Last week I laid out my plans for combining prospect grades and “scoutable” traits to help project major league performance. Finally, I’m able to output projections with encouraging results. Just by using traits people can scout with their eyes, I created a set of projections which competes with Steamer projections. Additionally, it helps point to the traits people should look for in prospects.

Previously, I tried to use just the five traits prospects get graded on (Hit, Power, Speed, Field, and Arm) to come up with a player’s value. I found the Speed and Power grades useful but came to the following conclusion on the Hit grade:

Basically, the Hit tool is a useless component to determine hitter value as it’s currently being distributed.

The more I thought about the Hit tool, the more I concluded that it’s trying to evaluate too much information (examples of different Hit tool definitions).

For these projections, I matched up the traits hitters display with common stats. To start with, here are the core traits I decided to utilize:
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Last offseason I committed to finding if there was any information to be gleaned from prospect grades. Sometimes the grades were useful. Other times not at all. While I made some conclusions, many are still unanswered. Over the next few weeks, I going to try to find those answers.

I’m heading down the path with an unknown timetable or conclusion. My goal is to take scoutable hitter traits and come up with a usable projection system. For inputs, I will use the standard five 20-80 scouting traits of Bat, Power, Speed, Defense, and Arm. Using just these factors last year, I found an OK estimate of a player’s projection.

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(10/9: Thanks to everyone for the additions.)

One player class I target for potential bargains are hitters who played through injuries. These injuries drag down a player’s production as they and their team struggle with the tradeoff of a regular player at 80% or a replacement at 100%. With the season just ending and drafts months away, I want to create a draft season reference list while people still remember parts of the 2017 season.

A few years back, I examined the negative effects of playing through injuries, mainly power. In the following season, those effects are gone for hitters.

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After squeaking out the top finish in the inaugural 2016 Tout Wars Head-to-Head league, I moved to the 15-team mixed auction league. It was an interesting season and here are some of my “highlights”.

• To the frustration of auctioneer, RotoWire’s Jeff Erickson, I was just pulling names out of the air during the end game. The room lost its lighting (the sun) and my paper draft list was useless.
• Buster Posey and Chris Davis were my most expensive hitters ($57 combined). I’m pretty sure I got no more than $15 of value out them.
• On the pitching side, I spent $26 combined on Rick Porcello and Danny Duffy as my #2 and #3 starters. I may have been lucky to get positive value from them.
• Additionally, I found it necessary to roster Adam Wainwright, Shelby Miller, and Rubby de la Rosa on auction day.
• For my first waiver wire splash, I spent over a quarter of my FAAB on the recently anointed Nationals closer Blake Treinen. And release him a few weeks later once he lost his job.
• Got ravaged by injuries. In late May, I sent four players to the DL in one week.
• Around mid-season, I traded my Elvis Andrus for Nomar Mazara because I need some more power. In the season’s second half, Mazara hit one fewer home run, had 14 fewer R+RBI, five fewer stolen bases, and an on-base percentage 16 points less.
• Right after the Andrus trade, I lost my other stolen base threats, Kevin Kiermaier and Eduardo Nunez, to the disabled list.
• Picked up Zach Davies and Mike Clevinger off waivers and just let them go waiting for Rick Porcello to catch fire.
• Spent over 10% of my FAAB and Matt Chapman, watched him struggle on my team, and then released him. He hit 14 home runs in the season’s second half.

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It’s that time when I go back through and see how my preseason BOLD predictions held up. Usually, this process is humbling but after I reviewed them mid-season, I knew I may be in for a career year.

Note: For all the rankings, I used ESPN.com’s Player Rater.

BOLD prediction #1: Trea Turner will perform 20 spots worse than his ADP suggests.

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It’s the season’s end. Good luck to everyone and hopefully I can help a few teams win their titles. Now, if there ever was a time to second guess me, it’s this weekend. Teams are limiting their pitcher innings and changing starters, especially the playoff-bound teams. Do a bit of fact checking before picking anyone up.

