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I blame my podcat mate Rob Silver for today’s study. First, he stated this:

The history of 35-year old first basemen having seasons like what everyone think Votto is gonna do is almost non-existent.

Now Hall of Fame players do Hall of Fame things but everyone just assumes the curve goes back up – and I hope it does but man….

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) February 6, 2019

And then he said this:

Nelson Cruz hit 41 homeruns last year.

He’s awesome.

Super safe player to draft.

He’s 39 this year.

In the history of baseball one player has hit more than 40 homers at 39 or older – Barry Bonds.

Three players hit > 36 (Bonds, Hank Aaron, Papi)

Only 7 hit > 30.

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) November 18, 2019

Of course, players age. Some quickly. Some not as fast. While few hitters remain productive into and past their mid-30’s, I needed a simple rule on how to deal with these vets. I found one and since I need to provide content to be paid, so does the world.
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Today’s “news” is a combination of recent and old. Some of the information was reported over a month ago, but with little to nothing happening in the game, it still relevant.

• Trea Turner had surgery on his index finger and should be 100% by the start of spring training.

According to his Instagram, Trea Turner had surgery on his index finger, which is not a surprise since it never healed during the season.

(H/t @hansonlee75) pic.twitter.com/STh2ytuT9X

— Todd Dybas (@Todd_Dybas) November 16, 2019

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I’ve been slow at combing trough and reporting on any actionable fantasy news. I had to draw a line today since I had dozens of additional articles to go through. Here is some useful information with more to come Monday.

• The Reds are mudding up their playing time situation by trading for Travis Jankowski and picking up Freddy Galvis’s 2020 option.

• Aaron Hicks eventually had Tommy John surgery and will miss a few months to start next season.

New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Hicks underwent successful Tommy John surgery Wednesday, the team announced.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told reporters there is an eight-to-10-month timeframe for Hicks’ recovery.

This makes him pretty much unknowable except in leagues with unlimited DL slots.
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While it might be better to focus on FAAB usage right before the season starts, I wanted to have an idea on how to focus my draft resources. Also, FAAB management was one of my major faults after I picked over my 2019 teams. It was an issue and I need to address it. Now is the time. I took the 50 players with the highest average FAAB bids in the 2019 NFBC Main Event ($1000 in FAAB) and found which players were the best and worse deals and did the best deals have similar actionable traits.

Note: One unintended side effect was that the minimum average value was $51, so all players with a bid of over $50.

To rank the player’s usefulness, I pair them up against each other and let my Twitter followers which of the two players were a better deal last year. While not ideal or the only method I could have used (I could create from value to EOS), it was the quickest and the rankings pass the idiot check (me, myself, and I).

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I’m already tired of hearing everyone’s hot take on how Matheny is going to halt the Royals from stealing bases. I’m not sure they are wrong but the analysis, if there is any, is suspect. Most talking heads point to his Cardinals being second to last in stolen bases during his tenure (2012 to all of 2018). The Cardinals weren’t exactly full of speedsters during that time. Here are their top-10 hitters ranked by plate appearances.

Talk about “Wheelz”. Of these 10, Yadier Molina was second in steals. A catcher is second. This group would have problems stealing candy for a blind lady.
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This year’s edition of the Fantasy Baseball Process by Tanner Bell and myself is finally completed and the e-book is now available for sale (the paper version will be available at Amazon in a few weeks). We added over 50 pages of new material (link to list), cut out some info we felt was not needed, and included the historic standings and Standing Gains Points formulas to help with planning the 2020 season.

Before I move along to some of the highlights, I’d like to thank Dylan Higgins for the editing, Jared Cross for the Steamer projections, Clay Link for the introduction, Rob Silver for giving it a read over, and especially Tanner for hours and hours spent grinding through all the new changes.
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There is no need to beat around the bush with an intro full of cliches and examples. Simply does playing in the postseason wear down a player enough to effect their next season’s production?

Simple answer: Not really.

Less simple answer: Some with hitters, not at all with pitchers.

Complex answer: Danger math.

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For a while, I’ve been trying to have other people do my research for me with no luck. I figured with all the smart minds in the stock market and other securities, some method would line up. It really didn’t for the fact that everyone could basically buy or sell as much of every available option to everyone. Some hedge funds or Warren Buffett could buy up an entire asset, but basically it was tough for stocks to run out.

I needed to find a limited asset class where one unique asset (house) and several buyers determine its value. That is why I eventually got to looking into real estate. Most of the public literature involves how to get loans and fix up the house. There is surprisingly little on actually determining a property’s value. So far I’ve only gone to the library and the local book stores to find information since most books are completely useless with nothing beyond, buy low, sell high. I’m not wasting my time and effort on ordering a bunch of books.

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When I wrote my article on disappointing 2019 hitters, the data diverged from expectations in one subset of hitters. Injured players dominated the list but they also saw a huge drop in their production to the tune of about 100 points of OPS. While the season-to-season OPS values are never exactly one-for-one, a 100 point dropped is huge especially since the league’s overall OPS jumped 30 points last season. I needed to dig in.

It’s going to get a little nerdy as I have to explain how I examined the data. To try to minimize the pre and post-injury production from the investigation, I only looked at players who were placed on the IL in March or April. Little if any of their production should have been before the injury. A second reason was to help project hitters who are dealing with offseason surgeries (e.g. Adalberto Mondesi). So, over the past 10 seasons, 627 hitters met these criteria.
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