Episode 297

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

• Notable Transactions
  • Wei-Yin Chen to MIA
  • Gerardo Parra to COL
  • Yasiel Sierra to LAD
• Strategy Section
  • How much – if at all – does ADP affect your rankings?
  • Follow-up: can you give us 2 SPs who you’ll be way different than ADP on?
• Twitter/Email Questions
  • Adam Roberts on Carlos Gomez

We have a new email address for questions: sleeperpod@gmail.com. Send your fantasy-relevant questions. You can send keeper questions, but those are much better for Twitter. Questions most likely to get selected are those that apply more broadly, as opposed to specific trade or keeper queries. However, if you do ask a league-specific question, please include the league size and categories.

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If you’ve been reading any of my writing this winter or listening to the podcast, then you’ve heard me reference a draft I started back in November (click link for pics of first 23 rounds) during a trip to Arizona for Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Forums. It’s one of the NFBC Draft Champions 50-round draft-and-hold leagues. We did the first 23 rounds live and we start the final 27 today.

I picked 15th out of 15 in this draft and part of that was for today. I knew that 15th pick gets the first pick of the second part and the time in between often pushes some strong options up the rankings who otherwise would’ve been gone if we started from round 1 today. By the way, NFBC does the Kentucky Derby Style draft slotting where you pick your spot from what’s available. So I was 5th or 6th I think to make my selection and once 1, 2, and 3 were gone, I decided to jump back to 15 to be on the elbow with added benefit of the first pick in the winter session.

I’m interested in who y’all think I should take. Mind you, I’m not polling and then automatically taking the top choice, especially if it’s not a runaway vote. I just find this split-draft really interesting and I’d like to cash in my advantage so I figure talking it out with y’all will help.

I’m on the clock as of noon central with an 8-hour timer. I’m certainly not looking to take very much of that time at all since I’ve been sitting on this pick for quite some time. So after about 1 pm central, comments on who I should take will be moot as the selection will have been made, but then you can just make fun of me for picking incorrectly.

Before we get to who is available, let’s take a gander at my team (who says “take a gander”?):

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Episode 296

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

•  Notable Transactions
  • Drew Storen / Ben Revere trade
  • Denard Span to SF
  • Edwin Jackson to MIA

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Episode 295

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris are back for 2016! It’s the first episode of the year and the guys have a few signings to discuss including Kenta Maeda, Scott Kazmir, and Alex Gordon. They also talk about two recent pieces from Eno:

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That headline is not the slogan for Twitter, but it could be!

I got home from softball last night and really wanted to draft a baseball team. I wasn’t sure if anyone else was feeling the same, but figured I’d see if Twitter could fill up a mock draft over at CouchManagers and I was surprised when it filled in minutes. I was just doing their default setup which I didn’t realize was a non-standard roster construction of 18 rounds: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, UT, P, P, P, P, P, and Bench x4. To be honest I was a little bummed by that because I don’t play in any leagues with that format making it tough to draw much from the exercise.

So I decided to set up a second draft to run concurrently that ran a standard 23 rounds with the usual C, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, UT, P x9. I figured the first draft would be just a feeling out of where players are going very generally while the other draft would offer a better idea of team construction and give a bit more info about the market. By the way, I’ll be doing more evening (and even some midday) mocks over at CouchManagers during the winter so stay tuned on Twitter for info.

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Some might have you believe we just finished the most wonderful time of the year, but it’s actually coming up. Sleeper season is about to kick off for the 2016 fantasy baseball season and it promises to be another fun year of debating what actually constitutes a sleeper, who’s asleep and who’s just going at-cost, and whether or not you should include injury comebacks on your list. Another fascinating feature of Sleeper season is the group of guys who appear on virtually every list thereby negating their sleeper status by the time Draft season actually gets here: the wide-awake sleepers.

Examples from last year include Carlos Carrasco, Marcus Stroman before his injury, Michael Wacha, and Matt Harvey (especially by mid-Spring Training). They were all in 40s or later among starters in the winter magazines (which are written in the fall), but all were early-30s or higher by March. Stroman obviously fell off once he suffered the torn ACL, but Harvey surged all the way through draft season, winding up 14th among starters and top-50 overall. Being a part of this list isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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Playing a little catch-up from the holidays, here are the fantasy implications from the latest impact moves and they aren’t all former Cincinnati Reds:

(Remember, you can follow all the move analysis here)

Johnny Cueto signs with SF

If a pitcher who struggled mightily like Jeff Samardzija gets a major boost by joining the Giants, then you can only imagine what it could do for Cueto. Overall, he had a fantastic season and has been  one of the best pitchers in baseball for the last five seasons. He sputtered some with KC, allowing a ton more hits while striking out two fewer batters per nine innings. He closed strong with a World Series complete game, but he’s likely thrilled to return to the Senior Circuit.

Homers usually get Cueto when he’s off. He had a 1.1 HR/9 with KC including outings of 4 and 3 HR. AT&T Park is the spot to stifle homers. That’s something Fangraphs, Statcorner, and ESPN can all agree upon when it comes to measuring park factors. This is a great move for the Giants to solidify their rotation with a big three in Madison Bumgarner, Cueto, and then Samardzija. All of a sudden, the burden on Jake Peavy and Matt Cain is much lower and Chris Heston is now the fill-in if one of them fails.

Impact: ++ for Cueto, – for Heston

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Episode 294

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette are back for one more 2015 episode! Yeah, I thought the last episode would be their last of 2015, but y’all got lucky! Today they’re talking the Chapman trade, some mid-tier signings (Murphy, Leake, etc…) and their early thoughts on the NFBC ADP data released over the weekend.

Who stands out to you based on their early draft position?

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I discovered a Christmas treat over the weekend: NFBC average draft position data is now up for 2016 drafts! I don’t know exactly how many drafts have taken place just yet, but it’s still nice to get an early look at things and see what’s going on. I’ve got some thoughts for every position:

CATCHER:

• Buster Posey is far and away the top catcher for 2015. The 89-pick gap between Posey and Jonathan Lucroy is more than double the next-biggest at any position – which happens to be 42 picks between Carlos Correa and Troy Tulowitzki.
• I like Lucroy for a rebound, but I’m not chasing him so if I don’t take Posey then I’m waiting a bit on catcher. It’s not an endless trove, but Blake Swihart, Yasmani Grandal, Derek Norris, Nick Hundley, Miguel Montero, Wilson Ramos, and Welington Castillo are all going after pick 200.
• Don’t wait too long, though, dollar catchers are the worst investments in dollar days. The Baseball Forecaster by Ron Shandler tells us that dollar backstops return negative value on average.
• Edit: I just realized Kyle Schwarber is listed under OF despite qualifying at C (21 games played) so his 33 ADP makes for just a 13-pick gap between the first and second catcher. 

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Hey AL-only players, you didn’t think Santa Paul forgot about you, did you? I offered two NL arms on the rise on Tuesday, one for all-formats and another geared toward to deeper leagues (at least until he proves himself some more), and I’ve got the same for the American League today.

Carlos Rodon, CWS – pick 238 in early November, pick 158 in a draft last week

I think you can ignore that early November price because you won’t get him that late in other drafts. He jumped 80 picks in less than a month based on nothing and then I did a 12-teamer just this week (the roster setup is different than these other two drafts so I didn’t include the ADPs on purpose) and he was up at pick 140. He’s likely to live in the 130-175 range.

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