With prospect week happening on the main website, I’m going to look at the hitting prospects ranked by their NFBC ADP (average draft position). This will be the batter’s value just in redraft leagues, not in keeper or dynasty leagues. I’ve included the player’s average, low, and high ADP values along with their Fangraphs prospect ranking.

Ronald Acuna (133 ADP, 88 min, 207 max, #2 prospect)

As the first rookie hitter off the board, his price is just a little too high for me considering the options available after him. He’s a talented ball player who is consistently ranked as either the #1 or #2 prospect in the game. He’s going to be good but how good in 2018 is the question. I have two reservations about him.

First, the no league has had a chance to adapt to his weaknesses and then have Acuna adapt back. Even pitchers found Mike Trout’s “weakness” and he had to adapt. Acuna will need to also. The question will be when the adaptation will occur and how long will it take. Will it happen in the minors and take a couple months? Or will happen in the big leagues and only be a week or two. This adjustment time could really frustrate owners.

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We’d hoped to discuss the first half of our NFBC slow draft this week, but it’s moving with the Thialfian swiftness of Bartolo Colon trying to leg out a triple. So instead we’re back with another installment in our lucky/unlucky series, wherein we attempt to disentangle bad fortune from disappointment and good fortune from success.

For newcomers to our world: our theory, which seems to be borne out in practice, is that pitchers who aren’t hit hard but give up a lot of hits and a lot of home runs are simply unlucky, and pitchers who are but don’t and don’t are merely lucky. We posit that the unlucky guys outperformed their numbers last year, and will accordingly be undervalued in this year’s drafts and auctions, while the lucky guys will be overpriced and should be avoided. And we deduce who these guys might be by looking at 2017’s Hard-Hit Percentage, Batting Average on Balls in Play, and Home Run to Fly Ball Ratio.

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While it’s true that Ottoneu never sleeps, some are often surprised to know that January and February are among the busiest months of the year for this growing fantasy sports platform.  This winter frenzy period for baseball is refreshing because it keeps owners engaged even as they await free agent signings, and it is highly active because so many new leagues are forming.  If you’re thinking about playing Ottoneu this season, here are some key resources for review:

What Is Ottoneu?

Ottoneu First Impressions

Why You Should Play Ottoneu

How To Get Started Playing Ottoneu

10 Tips for Ottoneu Rookies

Join an Ottoneu League

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Yesterday, I began my discussion of another one of my xHR/FB rate equation’s components, FB Pull%, and shared the hitters who posted above average Brls/True FB and Avg FB Dist marks, but below average FB Pull% rates, hinting at upside if a change in approach is made. Today, I’m going to check in on the hitters who posted below average Brls/True FB and Avg FB Dist marks, but above average FB Pull% rates. These hitters are at greater risk of HR/FB rate regression given their heavy reliance on pulling their flies. If that skill erodes or approach is altered, there would be major downside.

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With such a solid response to the commentary added to my starting pitcher ranks last week, I want to do the same for the other positions and today I’ve got my first base rankings ready to go. In addition to the commentary, I’ve also highlighted the tier breakdowns as I see them. I didn’t do this with the SPs, but my February update will include that. We are also going to be rolling out our composite rankings in the coming weeks with several Rotographs authors contributing so stay tuned for those. Each colored bar represents the start of a new tier.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Who is your favorite mid-round target (starting with Santana) at the position?

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It’s tough to create a perfectly balanced team on draft or auction day. Owners are feeling the push-and-pull of trying to balance all five categories in a roto league. Mid-draft, many owners decide to drop a category with the hope of finding the needed stats on the waiver wire. Knowing which stats can be found can be tricky. By looking back at last season’s Tout Wars leagues, a decent idea of available stats can be determined.

One feature of the OnRoto.com fantasy league website computes the league’s final standings using just the drafted teams (nine pitchers, 14 position players). I took these draft values and compared them to the actual final values for each of the four roto leagues (12-team AL and NL-only and the two 15-team mixed leagues).

Some specific notes on these leagues. First, they are deeper than most leagues so every player who might be good is already owned. As for the timing of the mixed draft (the other three were auctions) happened a few weeks before the other three. Additionally, only the 23-man rosters were used used for the projected standings. Each team had an additional five or six-person bench.

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The third in an ongoing series (Pt. 1) (Pt. 2), I’ll continue to compare hitters using blind résumés to highlight “generic-brand” players who could be drafted as substitutes for “name-brand” players in later rounds of your draft. This entry will differ slightly in substance; I’ll focus on 2018 projections to identify similarly skilled players rather than use hindsight to rationalize (or poke holes in) how we’ve valued past performance.

I will use National Fantasy Baseball Championship average draft position (NFBC ADP). Reminder: we host them here on FanGraphs, too. It’s worth noting I pulled these projections this past weekend, so the numbers will likely differ slightly but not unconscionably. The ADPs are current as of yesterday.

Comparison #1: Power-Speed Outfielders, Mostly

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It’s prospect week which means it’s time for RotoGraphs to jump in line with cross-promotional synergistical, uh… I lost my train of thought. Anyway, I’m going to write about two prospects.

Wait. Here’s an important note about me, the author, with regards to assessing minor league talent. My prospect exposure is not uniform. I have a very strong grasp of the Phillies system, in part because I grew up within walking distance* of the city, and in part because they may have the best prospect coverage (h/t to @Matt_Winkelman and friends). I also have a few MLB contacts – mainly scouts with whom I used to play – who will occasionally feed me breakout prospects before they’re publicly recognized as such. Mostly, I use google-able scouting reports and FanGraphs stats to analyze players. Ok, disclaimer proclaimed. Shall we?

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One of the components of my new xHR/FB equation is fly ball pull percentage (FB Pull%). Sadly, I have spent significantly more time discussing barrels per true fly ball and average fly ball distance, so I’m going to change that. Let’s talk FB Pull%!

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Alex Reyes was considered to be a top-5 prospect coming into the 2017 season. Then his elbow gave out and he eventually needed Tommy John surgery. He’s nearing completion of his recovery and the Cardinals are considering when he’ll return and his role.

Wanting to protect their top prospect as much as possible, the Cardinals have set a soft target of May 1 as a likely return date for Reyes. What hasn’t been so explicitly defined, though, is what role he’ll fill upon that return.

Long term, the Cardinals have every intention of using Reyes to anchor their rotation. MLB Pipeline recently ranked Reyes as the seventh-best right-handed pitching prospect, and he likely would have been higher on that list had he not just missed a full season.

But given the recovery process Reyes has undergone over these last 12 months, the Cardinals intend to be cautious in 2018. Their preference, as stated multiple times this offseason by president of baseball operations John Mozeliak, would be to have Reyes first come out of the bullpen.

For fantasy owners, they could take a chance on having an elite arm as a starter or reliever. With so many possible unknown outcomes, the following is a breakdown of 2018 value.

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