A ridgeline distribution plot allows you to easily compare distributions across multiple categories. For this post, I’ve created one plot for each classic 5×5 roto category and position. I used ATC projections to graph the distribution and I’ll point out a few interesting trends that we can gather from each visual. Let’s have some fun with visualizations!

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Stolen Bases

First, you may notice the left tail of this visual goes below zero. Since the ridgeline creates a smooth curve over where the bars of a histogram would be, it smooths out into an area that may not be represented by data. However, if you take your cursor and move up the zero line, you can see that there are a lot of 1B and 3B players projected for one stolen base. The same happens on the right side of each plot. ATC projects only two outfielders for 30+ stolen bases, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Jake McCarthy.

The ridgeline essentially stops at 32 (Acuña’s projection) and tails off from there. So, it’s best not to focus too much on the tails of these graphs but instead on the peaks and to the left and right of the peaks. If you do that, you may notice that there’s a wide range of base-stealers in the SS, 2B, and OF positions, but you already knew that. Instead, look at the 1B peaks and notice that you can target players projected to accumulate six or more stolen bases. Here they are:

This mostly goes to show why players like Freeman, Goldschmidt, and Guerrero Jr. are all elite picks. However, you can pick up a few SBs in Rizzo and Myers without spending too much. That could be valuable on the bench. Miguel Vargas is penciled in as the second base nine-hole hitter on the Dodgers’ Roster Resource, but if he has 1B eligibility in your league, he may be a nice late-round flier.

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Batting Average

Different from stolen bases, we see that there are players all over the field who can provide high averages. However, take your cursor and move it from top to bottom along the .300 line. You’ll notice that the 1B and SS lines keep going whereas the OF, 2B, and 3B lines stop. There are a few 1B and SS players skewing the distribution to the right. Who are they?

If you don’t think Freeman, Goldschmidt, and Guerrero Jr. are worth the spend (roto or salary) then what will it take? These three show up as top targets in both stolen bases and batting averages among first basemen. I wonder if they hit home runs too? But, if you want to zip when everyone else zags, look no further than Pasquantino, Lowe, and Abreu. Yes, you’re faced with a big drop-off in runs, but you still have a power/average combo at a more modest price. How about the shortstops?

While it’s a smaller list, there’s a lot to like. We can deduce shortstops are more likely to provide an average/speed combination and that first basemen are likely to provide a power/average combination when targeted appropriately.

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Home Runs

This time, take your cursor and drag it from the top of the visual to the bottom at the 35 mark. What I find interesting here is the power drop off at 3B. Many fantasy analysts have been writing and talking about the major drop off at the 3B position, and this visual reinforces it. First base shows up yet again as such a critical spot and OF positional players hold a lot of power beyond that 35 mark. Here are the OF and 1B players projected to hit 30 or more homeruns by ATC:

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Runs

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RBI

Runs and RBI come from offensively productive players and it helps when they are on good teams. These visualizations reinforce the importance of drafting top-tier 1B and 3B players. But, the distributions are a little more even. Certainly OF players are holding higher run totals, but projected RBI totals are shared fairly evenly among OF, 3B, and 1B players.

If you want a larger summary of what to glean from these distributions it’s that waiting on corner infielders is not recommended, that you can double up on speed and batting average from shortstops, and power doesn’t have to come with empty stolen base potential and that there is simply more production in total to be found in the OF position.

Last week I detailed how I am preparing for an upcoming Ottoneu re-draft and how I set my hitter targets. In this post, I finish the job and detail my approach to targeting pitchers. I should note that this is an iterative process. It is necessary to go back and forth to figure out a good balance between hitting and pitching and so much of that is dictated by who you have on the free-agent list. Regardless, I’m a planner and need to set my targets ahead of time. I need to see what happens if Plan A fails and what Plan B really looks like. Sadly, I was never the kid in school who could just roll out of bed, head to the exam in their pajamas, and get an A without studying.

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2023’s PitcherList PitchCon was a great time. If you are unfamiliar with the event I highly recommend going back and watching any of the videos from any one of the four day’s recordings. FanGraphs’ own Ariel Cohen presented a few aspects of his ATC projections that I had never been aware of and think could be very useful in draft preparation. I encourage you to go back and watch Cohen’s talk on The Value of ATC Volatility Charts. In this post, I’ll take a look ATC’s InterSD, InterSK, and IntraSD metrics. Join me by opening a new tab, clicking on over to the ATC projections page, shuffling to the “Fantasy” tab and noticing three columns all the way to the right of the spreadsheet.

