re an idiot and any higher and you weren’t bold enough. So, let’s see how this goes.
Read the rest of this entry »

First of all I want to say thanks for a really great season. Without you folks reading, there’d  be no reason for #2xSP. I appreciate the “thanks” and “you helped me win a title” as much as the poking and prodding to make this a better column, and me a better writer.

So from the depths of my heart, this is a big THANK YOU.

With that said, if you have any ideas on how to make this column more useful, I’m all ears. We’ve stuck with 50% ownership as the cutoff here for a while, but we did adapt for Thursday postings and added quality starts to go with wins to help accommodate people as best we are able. If you have more ideas, hit us in the comments section.

Here’s how we finished the season:

• 46-46 record
• 3.90 ERA
• 8.2 K/9
• 2.9 K/BB
• 1.32 WHIP
• 61 quality starts

Out of 23 weeks:

• Seven ERA marks at/under 3.00 (30.4%)
• Thirteen ERA marks at/under 4.00 (56.6%)
• Eighteen weeks with at least three quality starts (78.3%)

At the risk of being unnecessarily brief, here’s a link to this year’s spreadsheet, and let’s continue the discussion in the comments below!