I love making outlandish predictions so much that I didn’t just stop at the standard 10 bold ones. I even stuck my neck out and risked looking foolish by forecasting the league leaders in the five standard rotisserie categories. I made sure not to choose anyone too obvious and maintained the same level of boldness. Unfortunately, this is much tougher than the regular bold predictions and my results in past years have unsurprisingly been poor. Let’s see if my crystal ball worked any better this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

During the all-star break, I decided to undergo a little experiment. I took two groups of 10 starting pitchers comprised of those whose ERAs outperformed and underperformed their SIERA marks by the largest margins. There were 437 of you who answered the question “Which Group Posts a Lower ERA RoS?” and 61.1% of you voted for Group A, the SIERA outperformers. Despite this group actually posting a higher SIERA than Group B, you felt that the magic would continue. Let’s find out the results and if the majority was correct.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 69
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss the Rangers short-term future and recap some of my preseason bold predictions.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 48 min of joyous analysis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Back in mid-February, I was invited into the inaugural Tout Wars mixed draft league, which was a real honor as it is one of the two most prestigious “expert” leagues the members of the industry participate in. A month later, I drafted my team. My full results and analysis can be found here.

As a quick reminder, it’s a 15-team, 5×5 rotisserie league with standard 23-man active rosters and a 4 player bench. The one quirk is that it uses OBP instead of AVG. I led the league the majority of the season and heading into the Rangers-Rays tiebreaker game, I was winning by 5.5 points. Unfortunately, the current second place team, Tom Kessenich, mathematically still had a chance to overtake me. It was highly unlikely, but there was a non-zero possibility. Luckily, I held on for the win, despite my lead narrowing to five points. If you’re interested, you can check out the full final standings here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Phew! The season has officially ended! Well…almost. For many owners, tonight’s one-game tiebreaker will not count toward the standings. For others, it’s one last night of nail biting as you hope your lead holds up. Even though the regular season technically hasn’t ended just yet, I’ll be starting the recapping efforts. As usual, I provided 10 bold predictions in late March. Let’s see how I did.

1. Justin Ruggiano surprises everyone, except for myself and FanGraphs readers, by going 25/25

My favorite offensive sleeper this preseason finished the year with 18 home runs and 15 steals over 468 plate appearances. Although he eventually did wrangle the starting center field job away from Chris Coghlan early in the season, he was cursed by a low BABIP and gave way to prospects Jake Marisnick and Marcell Ozuna later. Extrapolating his numbers over a full season of 600 plate appearances would have still yielded results that fell a bit short of this bold prediction, but he did prove that his surprising 2012 wasn’t a complete fluke. 0 for 1

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 68
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss every possible streamer option through the rest of the season.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 38 min of joyous analysis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Another day, another myriad of streaming possibilities! If you’re still in the hunt and a bunch of strikeouts and a potential win could move you closer to victory, then you’re at the right place.

Read the rest of this entry »

Only five days remain of the regular season! Ratio categories will be tough to move significantly, so you may very well have little downside in streaming as many starters as you can to gain some cheap wins and strikeout points. Here are all your options that are likely widely available in fantasy leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 67
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss every possible streamer option through Thursday’s games and a whole bunch of injury situations.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 43 min of joyous analysis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In recent months, Eno Sarris has talked a lot about going to the opposite field and how a hitter who sprays the ball to all fields may have a higher BABIP than those who primarily pull the ball. Furthermore, last summer Jeff Zimmerman updated an older BABIP formula and shared with us an xBABIP spreadsheet. Simply copy and paste a couple of lines of numbers from a player’s page and the calculator spits out an expected BABIP. The formula incorporates a hitter’s power, speed and batted ball distribution and does a darn good job of it. But with Joey Votto crediting his ability to go to all fields as a major factor behind his always near league-leading BABIP marks, I felt that it was time to start doing the research to determine if he was indeed on to something.

Read the rest of this entry »