Rangers sign Mike Napoli

Signing with the Rangers boosted Napoli’s fantasy value. If healthy, he’ll accumulate a full season of PA at first or DH.  He’s going to be in a good offensive park with good hitters around him. He just needs to keep up the gains he showed last season.

In 2016, Napoli went pull and flyball crazy on the way to posting his highest single-season home run total (34). His power may regress some, but if he comes to bat 600 times 30 home runs are reachable. He’s never going to have a decent batting average because of his lack of speed, high flyball nature, and near 30% strikeout rate.

The big losers with this signing are Jurickson Profar, Joey Gallo, Ryan Rua, and Josh Hamilton who are all competing for the DH spot. Playing time looks to be at a premium among them. Of the four, I have always liked Profar’s talent but he needs to play to be productive. I hope he gets a chance sometime.

Read the rest of this entry »

My Tout Wars prep continues. I have already examined the league’s historical aspects which I have used to create initial auction values and a draft outline. With the initial projections out of the way, I am refining them. One step in this process is to find the replacement level player and adjust players who will miss time accordingly.

The concept behind the replacement level player is fairly simple. If a good player is expected to miss significant time, his fantasy value is based on just the games he is expected to play. For the games he misses, some lesser player (replacement level player) will fill. The better player’s total value will be both his and the replacement player’s contribution.

For example, I don’t expect Yoan Moncada to get called any earlier than the Super Two deadline around June 1st. For the months he’s in the minors, a less talent replacement level player will be subbing in for him. The same idea works with pitchers. Tyson Ross is expected to miss at least a couple of months so a replacement is needed until he gets healthy.

Read the rest of this entry »

My fellow RotoGraph writers and I have started compiling our preseason position rankings. My initial rankings are projection based and then I adjust them as I see fit. I found several rankings/projections where the industry and I disagree. I am going to dig into three of those players today with more to come.

Freddie Freeman: Disputed Projection

Tenth? Really? I didn’t expect Freeman that low. Depth Chart based SGP values place him out as the tenth first baseman. At NFBC, he is the 6th first baseman which is near my gut based ranking. Additionally, he just went 24th overall in MLB.com’s Fantasy411 slow industry draft.

I am fine with the six players ahead of him (Goldy, Rizzo, Cabrera, Votto, E5, and Bryant). Then my gut disagrees and I am pretty sure some of our readers will also.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, our own Brad Johnson discussed unpredictable auction values in “Rationality Will Ruin You”. I 100% agree with his premise. Unexpected inflation exists but so does a solution. By charting out the desired and the potential outcomes before an auction, an owner can remove a ton of auction frustration.

Brad examined the elite player section of the draft where the actual auction values are higher than most people’s predicted values. Owners refuse to pay these high values but instead end up spending their resources on near replacement level talent. The following simple chart helps an owner deal with the problem along with uneven hitter/pitcher mix and outlining a personal auction strategy. The process is similar to the one used in Winning Fantasy Baseball by Larry Schechter but with a few more additions. Here’s the procedure.

Step 1. Get auction values

This step could be as simple as using our auction calculator or creating your own projections like our own Mike Podhozer does. To set the pitcher/hitter mix, use the league’s historic mix or just go with standard 70/30 split.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prospect list season is in full swing. Our Eric Longenhagen is knocking out his team lists. Keith Law has just finished his top 100 and team lists. Baseball America is done with their team rankings and is working on their prospect annual. And MLB.com just released their position rankings and top 100. The MLB.com’s top 100 list intrigues me the most. Since it provides scouting grades, it can be used to project a hitter’s fantasy value.

Earlier this offseason, I had a series on using prospect grades to project MLB talent.  While Field and Arm grades help to keep some players playing, defense doesn’t count in fantasy leagues. By comparing a hitter’s Bat, Power, and Speed grades I was able to come up with an overall 20-80 fantasy grade and projected full season stats. These values aren’t close to the final say in player values. They are just an input to be used with scouting reports, normal projections, and other systems like KATOH. Read the rest of this entry »

So far in my Tout Wars preparation series, I’ve documented the league’s draft tendencies and the stats needed to win. Today, I’ll create the framework for player pricing. Along the way, I will show how there is no position scarcity except with catcher. At least for this league

Completing this step brings the preparation is laborious, but necessary. Once it’s done, I can spend most of my time evaluating players and their projected playing time.

