We’re entering the final stretch of draft season. For many of you, the so-called advice in this post may be too late. However, it’s my hope that everybody will enjoy discussing the options for good-natured trolling in auction drafts. The nomination process offers several ways to mess with your rivals.
Edit (3/29/17, 7:55 pm EDT): Brent Hershey of BaseballHQ and Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster (very politely) brought to my attention that this has been done before! By Bill Macey back in 2012. Formerly behind a paywall, it has now been made public for your reading pleasure. I didn’t even know this research existed (so I’m really glad Murphy brought it to my attention); I am always reluctant to ever claim to break ground in this field that progresses so quickly but also has such a rich history of research. Please consider the following research a companion to and external validation of Macey’s work.
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I welcome all constructive criticism. This research is not especially rigorous, but given the nature of the claim — a legitimately significant spring training statistic! — it merits the disclaimer.
I found a statistically significant spring training statistic.
I’d rather not rehash the history of research and speculation regarding The Spring Training Stat(s) That Matter. Just know that, outside the modest results from this Dan Rosenheck piece in The Economist, it’s generally accepted that Spring Training statistics mean virtually nothing, and you’ll read all manners of baseball writers bashing this notion.
The big caveat is most of this research concerns individual players. Mine: team-level statistics. Alas, it’s an inherently different beast with which I’m dealing. Despite small within-year populations (30 teams rather than hundreds of players), the observation-level sample sizes are much larger (hundreds of plate appearances rather than dozens), making the odds of finding meaningful correlations much better despite fewer data points.
Per usual, I buried the lede: a team’s rate of stolen base attempts (calculated from stolen bases [SB] plus caught stealing [CS]) during spring training is actually meaningful. I’ll get to the implications of this later because there are many. First, let’s dig into the guts of the research. I gathered team-level spring training statistics from 2006 through 2016 and paired it with regular season statistics from the same span plus 2005.
This post was inspired by Trey Baughn’s Bargain Shopping: Five for $5 from December. With just days remaining before the start of the 2017 baseball season, most fantasy auctions and drafts are completed. However, since some will take place this week, and since most fantasy owners are always interested in making savvy moves to improve their rosters, now is as good a time as any to talk about fantasy bargains. To qualify for this list, players must simply cost less than $6 on the Ottoneu Average Salaries page (sorted by “All game types”) and be beyond rookie status. Getting right into the list: Read the rest of this entry »
“Be not too bold.” So wrote Edmund Spenser in his 1590 best-seller The Faerie Queene, a work so obscure, so archaic, and so tedious that even we can’t stand reading it. And anyway, it’s bad advice, at least when it comes to something called Bold Predictions, and at least for us Birchwood Brothers, whose stock in trade is identifying the unheralded and unsuccessful before they become heralded and unsuccessful. Thus, we pledge: nobody among our ten bold predictions cost more than $1 in the just-completed Tout Wars mixed auction. Indeed, some were reserve-round picks, and some weren’t chosen at all. And to keep our promise, we’re starting with a bonus pick, which includes guys who went for more than $1, though not much more. Thus, in ascending order of improbability, we have: Read the rest of this entry »
Alas, we have reached the end of the Pod’s Picks and Pans series. We conclude with a look at starting pitchers. Since there are just so many differences of opinion, I didn’t strictly go down the line of pitchers with the largest gaps, but rather cherry picked a bit that would be the most insightful.
Today, we continue our look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season. Last week, we reviewed the NL East.
Top 10 Prospects for 2017: NL West
1. Hunter Renfroe, OF, San Diego: The Padres should have opportunities a plenty for rookies in 2017 and both Renfroe and Manuel Margot (see below) could see lots of playing time. This 25-year-old rookie really started consistently tapping into his raw power in ’16 and went deep 30 times at triple-A. He then had a scorching 11-game debut in the majors with another four long-balls. He has some swing-and-miss to his game due to an overly-aggressive approach that also leads to low walk rates but Renfroe’s power could eventually go nicely in the middle of the Padres order.
