Archive for December, 2016

Early Ottoneu Pitcher Projections

I highlighted some early ottoneu hitter projections a couple days ago, so today I’m going to take a look at some pitchers with interesting surplus calculator dollar values using early Steamer projections.

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Devon Travis – Two Years Equal One Strong Full Season

Paul tackled the top 15 options at second base. Just missing the cut but earning an honorable mention was Devon Travis. Since reaching the bigs in 2015, he’s been a highly productive offensive player at the keystone position tallying a .301/.342/.469 line with a 119 wRC+. The biggest knock on Travis is that a shoulder injury that required off-season surgery last November has limited him to almost exactly one full season (163 games and 670 plate appearances) of work in The Show. The good news for Travis’ outlook going forward is that once he made his season debut for the Blue Jays on May 25th, he stayed healthy and avoided being bit by the injury bug the remainder (he did suffer a knee injury in the postseason that required an arthroscopic procedure, but he’s expected to be fully ready by spring training). Also, the further removed from his DL activation, the better Travis hit. Read the rest of this entry »


A Minor Review of 2016: Boston Red Sox

Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Heath Hembree (RHP): The Red Sox leaned heavily on a veteran roster in 2016. Freshman Andrew Benintendi didn’t play enough to graduate from his rookie status so that leaves us with Hembree. The right-handed reliever didn’t pitch a lot of important innings but he gained some valuable experience, produced respectable numbers and soaked up innings — 51 in 38 games — despite being more of a one-inning guy in the minors. Hembree, 27, can hit 94-95 mph with his heater and the slider showed potential so his role could continue to expand in ’17. For that to happen, though, the fastball command will need to improve and he’ll also be at the mercy of future offseason moves as the club looks to improve its bullpen.

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Ian Desmond: Outfielder? Shortstop? Regression Candidate?

Desmond ranked sixth in our End of Season outfield rankings at $22.10, behind Nelson Cruz and ahead of Mark Trumbo.

No matter how one slices it, Ian Desmond’s bounce-back season was nothing short of tremendous. From a real-life standpoint, it wasn’t Desmond’s most valuable season — though it was among his three or four best — but from a fantasy perspective it’d be hard not to put this among his best.

First of all was the sheer magnitude of the improvement. It’s not often that a 29/30-year-old simply forgets how to play baseball, but it was an ill-timed poor season to be sure for Desmond, who not only turned down a lucrative offer from the Nationals prior to the season, but hit free agency with the ferocity of an indecisive running back hitting the line of scrimmage. Coming off hitting just .233/.290/.384, Desmond’s market was bound to be limited. Doubly so, considering the Nationals still slapped him with a qualifying offer. And while in retrospect it might have made sense for Desmond to accept — a la Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Wieters and Neil Walker — things couldn’t have panned out much better for him.

But the amazing part isn’t only that Desmond raised his wOBA 40-plus points, his batting average by more than 50 points and posted his career-best OBP. He also did it while switching positions, a truly intriguing proposition that would make even the faintest shortstop’s stomach queasy. There’s a quite a bit of value at short as someone who has hit .264/.312/.424 over their career — Desmond’s line coming into 2016 — while in the outfield, that’s….well let’s just say that Matt Joyce just signed a two-year deal for $11 million and he’s a career .242/.341/.429 hitter.

But in the end, Desmond gambled on himself — and won. So did fantasy owners. Can they do so again next season? Let’s investigate. Read the rest of this entry »


Paul Sporer Baseball Chat – December 1st, 2016

Chat transcript found below!

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Three Outfield Sleepers

When looking for breakout hitters, outfield is usually a great place to start. Volume alone gives it an edge over the other positions, but there’s also the fact that a lot of the best athletes play out there and can offer a dynamic set of fantasy numbers. Sleepers don’t exist as they used to anymore, we all know that. Before the internet age, you could legitimately know of some players that the rest of your leaguemates were oblivious to and scoop them up late. Nowadays, no player is truly hidden – or asleep, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get bargains in the draft.

Let’s not get hung up on the term “sleeper” and instead focus on mining some surplus value in the draft. I look at them on levels: mid-rounder, late-rounder, and flyer. I loosely use the following guidelines for them.

Mid-rounder: picks in the 7th-12th rounds

Late-rounder: picks in the 13th-18th rounds

Flyer: picks from the 19th round on, including reserves

To qualify as a sleeper, I generally see that player as someone who will deliver value about four or more rounds higher than his draft slot. Again, these are loose guidelines, but they give me a general framework for identifying my potential plus value picks. I’ve got an outfielder for all three categories today.

Mid-rounder: Marcell Ozuna | Marlins

Ozuna returned to his 2014 level after a rough 2015 that included a demotion, but that’s not quite as impressive when you consider the surge in offense across the league. In fact, his .773 OPS was a point higher than ’14, but his wRC+ was 11 points lower at 105. Credit him for rebounding from ’15, but there’s a level of disappointment to Ozuna’s season because it looked like he was going to breakthrough and have that big season some have seen coming for him (including yours truly).

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MASH Report: Fantasy Implications Moving to the 10-Day DL

Information is slowly coming out on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the major league owners and players. Most of the news centers around the All-Star game no longer determining home field advantage or changes to draft pick compensation for free agents. All that information is useless for people playing fantasy baseball, though.

Almost all of it. Buried in all the news is that the minimum disabled list (DL) stint has gone down from 15 to 10 days according to the Associated Press.

In addition, players and management agreed the minimum stay on the disabled list will be reduced from 15 days to 10.

The DL change will allow teams to make quicker decisions on whether to bring up a roster replacement rather than wait to see whether the injured player would be ready to return to action in less than two weeks.

I never read or knew this change was even on the negotiating table so I haven’t had a lot of time to ponder the change. While it won’t drastically change the fantasy or real world game, I think it may add a little bit more stability to fantasy baseball. The following are some initial ideas I had after hearing the news.

I think the move will have different implications for hitters and pitchers. Let me start with the hitters.

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Out of Nowhere: Powerful Outfielders

Yesterday, we discussed a few speedy outfielders who could break out in 2017. The speed tool is easy to observe. For them, it’s mostly about opportunity, defensive ability, and hitting just enough to bat near the top of the lineup.

Prognosticating power breakouts is a harder job. One way is to look for guys with 80 grade batting practice power like Miguel Sano. Opportunity and ball park are other important indicators. As we learned in 2016, many power breakouts are the result of mechanical changes. I can’t predict those here.

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Odubel Herrera Isn’t Joey Votto, But That’s Ok

Remember when Odubel Herrera had the third most walks in baseball this season? Jeff Sullivan wrote about it in late April. Herrera was a Rule 4 draft pick who immediately became a 4-win player in his rookie season for the Phillies in 2015. As such, he quickly dropped in the mental space I have that holds players like Jose Bautista and J.D. Martinez who changed something after already becoming major leaguers and became dramatically different players. And so maybe it was possible that Herrera could become the next Joey Votto. I just didn’t know how to project those late bloomers.

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Khris Davis Doesn’t Care for Park Factors

As a projectionist, it’s always fun when players switch teams. It doubles the challenge, as not only do I need to account for standards such as aging and regression in my forecast, but now I have to consider the effects of a switch in home parks. When Khris Davis was traded to the Athletics before this season, I immediately projected a dip in offensive performance, unadjusted for park. That was a normal reaction. Just check out the park factors! Below is a breakdown of just those park factors the two parks sharply differed in.

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