Yesterday, I finally launched my never ending series of lists as we look toward the 2016 season by reviewing those fantasy relevant hitters who gained at least 15 feet of batted ball distance from 2014 to 2015. As you may have guessed, today I’ll look at the other end, those hitters who lost the most distance. Since there were surprisingly fewer extreme decliners, the list is going to include those who lost at least 10 feet of distance, rather than 15 feet like the gainers list included.

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Finally, it’s time for me to start looking toward the 2016 season with list after list after list. You love lists, right? Of course you do! We’ll start preview season with a look at one of my favorite metrics – hitter average fly ball and home run distance, or simply hitter batted ball distance. A long three years ago, Chad Young and I embarked on a quest to predict HR/FB rate and found that a hitter’s batted ball distance available at Baseball Heat Maps is highly correlated with HR/FB rate. No duh. The further a batter hits the ball on average, the more home runs, shocking!

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One of the more exciting effects of offseason player movement is the opening up of closer roles. When established closers sign somewhere else or get sent packing as part of a trade, us fantasy nerds have all the fun of speculating who steps up to fill the vacated role and how likely it is that the pitcher holds the job all year. After the Yankees stole traded for incumbent Reds closer Aroldis Chapman, there was a gaping hole at the back end of the Reds bullpen. Since the Reds are clearly in rebuilding mode, it’s highly unlikely they go out and trade for or sign another reliever to fill the void. So at the moment, all signs point to J.J. Hoover opening the season as their closer. We’ll expand on the battle and other options when we begin our depth chart discussions in the coming weeks. But today’s post is all about Hoover.

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Finally, it’s the last recap of my projections from the 2015 season! The Pod Projections are derived using the methodology outlined in my just released eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance. As usual, Steamer and I is a comparison of my projection to Steamer’s. Steamer was significantly more bullish on James Shields, who moved to the National League and joined the Padres, both of which should have boosted his fantasy value. It didn’t of course, as his ERA and WHIP both jumped, despite a career high strikeout rate.

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Bored yet? Oh c’monnnnn, you love making us accountable for everything we say! This is my last review of our 2015 preseason rankings. We continue the look at those players we disagreed on most that we ranked outside the top 100, and we finish off with the starting pitchers. Once again, actual ranks are courtesy of Zach’s calculation wizardry.

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Phew, we’re almost at the end of my 2015 reviews. Remember when I assured you that I would review all that I predicted, projected, ranked, and said from the 2015 preseason? I wasn’t joking! So today I return to recapping the list of players us RotoGrapher rankers disagreed on the most. This time we check in on the hitters we ranked outside the top 100 that had us baffled. Actual ranks based on Zach Sanders’ top 300. Let’s see who was right…if any of us were.

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At last, we have reached our final 2015 Pod Projection review! All pitcher projections were based on the methodology laid out in my just released eBook, Projecting X 2.0. Yes, it’s the follow up to the original Projecting X, and is chock full of new research, new metrics, new ideas, and new methods for projecting baseball player performance.

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Let’s continue where I left off before Christmas when I reviewed the hitters that baffled the rankers in the top 100 and switch things up to the starting pitcher side of the ledger. Since we had five rankers for our preseason consensus, it was only natural that there would be some players we disagreed on. Sure, we didn’t rank everyone exactly the same, but most were in the general vicinity. For these players that were part of our preseason top 100, our opinions were all over the map. Let’s find out who got it right. The original writeup is here and here is the top 300 the “Actual” ranking is pulled from.

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Let’s take a short break from the starting pitcher reviews and move onto recapping something I did for the first time this year. Since we had five rankers for our preseason consensus, it was only natural that there would be some players we disagreed on. Sure, we didn’t rank everyone exactly the same, but most were in the general vicinity. For these players that were part of our preseason top 100, our opinions were all over the map. Let’s find out who got it right.

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It’s time for another Pod Projection review and today it’s new top 10 starter Jacob deGrom. After a dominating performance during his 2014 rookie campaign that essentially came out of nowhere, we all wondered how much regression he would experience in 2015. Instead, he laughed at the notion of regression and took his performance to further heights, earning more than $24 and finishing as the ninth most valuable starter. Refresh your memory by reviewing my initial Pod Projection post.

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