Note: All players have a 10% or less Yahoo! ownership.

Saturday

Luke Sims (5% owned) at Marlins (Odrisamer Despaigne)

If you’re streaming just for Wins, Sims is a perfectly decent option. He’s pitching good enough to squeak out a Win, especially against a beatable Miami team. His strikeouts are reasonable at ~7 K/9. His ERA and WHIP are likely to be high but it’s just one game.

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The great, powerful, and unbelievably handsome Justin of Friends With Fantasy Benefits (and of course, RotoGraphs) is hosting four early mock drafts. I am participating in one of them.

All 4 #2EarlyMock drafts are running! https://t.co/F8MVltwVHThttps://t.co/voN0u0qhxohttps://t.co/Zs0dRbc3ZQhttps://t.co/b4kc4XbBk5

— Justin Mason (@JustinMasonFWFB) September 21, 2017

In each draft, the following four pitchers went first without exception.

Last season in NFBC drafts, these four were included with the first six pitchers drafted on average. While Kershaw and Scherzer were 1st and 2nd in each draft, Madison Bumgarner and Noah Syndergaard were taken, on average, before Chris Sale and Corey Kluber. Both Bumgarner (bruised ribs, strained shoulder) and Syndergaard (torn lat muscle) missed most of the 2017 season. Because of their current injuries and unknown future health, their ADP has fallen in these four mocks.

The trepidation about owning them is understandable but owners still need to value the pair. It’s not going to be easy.

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Tuesday’s lowly owned starters are a sad lot. Some decent arms have their ownership up like Daniel Mengden and Tyler Anderson. It’s like “Aces and Duds” today.

Just eyeballing some names, I may hold off and use some the guys going Wednesday (e.g. Andriese, Ynoa, Leiter)

Rafael Montero (3% owned) vs Atlanta (R.A. Dickey)

Montero is a perfectly good option for a team needing just strikeouts and Wins and doesn’t care about their ERA and WHIP. The game against Atlanta is winnable and Montero is averaging 8.6 K/9 as a starter. His value gets destroyed by the 5.0 BB/9 and the problem it causes to WHIP and ERA.
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Quite a few aces (and Matt Harvey) are throwing on Saturday so owners may not have many open slots but here are some lowly owned starters. While I normally limit my ownership rate to 10%, I bumped it up to increase the options.

Henderson Alvarez (1% owned) vs Braves (Julio Teheran)

Starting Alvarez is like playing Russian roulette with five chambers filled. It may kind of possibly end up good, but likely not. The basic issue is that it’s about impossible to have a feel for his talent level with spotty starts since coming back from shoulder surgery. Instead of trying to make sense of the rehab starts, I will let Steamer and Zips do the work. They put him with a near 5.00 ERA and 5.5 K/9. If those stats along with a possible Win, if he can make it five innings, against Teheran and the Braves are usable, start him.

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Continuing my Quick Looks series, today looks at a pair of NL East arm…

Mark Leiter

It’s like the 26-year-old righty didn’t exist before this season. I like to look at previous reports on popup guys to see what has changed. I was able to find one report on him at 2080baseball.com.

“A senior sign out of New Jersey Institute of Technology, he certainly got on some radars when he posted a 20-strikeout game his senior year before being drafted by his favorite hometown team, the Phillies. He doesn’t have pure “stuff” – his fastball barely touches 90 – but he’s a smart pitcher who works with what he has and has posted a 3.37 career ERA in 95 games, 69 of them starts, over 445 2/3 innings. He underwent shoulder surgery prior to the 2016 season but enjoyed a strong campaign that summer and now gets his call-up just a few games into his Triple-A debut.”

It’s not exciting but it’s at least a starting point. Now to move onto the starts I watched. There are no good camera angles for any of his starts. The best was against the Mets (9/4) when he lasted just three innings (video from it). Also, I watch his last start at home (9/15) against Oakland to see if anything changed.

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