Before I begin, I wanted to get something out of the way first. I have never played in a keeper league for more than a season (therefore never having the opportunity to make keeper selections), and so I might be wrong about my feelings on this strategy. But, I don’t think I am. On Saturday, I was asked to participate in an online auction for a FanGraphs reader who was unable to attend. Being the awesome person that I am and unwilling to pass on a chance to participate in another auction, the player selection format I enjoy significantly more than the snake draft, I said yes with little convincing necessary.

This was a 12-team 5×5 mixed rotisserie keeper league, where if an owner chooses to keep a player, his salary would increase $3. Standard roster size, except the league uses just one catcher instead of two. Oh, and you also use your auction budget ($270, instead of $260) to bid on your 5 reserves. Anyway, having had little experience in a keeper league auction to compare, this one seemed insane. Let me tell you how.

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It’s been over a week since I shared my last Pod Projection, so let’s get back on the saddle. Easily tallying the second highest number of votes was Max Scherzer. Clearly, Scherzer set your heart aflutter when he posted that 2.69 ERA in the second half. Funny, it was just the luck pendulum swinging the other way, rather than any change in skills, as his xFIP was very similar in each half. On to the projection we go.

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Yesterday, I unveiled the top 10 list of good names with regards to both No Doubt percentage and Just Enough percentage from the home run classification buckets on ESPN Home Run Tracker. Today, I will present the negative nellies. These hitters are at greater risk for HR/FB rate decline this season, so it might not be a bad idea to use as a tie-breaker if debating between a hitter on the list and someone else.

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Yesterday, I published the results of an exhaustive study I conducted to determine the predictive value of the data available on ESPN Home Run Tracker. As we suspected all along, the various home run classification buckets do indeed provide some valuable information. Today, I will unveil the names of the hitters who get a positive boost from knowing this new information.

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In 2006, ESPN Home Run Tracker (then known as Hit Tracker Online) launched to provide us stat fiends with data about every home run hit in baseball. It wasn’t enough anymore to know that Ryan Howard led all of baseball with 58 long balls. No, we craved more information, and more information we got, in the form of distance, speed off the bat and a classification into a specific bucket depending on how far past the fence the ball flew. For years, I have been referencing a hitter’s percentage of “Just Enough” or “No Doubt” home runs, operating under the assumption that they have some predictive value. Although I had done a small scale study several years ago which did seem to support this thesis, nothing exhaustive has been done since. Until now.

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The editors apologize for the title error. As reader Matt Bertelli notes below, however, “No one would read the post if it said Astros rotation.”

The Astros make the move to the American League this year and this switch is going to hurt their pitching staff. Of course, even in the National League this was not a staff that made fantasy owners very excited, but now it becomes even more of a struggle to identify anyone worth pursuing in shallower leagues.

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For the most part, the Athletics have an exciting young starting rotation. But with youth comes inexperience, so it’s a group that could lead the team to another playoff visit or break the hearts of Oakland fans. Enough with the cliches, let’s dive into the players.

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Your voices have been heard. Tallying six big votes for the next pitcher to be Pod Projected was 2012 breakout starting pitcher, Jeff Samardzija. I owned him in all of my leagues last year after scooping him up post-draft during spring training and I know how to spell his name without looking it up! Impressive feat, I know. So what will the “Shark” do for an encore?

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Last Thursday, fellow RotoGrapher Chris Cwik tried to make sense of Justin Ruggiano’s half a season breakout performance last year. Chris primarily focused on historical comparables and concluded that it is unlikely that Ruggiano will continue to enjoy above average offensive performance. Looking at historical comparables is a good idea and tells us that Ruggiano is indeed facing long odds. However, I want to take that analysis one step further and dive into Ruggiano’s specific skill set to determine whether he’ll experience a better fate than the majority of the group in Chris’ sample.

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Over the past couple of weeks, I have published several of my hitter projections with a detailed explanation of each metric projected. Today, it’s finally time to switch over to the pitching side. Kris Medlen returned from Tommy John surgery with a bang last year, posting a microscopic 0.97 ERA and 0.81 WHIP as a starter. A performance like that will grab the attention of fantasy owners and it has vaulted him up the ADP charts, as he has been getting drafted 75th overall and 14th among starting pitchers on Mock Draft Central. With a limited history, projecting him is tough. Let’s go through the process, of which you can read more about here.

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