Author Archive: Mike Podhorzer

Here at FanGraphs, we are doing our best to make sure we publish as many articles about Prince Fielder’s move to the Motor City as possible. We want to ensure that there is absolutely no temptation to go anywhere else to find an angle that we missed (because we couldn’t have missed an angle, we covered them all!). So to continue on with the behind the scenes look at my projections, it is only fitting that Fielder is the next man in the spotlight.

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I first want to thank everyone who read What is Position Scarcity, Really? and commented, as it led to an interesting discussion with lots of good points and observations. I quickly realized how in-depth this concept could go and that I may not have explained myself as well as I would have liked. It happens all too often, as I sometimes suck at clearly stating my argument and finding the words to use so that everyone understands what I am trying to convey. I have been emailing with a reader/listener of my radio show who read the aforementioned post and it was evident that I had not done a good enough job convincing him either. Luckily, as I was typing my response to him, it suddenly hit me, as I thought of something I should have included in my original article, but failed to.

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Last night on the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable radio show (live every Wed. night at 9 PM EST!), the question was posed as to whether position scarcity was greatest in the outfield this year. I was pretty shocked to hear such a suggestion as I figured it was pretty well known that every year catcher is the scarcest. It got me to thinking that this may be an issue of semantics and that many people still aren’t sure exactly what is meant by the phrase position scarcity. So here I am to explain.

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Today I continue with my projections and have decided to go with the sophomore Diamondbacks first baseman, Paul Goldschmidt. Although the excitement hasn’t truly begun yet, I could already imagine all the preview magazines hyping him as a sleeper, pushing him up draft boards. He is currently being drafted 137th overall on Mock Draft Central and 11th among first basemen.

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Welcome back to another edition of the Pod hitter projections. Today I’ll look at one of last season’s biggest surprises, Asdrubal Cabrera. The primary contributor to this breakout was his power surge, as his ISO jumped to .187 and HR/FB spiked to 13.3%, both career highs. He was just 25 last year, so based on age alone, one might believe this is sustainable. Let’s dive into my projection and the thought process behind it.

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A couple of weeks ago, and probably way too early, I couldn’t help myself from taking a peek over at the average draft position values at Mock Draft Central. I then identified a bunch of pitchers I thought were overvalued. This time I will look at the opposite side of the ledger and take a gander at who appears to be undervalued. I used the AL-Only league ADP values so I could look deeper into the pitcher pool.

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On Monday, I posted an introduction to my forecasting method for hitters that I developed to help me in my fantasy leagues. I do not actually project any statistics besides the five fantasy categories and those that lead to the calculation of them. As a result, no walks and on base percentage, doubles and slugging percentage or wOBA from me. So just a heads up if anyone wanted to hear what OPS I am projecting, sorry, but I have no projection!

Since I am going in alphabetical order in my projections and haven’t gotten very far, I have decided to start with Dustin Ackley. He is quite the interesting player to project as Jeff Zimmerman is not a fan and Chad Young suggested fantasy owners pass on him and wait for Jason Kipnis later. Early mock drafters aren’t overly optimistic, as his ADP sits at 133, which is the beginning of the 12th round 11th among second basemen.

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For the past 10 years or so, I have generated my own projections to use for my fantasy baseball drafts. As you can imagine, the spreadsheet has become more complex every year as I have incorporated more and more formulas in an attempt to increase the precision. Unlike the projection sets you are familiar with, such as ZiPS, CAIRO, Bill James, etc, I don’t actually have a system. It would be fantastic to have the programming and mathematical chops to be able to develop a full-fledged system that takes previous year’s stats and a host of other factors into account and instantly spit out a projection. Unfortunately, my method is very time consuming as I literally project every player by hand, poring over countless metrics on FanGraphs, ESPN Home Run Tracker, StatCorner, and Rotoworld, and in Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster.

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Admit it, my post titles are cleverly brilliant, every time. A couple of weeks ago in my look at overvalued AL starters based on the average draft position values at Mock Draft Central, I realized that Ervin Santana has gotten little fanfare for his 2011 performance. He posted a career best 3.38 ERA for a solid 84 ERA- and struck out 178 batters. Should you be starvin’ for Ervin in your 2012 drafts?

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So Mark Melancon is gone and now fantasy owners are left with a mess in the Astros ‘pen. Who’s the closer? Is Brandon Lyon still playing baseball? What, he’s still in consideration for the role? Should we care? Are the ‘Stros going to win more than 10 games all year? The names of the candidates are some of the most “who the heck is he?” group of characters I have seen fighting for the role of closer in years. This should be one exciting battle, so let’s get to the analyzation…

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