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For most people, today is Father’s Day. For those who have an NFBC league, it’s Yordan Alvarez Day. The bids for him this week will be off the charts. It’s not just him who’s available and with many owners spending time with their families, there should be deals everywhere.

The projection guidelines:

• The ownership rates are from CBS since they have some quickdraw waiver wire leagues where players can be picked up at any time.
• The FAAB estimates are based on the 2018 15-team mixed NFBC leagues which used a $1000 FAAB budget. Owners are going to need to convert these values to their own league.
• The ownership values were taken from Saturday and lots can happen in between when they publish and FAAB bids run.
• Only players owned in 50% or fewer of CBS leagues are examined.

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Angels

• Luis Rengifo (.597 OPS) and Wilfredo Tovar (.422 OPS) are manning the two infield positions while batting eighth and ninth.
• Kevan Smith (.284//.376/.419) is hitting better than Jonathan Lucroy (.232/.300/.368) but is only starting twice a week.
• Cesar Puello (vs LHP) and Brian Goodwin (vs RHP) are platooning in left field.

Astros

• The Astros lineup remains in flux with the three stars out and the recent promotion of Yordan Alvarez. They’ve also demoted Derek Fisher. For the last two games, they’ve used the same lineup with Josh Reddick leading off, Alvarez batting fifth, and somehow Tyler White is still batting eighth.
• When the big three return, I expect White, Tony Kemp, and Jake Marisnick to be benched.

Athletics

• The lineup is set with a Chad Pinder and Robbie Grossman splitting time in left field.

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Last season at BaseballHQ ($$), I found the expected results for hitters returning from Tommy John surgery (TJS). The research was completed with traditional stats and no StatCast information was utilized. The reason was that only one regular, Christian Vazquez, had Tommy John surgery since there was publicly available StatCast data. That changed when five hitters had the surgery last year. With the return of Didi Gregorius, all have made it to the majors. Sadly the early returns are unspectacular with Corey Seager and Shohei Ohtani struggling.

In his first three seasons, Seager posted a .876 OPS but past two seasons it has only been a .793 OPS. I included last season because he struggled while trying to play through the injury. For Ohtani, he posted a .925 OPS last year and just a .742 OPS this season. These values line up with the original TJS article.

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Instead of call-ups, I’m finding most of my gems in last week’s trash. Here are the players dropped the most in the 38 NFBC Main Event leagues

Demoted

• Corbin Martin (25): A 5.59 BB/9 and a matching ERA means he is off to the minors.
• Devin Smeltzer (23): With Michael Pineda off the DL, Smeltzer and his 89-mph fastball are back in the minors.
• Willians Astudillo (18): There is just no room for this fan favorite on the team. Marwin Gonzalez is a perfect utility player while Mitch Garver (1.103 OPS) and Jason Castro (.933 OPS) can handle the catching duties.
• Daniel Mengden (13): Mengden is an instance of an owner trying to get a jump on a possible two-start week against Tampa and Seattle. Then he went out in his one start and allowed six runs in just over two innings of work.
• Garrett Hampson (11): He’s back in AAA since he just can’t find his footing in the majors (.186/.231/.258)

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I feel the fantasy baseball season is at the part of the season where few “new” call-ups happen. Instead, it’s players we’ve already known about coming into and out of playing time. Garrett Cooper has been around for a couple of weeks but just now he’s seeing his ownership jump. I’ve noticed many of the movers are on 2nd or 3rd division teams. Owners are a little slow at knowing how the playing time shakes out on these sub-.500 teams. Bargains can be found in them.

The guidelines:

• The ownership rates are from CBS since they have some quickdraw waiver wire leagues where players can be picked up at any time.
• The FAAB estimates are based on the 2018 15-team mixed NFBC leagues which used a $1000 FAAB budget. Owners are going to need to convert these values to their own league.
• The ownership values were taken from Saturday and lots can happen in between when they publish and FAAB bids run.
• Only players owned in 50% or fewer of CBS leagues are examined.

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Angels

• Albert Pujols has started only six of the last 10 games.
• Brian Goodwin is hitting (.211/.244/.263) over the past two weeks after a hot start.
• Since May 21st when Andrelton Simmons went on the IL and Luis Rengifo was forced into a fulltime role, Rengifo is hitting .302/.387/.415 with no speedin 15 of 16 games.

Astros

• With George Springer on the IL, Derek Fisher is leading off and hitting .262/.326/.429.
• Yuli Gurriel is still batting fourth even though he’s hitting .240/.257/.323 over the last month.
• Jack Mayfield is hitting .074/.107/.222 while playing in seven of the last 10 games at a middle infield position.
• I’m guessing Tyler White (.220/.313/.293) will head to the bench one anyone returns from the IL with Fisher or Tony Kemp taking his place.

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In last week’s “Who is Being Dropped & Why”, I noted the following on Jeremy Hellickson

At home, he faced the Mets and Cubs and they lit him up. I went back over the previous two weeks in the NFBC Main Event to see if owners targeted him for this two-step. In the Main Event, owners typically look two weeks ahead on the two-start pitchers to get a jump on the crowd.

Week: Add Count, Avg Bid
8: 7, $14
9: 5, $5

First, I found it a little funny that the owners hoped to get a jump on the bidding paid more. Second, almost all of the Hellickson shares added were then dropped (12 of 13).

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Today’s data dump is brought to you by Paul Sporer and Justin Mason. In a recent Sleeper and the Bust episode, they were frustrated with not knowing how bidding in a 12-team league compared to a 15-teamer. I decided to go ahead and dive into the bidding in the NFBC’s 12-team Online Championship and the 15-team Main Event.

Note: I worked on this article over the weekend and only had this season’s FAAB data up to week 10. By the time the article publishes, week 11 will be available. The results wouldn’t change much with one additional week.

First, here is some background information on the league types. They are exactly identical in these ways:

• 23 total starters, 9 pitchers, 14 hitters
• $1000 in FAAB to spend with no Vickrey bidding and the results run on Sunday evening.
• No $0 bids.
• Seven bench spots.
• Both have a league and overall prize.

As for the differences, one is obvious, one has 12 teams and the other 15 teams. The less obvious one is that the 12-team leagues, on average, start drafting earlier in the preseason. For this reason, MLB teams have more time to churn their rosters and deal with injuries making the first FAAB period a little more aggressive compared to the 15-team leagues.

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