It wasn’t long ago that the Nationals had a depressing system. The system still lacks depth but it now has some prospects with impact potential.

The Graduate: Brian Goodwin, OF: The Nationals may lose Bryce Harper to free agency after the 2018 season but take a quick glance through this review and you’ll see the names of five intriguing outfield prospects. Goodwin will likely slide into a fourth outfielder role long term but he could fill in as a regular until the wave of younger outfielders is ready to infiltrate the majors. He struck out a lot in his rookie season (almost 25%) but he took some walks and also took advantage of the juiced ball to show a lot more power than he ever did in the minors (.247 isolated slugging). With regular playing time, Goodwin could be a threat for a 15-15 (HR-SB) season.

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Last week, I discovered something unfathomable – the fantasy baseball industry considered Dee Gordon to be a consensus top 50 asset in dynasty leagues. Nobody is as present value-centric as me when it comes to dynasty rankings, and yet I choked on this valuation. We’re talking about a one-dimensional player entering his age 30 campaign. Without some help from iron man Robinson Cano, Gordon is going to lose his useful second base eligibility.

It’s hard to receive between zero and two home runs from a starting outfielder and still contend. Much easier to swallow those numbers from the middle infield spot. And so, amply confused, I asked for your help. Today, I’ll take a closer look at the results of that post, where Gordon may go from here, and why my industry colleagues appear to be so bullish.

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Let’s shift back to the bottom of the Statcast leaderboard and discuss seven names you might be surprised to find down there. The surprise won’t be driven by a bunch of guys who just posted 20% HR/FB rates yet don’t have the barrels to explain such results, but rather one of “whoa, his power really did dry up in 2017, what happened?!”.

In 2017, league average Brls/BBE was 6.4%, while the median mark was 5.3%. The median is much lower because it includes the many hitters who recorded few plate appearances and batted ball events, a group which likely posted lower Brls/BBE marks. After all, more power equals more playing time, all else being equal. The average is weighted and so the 437 batted ball events from Giancarlo Stanton, who posted a 17.4% Brls/BBE is going to pull up that mark, but ends up counting the same as the 16 batted ball events from Brett Eibner, who posted a slightly better 18.8% Brls/BBE.

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1/5/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER18!

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Solo episode where I discuss my first 11 picks in the “Beat Paul Sporer” league.

• Draft results

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More often than not, I write to hype a player who has wowed me in one way or another. Sometimes, I have to put a damper on things. Through 20 National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) drafts, Luke Weaver’s average draft position (ADP) stands at a pearly 111th overall and 28th among starting pitchers.

Weaver’s 36-inning debut freaked me out a bit. It was evident he could capably prevent baserunners, or, through 20% of a season, he could at least fake it. His 3.34 xFIP suggested as much, even in spite of his abhorrent 31% ground ball rate (GB%). Everything else stunk — all the luck metrics broke the wrong way in a small sample — but it was enough to suggest a bright future for the former 1st-rounder was imminent.

I planned to avoid Weaver at all costs in 2017 because of his fly ball tendencies exclusively; I simply did not want to suffer the wrath of a juiced ball because some small-sample strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB) goodness seduced me. Turns out, batted ball metrics can also feel the wrath of randomness in small samples, as his ground ball rate spiked to an above-average 50%. Some of the luck metrics tempered a bit, and the result was a 29% strikeout rate (K%) and defense-independent metrics that suggested he should nearly have a flat 3.00 ERA. It’s almost like there’s a reason why this 24-year-old kid was drafted in the 1st round or something.

I’m here to pump the brakes. I’m not sold on Weaver’s peripherals. I’m willing to let you convince me otherwise, but allow me to explain.

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The system boasts potential stars, lots of pitching and great overall depth. Things have been bleak for the Braves recently but there is a lot to be excited about.

The Graduate: Ozzie Albies, 2B: Dansby Swanson received the most attention early in 2017 as the potential impact middle infielder but he proved less polished than expected and struggled throughout his rookie season. Allowed to simmer a little longer in the minors, Albies — at the age of just 20 — arrived in the summer and didn’t look out of place. He kept the strikeouts down, the walks up and showed more pop than expected. If Swanson needs more time in the minors, look for Albies to slide over from second to shortstop, his natural position. He has a chance to be a top-of-the-order hitter with lots of runs scored, bases stolen and surprising pop for his size.

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Gazing right back at you is someone who relentlessly falls prey to the law of small numbers; to hindsight bias; to over-reaction; to narrow framing; to mental accounting; to status-quo bias; to the inability to evaluate your own future regret; and, most of all, to overconfidence. – Jason Zweig

I’ve been digesting all the literature on behavioral economics I can find as I stated in an article earlier this week. This focus area has gotten quite a bit of attention in the past few years with Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman each winning the Nobel Prize in economics for their work in this field. Thaler (Misbehaving) and Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow) have each written must-read books on the subject. I recommend both books, they are loaded with information. To give a brief induction into the various behavioral economic concepts and their application to fantasy baseball, I will utilize a speech given by the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig on the subject.

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Entering the 2017 season, we were talking about two game changing trends – the home run surge and the 10-day disabled list. We’ve talked home runs to death. I think we all get it – players continued hitting record quantities of home runs. The 10-day disabled list also had a big impact on our fantasy games, and no team better exploited it than the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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The Rockies have spent more than $100 million on relief pitchers this offseason. It’s a strategy with an obvious eye turned toward the postseason, when relievers are becoming increasingly important to team success. But Dave Cameron made a compelling case that the Rockies may not be ready for that sort of roster refinement. They overachieved their expected win total by five games last season and have yet to replace several key contributors—including Carlos Gonzalez, Jonathan Lucroy, and Mark Reynolds—that helped them eke into the playoffs with 87 wins. I don’t dispute that they will still need to fill some of the holes on their roster, but I did stumble upon some evidence that the Rockies’ bolstered bullpen may pay major dividends in the regular season, not just the postseason.

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Let’s continue diving into the Statcast leaderboard, sticking with my favorite metric, Brls/BBE (barrels per batted ball event). While it’s no surprise to find Aaron Judge atop the leaderboard, followed by Joey Gallo, and J.D. Martinez, there are other names that do surprise and provide actionable information. So let’s peruse the top 50 hitters (there are 540 players on the list, including pitchers, as the board simply includes everyone with at least 30 batted ball events) sorted by Brls/BBE and discuss six legit sleepers for home runs in 2018.

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