You know, I can advocate for different types of leagues. I can talk about the pros and cons of head-to-head, and how redraft leagues are great for the refresh, and about deep leagues and shallow leagues. It’s my job!

But when it comes to playing, to the leagues I actually join, the rubber hits the road. In other words, I vote with my wallet when I join these leagues, because I’m spending actual time and energy in this way. So I thought I’d look through my leagues and see what kinds of leagues I like. And while I’m there, I might as well count up my pitchers so you can see what sorts of arms I’m investing in. My arms and my leagues, and now you know what I *really* like.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets tweeted something that at first seems really boring. But it *might* mean something very exciting for a young hurler in the organization. One that isn’t quite yet a national name.

We agreed to pay Daisuke Matsuzaka $100,000 in order to retain his rights under his existing Minor League Uniform Player’s Contract.

— New York Mets (@Mets) March 25, 2014

At first glance, it’s a yawner. Except that Daisuke Matsuzaka is in a competition right now for the fifth starter spot in New York. In competition with Jenrry Mejia, who has so-so numbers in the minor leagues, can’t stay healthy and hasn’t been a top prospect for a while. That said, if Mejia wins the job with a good start this weekend in Montreal — that’s the final hurdle now that it’s easier for the Mets to retain Dice-K — he’s absolutely mixed-league relevant and a great final pitcher pickup.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite stats to look at in Spring Training is plate appearances. Absolutely devoid of the whiff of results-based analysis in a small sample, plate appearances can tell us who the team likes, and who the team wants to run out there every day. So, despite the fact that he’s hitting .148/.209/.295 this spring, I’m excited about Abraham Almonte. He’s leading the Mariners in plate appearances!

Even if you buy the idea that Almonte is the starting center fielder for the Mariners in 2014, and that the team will score more runs this year so his counting stats won’t be horrid, there’s still the matter of deciding how much you like him. Do you like him in your 12-team AL-only? Sure. But do you like him in your twelve-team mixer?

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we looked at the elite pitches when it came to whiff rates. Today, we’ll look at things a bit differently. The following pitchers rated highly by swinging strike rate across multiple offspeed pitches. You might notice a certain deficiency in the group. Not a lot of great fastballs! As always, here are the benchmarks for each pitch type.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know I’m very interested in looking at peripherals by pitch type. Looking at the swinging strike and ground-ball rates against benchmarks for each pitch type can give us an idea of which arsenals are the most well-rounded, and which pitches are elite when set against the league benchmarks. Let’s use last year’s per-pitch numbers to see if we can identify some undervalued pitchers. Today, we’ll go with the elite single pitches by whiff rates. Tomorrow, we’ll look at balanced arsenals.

Read the rest of this entry »

In what should hopefully be the final update to the draft ranking spreadsheet that you can download here — thanks to Blake Murphy, Jeff Zimmerman, Mike Podhorzer and Zach Sanders for their work on it — we’re now adding the top 300 as a tab and a post.

I will say it felt sorta nonsensical by the second half. In most drafts, by the time you’re in the 15th round, your needs have overtaken any value-based picking you could do. It might be great that there are first basemen available for cheap, but if you have first, corner infield and utility already lined up, you won’t be looking at that position. The good news is that we still have the deep positional rankings on the same sheet, now with updated composite projections.

The bad news is that we had to try and figure out the relative value of a flier setup man that might close or might not versus a position player too deeply ranked to actually expect to play on a mixed league team. Enjoy!

Read the rest of this entry »

I keep making these bold predictions, and keep hitting about .300 on them. No idea if that says I’m not bold enough or if there’s some predictability in the crazy things that happen each year.

Really, that last reason is why we make these predictions every year. Crazy stuff happens every year, and it takes a little elasticity of the mind to consider the possibilities of the coming season. Maybe by doing this we’ll be in a better spot to reap the rewards when crazy things do happen. Sure, 70% of the following will not happen. But 30% probably will! And as long as you don’t invest too much in the possibility, and keep an eye on the floor, you might be able to use our bold predictions to your advantage.

This year, there’s a bit of a wrinkle: Jay Long of Razzball and I are having a gentleman’s wager regarding our Bold Predictions. With some right of veto on each other’s predictions, we’re putting our ten up against each other. His will publish on Razzball later today. Loser buys the winner a six pack of craft beer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a super easy post, I’ll admit it. All I did was take the difference between my rankings and the consensus rankings (which you can find on the right-hand nav bar) and sort. But I’ll do a little writeup for each group of hitters so you can know why I like them. The numbers listed for each player are steamer projections, which aren’t exactly what I used, but can give you an idea of how useful the player will be in your league. Good luck drafting.

Read the rest of this entry »

I stunk up the joint last year in AL LABR, one of the longest-going super leagues in the business. I combined terrible draft choices with terrible free agent auction decisions and even a bad trade in order to end up tenth of twelve. I showed poor restraint and discipline at the draft, I lacked the context necessary for making good decisions, and I panicked a bit late in the season. I’m not so proud of that season.

At least this year I feel a lot better about the draft. As Razzball’s Grey Albright said at the after-party, there’s a long way from feeling good to doing good in the final tally. Admitted. But since I actually didn’t even feel great about my draft results last year, I’ll take this as a positive sign.

Let’s take a look at the team and the better decision-making process that went into it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hope this is just in time for your draft!

Our ranks, plus Steamer projected hitter numbers and ZiPs projected pitcher values, all in one downloadable place.

Read the rest of this entry »