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Now that you’ve gone through the keep or cut process, are you ready to draft? Do you have a big board on your wall with your targets? Do you know how much you’ll pay and how much you won’t? The FanGraphs auction calculator will tell you what a player is worth based on your league and whichever projection system you prefer, but which players do you need to get to fill out your roster? In this post I’ll detail my process for targeting players in an Ottoneu FanGraphs points league re-draft auction.
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At the start of the new year, I was invited to participate in an Ottoneu mock draft with other industry people and I was excited to take on the challenge. We mocked a 12-team, FanGraphs points Ottoneu league. Each team had a $400 salary and a 40-man roster to fill. Chad Young tweeted his analysis of each pick and you can follow each piece of valuable insight here. But, he was being polite when he wrote:

55) Edwin Diaz $25 @DrEephus

Like, within $2, maybe less? Sure. Diaz is the top pen option and if this is top pen price, that makes sense.

BTW, intrigued by what Lucas is doing here. Diaz, Clase, and Hendriks – that is an elite, elite pen. very curious how that would play out.

— Chad Young (@chadyoung) January 6, 2023

The truth is, I didn’t really mean to do it, draft three top closers, that is. I won’t make excuses, but if I did make excuses I’d say that I’ve never actually participated in an Ottoneu first-year draft, both of my Ottoneu teams were inherited and that I had also never participated in slow draft before. I had a hard time keeping track of where I placed bids. Insert emoji of person with hands up in the air here. Yes, I made a rookie mistake and I am not a rookie, I swear. But, mock drafts are mock drafts and if you go into one without some kind of planned experiment, then what’s the point? My experiment? Come out with guns blazing! Pay top dollar for top dollar players. What ended up happening when it was all said and done? Let’s dig in a little and find out.

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Hypothesis: Cornering the closer market will add value to my team.

The elite pen that Chad was intrigued by is projected by Steamer to be worth 1722.6 points. This draft took place prior to the unfortunate news that Liam Hendrick was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, so I used his 2022 points in this calculation. Here’s a pricing break-down:

The crazy part about this is I technically got a discount on Diaz and Clase when assuming FanGraphs auction calculator values. But, what happens when you corner the market? You end up with a surplus of stats and while that’s valuable, it means that you valued it more than everyone else. If this were a real league, I’m sure it would be difficult to trade away one of these closers and get a return that I was happy with. Add to that the fact that Hendriks has more important things to fight through than the bottom of the ninth, and you can see that I’ve placed too many eggs in one basket. Larry Schechter wrote about this exact issue in his book, “Winning Fantasy Baseball”. I’ll change some of the things Schechter wrote to fit my situation, but the idea is the same:

“Suppose [Lucas]…goes over-board on closing pitchers because there are too many great deals (in his opinion) to pass up. Later he needs to try to trade a pitcher for a hitter. He has several [relief] pitchers he can trade…When he offers these pitchers for a trade, he will be offered hitters more in line with the auction price, not his value. In other words, nobody else thought [Clase] was worth more than $23, so he’s not going to receive more than a $23 hitter for [Clase]. He will be forced to trade [Clase] for a $23 hitter, thus negating the gain he thought he had by buying [Clase].”

Lastly, suppose I still was aggressive with closers and took both Clase and Hendriks, but used the $23 I spent on Díaz on a starting pitcher. In hindsight, which is 20/20, I would spend that $23 on a pitcher who actually went for $22. Maybe the bidding would have gone further up, but for this exercise, this logic is all I have. Here are the starting pitchers who went for $22:

Just the points boost alone is enough to show how trading out that third closer for a more dependable stater at the same price makes more sense. Had I drafted Darvish instead of Díaz, I would have had an additional ~200 projected points to add to my total.

Conclusion: Drafting three elite closers is not the way to go, but drafting two and a good starting pitcher seems like a good strategy.

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Hypothesis: Being aggressive and paying for top talent is better than waiting and spreading your money more evenly.

In addition to locking in closers and cornering the market like a savage, ruthless entrepreneur who walks out of his apartment building, onto the streets and screams, “Cash rules everything around me! C.R.E.A.M.! Get the money!”, I dove straight into top-tier hitter bidding:

Having a roster with Vlad, Adley, J-Rod, and Soto made me giddier than a Canadian woman at a Shania Twain concert. But, that’s a lot of money spent early on. What we have here is a real “Stars and Scrubs” approach. The roster image above showed what I would consider my starting lineup, but just take a look at my bench:

That’s a long list of $1 players, but there are a few that I believe in. Regardless, how would things have looked had I passed on just one of my top targets, let’s say Julio Rodriguez at $47? Using the same logic as before and adding $1 to a few middle-of-the-pack players, I could have turned Julio Rodriguez into Seiya Suzuki and Jazz Chisholm, for example:

Obviously, the combination of these two players means I get more points, but who would have not been drafted? Well, that would have clearly been Adam Frazier. Here’s a breakdown:

J-Rod (rPTS 952.7) + Frazier (rPTS 445.8) = 1398.5 rPTS @ $48

or

Seiya (rPTS 773.9) + Jazz (rPTS 726.1) = 1500.0 rPTS @ $47

Conclusion: While there are a lot of assumptions being made here, the two middle-of-the-road players look better on paper. I’m saving $1 and generating 100 more points.