Read the rest of this entry »
Spring is here, and with it comes a renewed sense of optimism for yours truly. The never-ending cold rain and oppressive grayness of my first winter in Seattle is giving way to slightly warmer rain and a lighter shade of gray, and the sun even made an appearance last Tuesday. I’m more excited for baseball season than ever, seeing as I finally live in a major-league city for the first time in my life. Also, WrestleMania and Opening Day — objectively the best two days of the year — land on consecutive days in 2017.
Unfortunately, this time of year also means I get my annual opportunity to make a fool of myself with my Bold Predictions column. The last time I did well with these, I was still in my twenties and The Undertaker’s undefeated WrestleMania streak was intact. I’m not saying that turning 30 (or 31…or 32…) definitively altered my ability to make borderline-crazy-yet-somewhat-possible baseball predictions. However, right around that same time, I developed a bald spot on the top of my head. Without the protective layer of hair, a great many thoughts started escaping my head, and I became much less smart.
What’s changed now? I’m so glad you asked. I recently discovered the incredible Thought Screen Helmet! Originally intended to shield your brain from alien mind-control waves, it turns out that the Thought Screen Helmet not only keeps the aliens out, it also helps keep your thoughts in! Furthermore, the Thought Screen Helmet sports a great track record, with “Only one failure since 1998.”
With my Thought Screen Helmet firmly strapped in, I’m ready to unleash my new and improved Bold Predictions, now featuring occasional accuracy! Hopefully.
Tout Wars Weekend
This past weekend, I participated in the 15-team Tout Wars mixed auction. Participated is a misleading term. Survived is probably more accurate. The auctioneer, Jeff Erickson of Rotowire, keeps the auction moving along at a pace which barely allows a person to find a player’s bid value yet alone perform any in auction calculations. Most of the breaks aren’t breaks. They are used to catch up with your team and assess the rest of the league.
Additionally, the location added difficulty. We bid in an open New York City bar on a Saturday afternoon into the evening. It was not a quiet venue. Since I am about 3/4 deaf, it made hearing everything hard at times. Additionally, as the auction went from afternoon to evening, our location lost its window lighting and morphed into the bar’s dimly lit romantic location. It might be great for singles hoping to score but it forced me to read my printed rankings from my laptop’s light. Even with the challenging conditions, the auction process was great.
I came with a plan of taking Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw and then filling in my team with $10 options and four $1 plays. With Trout and Kershaw, I found over the past three seasons, no owner has spent over $38 on Kershaw and $48 on Trout. My valuation had both valued more than those top values. These two were the only two top players who went close to their perceived values with heavy inflation for the top 30 or so stars. I devised a predraft plan on allocating the rest of my money on the other 21 players after dropping closing to $90 on just the two players. My backup plan was to just to go with my normal value centered approach. Within four nominations, the auction dictated I switch to the alternate plan.
Here’s the transcript from today’s 100 minute chat. See ya next week.
| 10:21 |
: Hello everyone, I’m going to take the next couple minutes to finally renew my MLB.tv, then we’ll get started
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| 10:26 |
: How worried should the Mets be about Steven Matz long term? I understand he is young and sometimes these guys just all of a sudden stay healthy for 3,4,5 years but this is becoming very troubling.
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| 10:28 |
: Pitcher health is always a pain for us fantasy owners. Everybody is a long term concern. That said, Matz certainly isn’t winning the “health as a skill” championship
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| 10:28 |
: I think it’s time to treat him like a Francisco Liriano – promising when everything is clicking, but so frequently out of sorts
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| 10:28 |
: Thanks for the bonus chat! 4th pick in a 12 team draft today. Kershaw Betts Altuve Bryant. Please rank assuming some are available
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| 10:29 |
: So…these are the types of questions I don’t like 🙂
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Let’s finish up the hitting side of Pod’s Picks and Pans with a look at the outfielders. Since we draft so many of them, there are far more opportunities for disagreement. For this position, I’ll only consider Picks to be those in my top 60 and Pans to be those in the consensus top 60.