This past Saturday morning, I hopped on the NYC subway for the quick trip to Hotel Edison to participate in the annual Tout Wars AL-Only live auction and try to win a third AL-Only and fourth overall Tout Wars championship. It’s one of the most exciting days of the year, and it’s always bittersweet when it’s over, knowing that I’ll have to wait an entire year to auction with these lads again.
Is the regular season that close that it’s already time for Bold Predictions?! I’ve been doing these for many, many years and they never stop being fun. I also want to caution that I’m truly fantastic at predicting injuries. By that, I mean a good portion of my positive picks seem to regularly miss a chunk of the season while on the IL, so perhaps being listed here is more curse than complement. We shall find out if the trend continues at the end of September! Note that any bold predictions calling for an auction value or ranking by end of season will be based on our auction calculator’s default settings.
On February 23, the competitors of the LABR Mixed draft virtually congregated for our annual February 15-team draft. Drafts this early are challenging. On the one hand, the early timing benefits the prepared and the more highly skilled. On the other hand, there remain a great many unknowns that we need to make educated guesses on at best, and complete shots in the dark on at worst. Position battles either haven’t begun or just began and all the excitement about pitchers throwing new pitches and the velocity spikes they are experiencing typically aren’t even known yet, taking away actionable information we would normally use in our player evaluations. In addition, the longer time between the draft and opening day means more opportunity for injuries to decimate your roster before the season even begins!
For the first time, we can now compare THE BAT X ERA forecasts to other projection systems. That’s because Christmas just arrived early — the pitcher version of THE BAT X has finally been released and is now available on our player pages. A shoutout goes to my friend Derek Carty for what I presume was a massive undertaking in developing the pitching side of his Statcast-driven THE BAT X model. Let’s all be selfishly thankful that he hasn’t been scooped up by a Major League team yet, allowing his analysis and projections to remain accessible.
In a just released study, THE BAT X and Steamer were the two best original projection systems last year that were reviewed by FantasyPros and available on this very site. So let’s compare their individual hitter wOBA forecasts and discuss the hitters each is most optimistic on versus the other. Since most projection systems tend to produce similar results, especially the aggregates, it’s always fun to learn about the outliers in the original systems, as they could be the product of factors missed by the other systems or overvalued that leads to inaccurate forecasts.
Last week, I unveiled new research that concludes looking at league-relative Statcast power metrics, such as HardHit%, maxEV, and Barrel% could help forecast the direction of both Barrel% and HR/FB rate the following season. The data was bucketed into two groups, A being those with high relative HardHit% and maxEV marks, but low Barrel%, while B included those with low relative HardHit% and maxEV marks, but high Barrel%. Let’s now identify and discuss the names that met each group’s criteria in 2025 as we look forward to 2026.
Over the years, I’ve thought about so many different ways to try predicting which hitters might see a jump or decline in power and HR/FB rate. Whether it was using ESPN Home Run Tracker, building an xHR/FB rate equation, using Statcast’s Home Runs leaderboard and its xHR calculation, or countless other ways, I left no stone unturned when attempting to find an edge. So are you ready for a new method?! Sure, you are!
Perhaps the most valuable free agent fantasy asset finally signed after weeks and weeks of speculation. Kyle Tucker signed with the Dodgers, making it more laughably strong than it already was. Heck, they scored the second most runs in baseball last year so they weren’t exactly hurting for even more offense. But more offense they got, which means you might want to think twice about your starting facing the team, no matter who that starter is! Moving out of Wrigley Field and now calling Dodger Stadium home, let’s dive into the park factors to find out how the move might impact Tucker’s results.
Let’s dive into Statcast’s Home Runs Leaderboard to identify and discuss the hitters with the largest gaps, both positive and negative, between actual and expected home runs. I’m using the default “Adjusted” type which applies an environmental variable to the xHR total to account for ballpark effects. Also note that this leaderboard includes postseason home runs, which made me do a double take since I definitely didn’t remember Cal Raleigh hitting 65 home runs and Shohei Ohtani also clearing 60 homers!
A couple of weeks ago, the Pirates acquired second baseman Brandon Lowe from the Rays as part of a three-team trade. The 31-year-old had spent his entire career in Tampa Bay, so it’ll take some getting used to seeing him don a new uniform and in a new league. He’s coming off the second best fantasy season of his career. Let’s dive into the park factors to determine how the park switch might impact his results.
