Author Archive: Paul Sporer

Episode 285

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris are back to discuss more playoff standouts including Daniel Murphy, Stephen Piscotty, Kevin Pillar, and Jorge Soler. They finish with scouting reports on the game 1 starts of each LCS and how the teams facing them might find success.

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We’re passing out awards this week at RG (we’re also delivering demerits, but not in this piece) and I’m looking at the Deep League MVP today. I share Eno’s position of what this award should be as he discussed in the Deep League Cy Young. What that means in a nutshell is that A.J. Pollock isn’t winning this one.

He had an undeniably fantastic season, rising up from a 104 hitter ADP to end up as the fourth-best hitter in baseball, but even factoring in pitchers only jumps his ADP 54 spots meaning he wasn’t exactly cheap despite being a tremendous return on the investment. Kendrys Morales was less expensive as the 226th hitter off the board, but he was drafted enough to log a real ADP on four of the six sites FantasyPros uses so he’s out, too, despite the incredible season.

I was a little lighter on my playing time requirements for consideration as we saw some guys do amazing things in fewer than 100 games this year, so I was looking for at least 400 PA. You can probably think of some of the top candidates immediately, especially if you won a league as the beneficiary of these free agent finds. The booming rookie class paid major dividends via the wire in large part because the arrival of several was well ahead of schedule, let alone the fact that they performed immediately.

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Episode 284

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette are back to discuss Utley slide, some playoff standouts who are improving their 2016 stock, including Rougned Odor, Colby Rasmus, and Marco Estrada among others, and the playoffs at large (outside of the fantasy realm). And they finish the podcast discussing Jason’s bold picks from RW (AL, NL).

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Do you like laughing? Of course, we all do. Well, have I got something for you! Incorrect bold predictions always look hilariously stupid at season’s end, that’s just the nature of the beast. Given that they are at least somewhat far-fetched to begin with, ones that fail (most of them) often do so spectacularly. The RG crew has been reviewing their bold predictions all week so it’s time for me to take my victory lap medicine poop sandwich.

I tend to think that letter-of-the-law grading with Bold Predictions isn’t necessary as the purveyor of them is usually trying to get across a more general point as opposed to nail it exactly. For example, if someone said Kendrys Morales will be a top 10 first baseman as one of their BPs this year, I’d be inclined to give them a +1 for that even though he was 11th at the position per the ESPN Player Rater. That said, even leniency wouldn’t help me so we’re going with letter-of-the-law grading.

Let’s get to the carnage.

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Dividends from the Cole Hamels trade weren’t supposed to start paying off for either team until 2016. But then the Rangers stormed the West to clinch a playoff berth with a 3-game lead on the Astros for the division, though the Phillies haven’t really missed a beat production-wise as Jerad Eickhoff has essentially matched Hamels (yes, I realize that Alec Asher has been a negative for Philly while Jake Diekman has also been a boon for the Rangers tilting the balance back in their favor rather sharply, but this is about Eickhoff).

The read on Eickhoff both before the season and at the time of the trade was a #4 or #5 starter who could find success in a bullpen role if he didn’t quite pan out as a starter. Through eight starts in his big league career, he looks more like a solid mid-rotation option by the numbers, but has he shown enough to be considered such for 2016? Of course, all of the necessary small sample size caveats are in effect at the 51-inning mark, but he is showing improvements on his early season scouting report.

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Episode 283

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris have got six pitchers who failed to live up to their lofty draft status. The two discuss what went wrong for these pitchers and decide whether or not they will re-invest in 2016.

• Andrew Cashner
• Alex Wood
• Gio Gonzalez
• Yordano Ventura
• Jordan Zimmermann
• Corey Kluber

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Value is nebulous term in fantasy sports. In fact, some (namely colleague and friend Todd Zola of Fantasy Alarm) don’t even like the term anymore as it can be often misused. I believe Zola has some good points against using the word so often, but nevertheless we’ll push forward with it as it conveys the idea I’m going for today. Who delivered the most bang for their buck? For this particular piece, I’ll be looking at those who were drafted regularly.

Determining who was drafted “regularly” will come via the excellent FantasyPros data on average draft positions (ADP) across six different sites. I used a 350 ADP as the cutoff, that covers 10- and 12-team leagues easily (23-man roster plus reserves) and gets pretty deep into 15-team leagues. Here is the overall ranking and then you can click by each position. I’m looking at this by position and comparing a player’s draft slot at his position to where he stands now.

To qualify as the best value, they must be in the top 12 at their position per the FantasyPros Player Rater. It’s great that Adam Lind is 32 spots higher than his draft spot at 1B, but he’s still only 17th at the position. Mark Teixeira is similar in that he’s 26 spots better than his draft slot, but sits just 20th at the position (due in part to an injury shortening his season, obviously).

CATCHER

Stephen Vogt [OAK – Draft: 23rd at C, 315th Overall; 2015: 6th at C]

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Episode 282

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette meander along the baseball highway on this penultimate Sunday of the regular season. Jason brings up the second-half leaderboards and we hit some surprises scattered on each end of said leaderboards. It’s a pretty chill episode, small technical glitch in the middle, you’ll hear it.

If you have anything you’d like to hear us discuss next week, let us know in the comments. 

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Fantasy baseball has made great transformations thanks in large part to the internet. The mounds of excellent data that have made the game on the field have also improved this game we play off the field. We’ve learned better ways to analyze players and while we still can’t predict the future, we certainly have a better understanding of what is happening with players and why. One casualty of the increased information should’ve been the age-27 breakout theory, but unlike the poor animal that sacrificed its life to be Donald Trump’s hair, this theory won’t die.

It’s not that we don’t see anyone breakout at 27 years old. It’s that being 27 has virtually nothing to do with it. Derek Carty covered this is some detail several years ago at The Hardball Times. And yet it persists every spring with lists of upcoming 27-year olds primed for a breakout. I’m fine with lists of breakouts, those are fun to read. It’s the adherence to age-27 that bothers me. Or the fact that a lot of these lists include guys who have already broken out and thus a huge season at 27 wouldn’t be a surprise in the first place.

I found 11 players who were mentioned as age-27 breakouts on various lists and I’m not sure any of them really had breakouts this year. Some of them were great, but we already knew they were great (Goldschmidt). Some had big gains from last year, but it wasn’t really a breakout since they had been good in previous seasons (Kipnis). Some just flat out busted (Ramos). Here is the whole list:

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Episode 281

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

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris get you set up for the final week by discussing some potential stream options for power, speed, and pitching. Names includes Greg Bird, Franklin Gutierrez, Kevin Pillar, Rico Noel, Marcus Stroman, and Jake Peavy among many others. If you’re chasing a title, we can help you in the final week.

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