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Hypothesis: I can still get a lot of playing time out of $1 players.

Last week I wrote about the value in keeping, or not keeping, prospects on your roster, especially if they are being paid more than $1. This is a tricky part of Ottoneu. First, Ottoneu points leagues have 162-game maximums for all positional players, so you have to be careful with how often you’re setting a full lineup. Maximums can sneak up on you when you least expect it. Having a solid bench is very important, but how much do you want to pay for players who will rarely be plugged into your starting squad? It’s a difficult thing to balance, but I tend to rely on plate appearances when stocking my bench. It’s terrible when you need to plug in a couple of substitutes, but everyone on the bench is in AAA or rarely starting. Here are all my $1 players’ projected plate appearances by steamer:

While many people target upside with their $1 bids, as they should, I chose to go with players who were still available and who can be counted on for plate appearances. I forced myself into this situation because of my aggressive spending from the outset, but I’d rather have players who I know I can plug in when I need to instead of players whose playing time may not be very reliable. The aggravating part about this strategy was that I was out of the bidding for players like J.D. Martinez ($3), Juan Yepez ($3), Jean Segura ($3), Gavin Lux ($2), and Brandon Drury ($2). These players were all taken at great value and I missed out.

Conclusion: Spending early and going after high-value players early forces you to fill your bench with $1 players, but $1 players can still carry playing time.

All in all, I’m happy with my lineup, I think I put together a decent rotation and I locked in the two best closers in the game. Things would have to go right for me to work into the top three at the end of the season, however. I would need a Giolito bounce back, a Morton-like Morton season, Tyler Anderson’s 2022 to be the real deal and for my players to stay healthy. That’s a lot to ask for, but if it all goes wrong, I can always start a re-build, tear down. That’s the fun part of Ottoneu.

Last week I detailed my late-round starting pitcher recipe, “Thinning the Herd”. I wrote about the first six pitchers on this list and this week I’ll continue with the bottom six. As a reminder, here’s my ingredients list:

• A SwStr% in 2022 of at least 11%. (2022 MLB SP average – 10.7%)
• A K/9 projection (steamer) of eight or better. (2022 MLB SP average – 8.18)
• Positive pVals (Pitch Info) on at least two pitches in 2022.
• An ADP greater than 100.

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Sticky metrics refer to statistics that are highly correlated from year to year. Here’s an example. Among all qualified pitchers in 2022, Jordan Montgomery ranked 11th with a 12.9% swinging strike rate (SwStr%). Bringing the innings-pitched threshold down to 150 in 2021, he ranked ninth with a career-high 13.7%:

In every season except 2018, he’s had an above-average SwStr%. Projections don’t predict SwStr%, but if they did you could imagine that Montgomery would easily be projected above 12%.

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If you are rostering a player in the minor leagues who has yet to debut, how are justifying it? I don’t write that to be critical, I’m rostering a few myself and I ask myself the same question whenever I look over my roster. If your answer is something like, “They could be really good in the future!”, then you are also thinking like me and everyone else who is rostering young, yet-to-debut minor leaguers. Who are some of these players? Here are just a few hand-selected examples with high average salaries in Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues:

Hitters
– Marco Luciano, $5.08
– Anthony Volpe, $4.88
– Jasson Domínguez, $4.37

Pitchers
– Jack Leiter, $5.52
– Grayson Rodriguez, $5.47
– Eury Pérez, $4.29

A player like Grayson Rodriguez can be found on the auction calculator because he is expected to join the O’s rotation either out of camp or early in the season. Using Steamer projection and the auction calculator’s FanGraphs points pre-settings, Rodriguez projects as a $1 player. Technically, he’s not worth rostering with a projected value of $-13.4, but you can usually treat any player with negative value as a $1 player. Regardless, he’s not expected to be worth the $5 plus he’s averaging in Ottoneu leagues, but his rookie season is not the reason you would roster him. You would roster him in hopes that he will be worth much more than $1 in 2024, 2025, and on. If you’re paying $5 now, he’s worth $1 now, but you’ll be paying him $7 next year when he’s worth $10, and maybe you’re doing alright. That statement probably deserves a much deeper dive, but for now, I’ll stay out of that rabbit hole.