For evaluating players, I utilize the Standings Gain Points (SGP) method. I previously outlined the procedure and it‘s the same method Larry Schechter recommends in his book, Winning Fantasy Baseball. Normally, this procedure is fairly straight forward since I’ve historically used three-year average values. Last year’s offensive explosion complicates the math. With more offense available, home runs, Runs, and RBIs become less important. Predicting 2017’s run scoring environment is impossible so I won’t for now. I feel I need to use a weighted average system with 2016 getting the most weight but I am just not sure how much to weight them. To get the process started, I will use the average standings from 2014 to 2016 for this work.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are at a low point in the offseason where there isn’t much usable fantasy news. I was able to find a few pieces of relevant news and gave a quick review of a book I just finished.

Notes

• Carrie Muskat of MLB.com provides her best guess on the Cubs lineup.

LF Schwarber; 3B Kris Bryant; 1B Rizzo; 2B Zobrist; SS Addison Russell; RF Heyward; C Willson Contreras; P Starting pitcher; CF Jay or Almora.

Maddon says he’s considering having the pitcher bat eighth again to give Schwarber more RBI opportunities. The manager wanted the “geeks” in the baseball operations department to go over the numbers. Schwarber leading off isn’t as crazy as it might seem. He’s one of the best in terms of on-base percentage.

Two thoughts. With Schwarber leading off, he will have a Run/RBI ratio near 1.65 (league average). Steamer projects him for a ratio of 1.07 Run/RBI. Owners must remember this new ratio if they want to keep their RBIs and Runs balanced.

Additionally, she predicts Contreras will hit before the pitcher and then one of the light hitting outfielders. This placement will kill his run scoring opportunities. He may get a good number of RBI chances as long as the other team doesn’t walk him to face the pitcher.

Read the rest of this entry »

Trea Turner’s and Francisco Lindor’s Unexpected Power

In 2015, Lindor perplexed fantasy owners by hitting 12 HR in just 438 PA. He was never much of a power hitter in the minors and scouting reports put him at below average power. He’s not been the only light-hitting infield prospect with unexpected power.

Trea Turner’s home run power was unanticipated with 13 homers in about half a season last year. Like Lindor, he never hit for much power in the minors and his power grades disappointed. Should owners point to Lindor as an example for limiting power expectations after an unexpected half season?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m continuing to step through my Tout Wars auction prep. Last week, I broke down the league’s draft including the pitcher/hitter mix and some ownership trends. Today, I am going to examine the league’s final standings to see what it takes to win.

Every owner may try to win every category but that approach is completely unrealistic. I believe an owner should never win a category if they are behind in any other one. Every bit of distance between them and second place is a waste. Get to second in every category and then starting taking over the top spots. There is no reason for an owner to win RBIs by 50 if they’re 8th in Runs.

To find what it takes to win the Tour Wars league, here are the average points per category for the past three winners. As a reminder, the league is a standard 15-team 5×5 league with OBP instead of AVG.

Season: Average Points per Category (1st place = 15 points, 2nd place =14 points, …, 15th place = 1 point)
2014: 12.1
2015: 11.3
2016: 12.7
Average: 12.0

A fourth place finish in every category puts me in good shape to win while averaging third place almost guarantees me a win.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent chat, Paul was asked the following question:

Challenge accepted. By using our auction calculator, I wrote a procedure for any league type which creates an ADP to auction value formula. I will step through the process for any league and provide a few standard equations.

Step one: Set up your league settings in our auction calculator.

Go through all the boxes and make sure each option is set correctly especially the number of bench players to bid on. For a projection, use the Depth Charts.

Read the rest of this entry »