This is the fun part of rostering yet-to-debut minor-league players. It’s literally prospecting. It’s fun to do with Bowman autographed baseball cards and it’s fun to do in fantasy baseball leagues. This prospecting becomes more exciting as the player gets closer and closer to success. But, what about a pitcher like Jack Leiter? Technically he edges out Grayson Rodriguez ever-so-slightly in average salary, but here’s a bold prediction; Jack Leiter will not return $5.52 in FanGraphs points leagues this season. Ok, maybe not so bold. No one can predict the future, but this one seems like a gimme. Last year (2022), Corey Kluber returned $5.70. If Leiter were to do the same in 2023, he’d have to be around Kluber’s 2022 numbers:

First of all, Kluber only walked 21 batters in 2022!? That’s the lowest total among all starters with at least 160 innings pitched and seven less than second-place Kevin Gausman. That’s what you can or should get for around $5.00 in FanGraphs points leagues. Kluber’s current average Ottoneu salary sits at $6.66. Second, I included Leiter’s Steamer projection tongue in cheek, he basically has no projection. His player page does have a 2023 MLB ETA, but who knows? So, we can’t realistically project Leiter’s 2023 value. I suppose we could compare his minor-league stats. That’s also unfair but at least it gives us some semblance of what he can do. Luckily, Dan Szymborski does the good work of projecting player performance a few years ahead with ZIPS:

I tossed in the HBP projections myself, thinking that maybe Leiter will gain a little more control over time, and I projected no holds, the rest is provided by ZIPS. Before you start going crazy over this projection remember that volatility in projections for players who have never played in the major leagues is very high. So, let’s get even more volatile! Let’s imagine that ZIPS is being very conservative and that Leiter’s 2024 season looks more like a combination of 2023 and 2024. This is a big assumption, I know, but stick with me. Here’s where Leiter would be in 2024:

I tweaked the HBP and BB totals to reflect a more realistic total, but the other categories are the sum of 23′ and 24′ ZIPS. If this turned out to be true, what would his value be in 2024? In FanGraphs points leagues, this projection would be worth approximately 725 points (rPTS on the table below). Now, we have something to work with. The auction calculator has the following pitchers in that realm for the 2023 season:

Remember my bold/not-very-bold prediction from earlier? I’m prepared to apply that to the 2024 season as well. Jack Leiter’s current average salary of $5.52 may not be what he’s worth until beyond 2024 even if he ends up being Nestor Cortes, which is a huge if. Up until this point, I have written nothing about arbitration, but it’s very possible that someone in your league could bump his salary up a few dollars and you would no longer be making smart decisions by rostering him. Could I be wrong about all of this? Yes! I have no doubt that Leiter will be a successful major league pitcher, but Ottoneu FanGraphs points fantasy leagues roster-able? Now? No. Why did I write all of this? Well, because I’m rostering a $6 Jack Leiter and had a theory about why that was a bad decision. Finally, just before the January 31st keeper deadline, I’m ready to let him go. Farewell my friend. I hope to pick you up for $1 in the draft and start this prospecting process all over again, but at a much more reasonable price.

It has always been difficult for me to understand pitcher volatility. Well, the volatility part isn’t hard to understand, actually, it’s very simple. Pitching in the big leagues is incredibly difficult and one tiny little element of a pitcher’s game could be off to make the whole outing unravel. But, what is hard to understand is what little element that is. Did a 1 mph drop on a four-seamer really make it all go south? Or, was it a matter of half an inch of location? Is it even measurable? Like, what if it was just bad gas from the previous night’s chimichanga that threw things off? Do you see where I’m going? I want to know why a pitcher does so well one day and so poorly the next. For my first round of this, I’ll start slow and focus on only one pitch, narrowing the question down to, why does one pitch perform well one day and bad the next? In today’s investigation, I’ll analyze and compare Robbie Ray’s July 3rd 2.6 wSL Pval (Pitch Info) with his July 24th -3.4 wSL pVal. Let’s have some fun.
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It is always odd to me how fantasy drafters come up with their auction values. “Oh, he’s a $10 SS at least!”. Ok, but, where did you come up with that number? If you load up the FanGraphs auction calculator with your league settings and Steamer projections, you will see exact dollar values that you can use to aid you in auction drafts. I write the word, “aid” because you will very rarely get the player you want for the price the auction calculator spits out. Sometimes you are lucky and get the player for under what the auction calculator thinks he’s worth, and sometimes you push the “Outbid By $1” button a little too much.

Regardless of whether your bid falls below the mark, above it, or right on the mark, the amount you paid cannot be evaluated until the end of the season. But, looking back at last season’s projections versus last season’s actuals can teach us a few things and if we were operating our fantasy team like we were operating a business, we’d all be sitting in the conference room drinking bad coffee and going over the fiscal year. Hopefully, someone brought in donut holes. In this post, I’ll look at 2022 steamer preseason projection values (hitters only) versus 2022 end-of-season values and make comparisons.

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