Archive for 2020

The 2020 ATC Projections

The first cut of the 2020 ATC Projections have arrived! Fantasy baseball draft prep season is now officially ready to be thrusted into high gear!

There are three ways to view and utilize the ATC projections on this site.

  • Full Projections
  • Individual Player Pages
  • Auction Calculator

Full Projections

The full ATC projections can be found by heading to the “Projections” drop-down tab on the menu bar by clicking on “ATC.”

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 770 – 2020 Shortstop Preview

01/20/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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2020 SHORTSTOP PREVIEW

NFBC Average Draft Position – 1/1/2020 thru 1/20/2020 using Draft Champions

Studs (2:22)

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 768 – Potential March Surgers with Dusty Wagner

01/17/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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10 PLAYERS WHO COULD SURGE IN MARCH DRAFTS

Current Price is January 1st-17th Draft Champions ADP

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Show Me What You Got

Fantasy baseball season is heating up. Dynasty drafts are escaping the early rounds, NFBC ADPs are starting to get a serious sample size behind them, and the interminable football season finally ended when Tom Brady didn’t see his shadow. If you’re waiting to get started on your 2020 baseball prep, well… stop waiting! Get crackin’.

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Steamer vs NFBC 2020 – Batting Average Bargains

In my last two columns, I uncovered potential undervalued speedsters and power bats by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. The exercise now continues this week for batting average.

In 2019, there were 55 qualified players with least a .280 batting average. There were 36 players above the .290 mark, and 19 above .300. Tim Anderson led all of baseball with a .335 BA, followed by National Leaguers Christian Yelich and Ketel Marte who each hit .329.

Though 2019 had almost two dozen players who hit at least .300, you won’t find a projection set that will have that many BA studs. Projections are typically more conservative. Steamer only projects 17 regular players to bat over .290 in 2020, and only 5 players to eclipse the .300 mark.

For this year’s potential batting average bargains, we will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of a .278 BA or more. This will give us a number of players who can greatly help your fantasy team’s batting average in in 2020.

For these draft value comparisons, I look at:

  • The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
  • The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from December 4, 2019 to present).

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Assessing My Big Differences with ADP, Pt. 1

I recently released my top 125 starting pitchers for 2020 and I couldn’t believe that nobody had a single question about them and everyone who saw them found them to be perfect top to bottom. OK, dumb joke. Anyway, I appreciate everyone getting in the comments and discussing the rankings with me. I’m still responding to questions and comments if you want to ask me about someone in the rankings.

Today I want to look the biggest differences between my rankings and the early average draft position (ADP) information at the NFBC in their Draft Champions leagues (50-round draft-and-hold format). On their list, they group all pitchers together so I took out the relievers making it more of a 1:1 comparison with my SP ranks. This will be a two-part piece with the first being the pitchers where I’m higher.

10 Where I’m Higher

Jeff Samardzija, SF | 107th SP in ADP; 52nd SP by me

I wouldn’t even say I’m a huge fan of The Shark, but his current ADP seems like a great price for someone who finished 33rd among SP on Razzball’s Player Rater last year. Even if you don’t fully buy the 3.52 ERA, he offers high volume with a strong WHIP. At the very least, he has Oracle Park protecting him for half of his starts. It’s a boring investment, but I’ll gladly take him outside the top 100 SPs.

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 765 – SP Ranking Review

01/09/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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STARTING PITCHER RANKING REVIEW: Paul’s, Justin’s 

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Top 125 SP for 2020

It’s time.

After offering up a first run all the way back in mid-August, I let the rest of the season play out but since then I’ve been working on SP rankings day-in and day-out. I contributed the starting pitcher section to the 2020 Fantasy Black Book so I had a working ranking for that but even since then (it was due back in early-December), I’ve made a ton of changes.

As you know, I feel there are globs of talent throughout the SP rankings wherein a 20, even 30 spot difference isn’t as vast as it seems because we’re splitting hairs between very similar arms and yet even knowing that I still agonize over the slottings and move guys up or down 2-3 spots like crazy before posting a new set of ranks. I decided on 125 for this one after paring down a list of 156 and yes, some of those remaining 31 are just as good as the last 7-8 on the list, but I had to cut it somewhere.

You’ll see tiers set up by the blue bars and that indicates the beginning of a new tier, but even those were hard to decide upon except the one starting at 99 which marks a group of prospects who I parked at that level because none are likely to make a rotation out of spring but all could be impactful at some point in 2020.

Enough chatter, let’s get to the rankings and start discussing them in the comments below. Again, if you think #44 should #38, I’m less interested in that as I probably agree that he could be. Let’s focus on the bigger splits, like if you feel #77 should be #40 or #28 should be #66, etc… Of course you can also just make comments or ask questions about a pitcher without relating it to their ranking. I’m open to discussing my thought process on any of the 125 pitchers.

These will be updated again in February and then once more in early March.

Check out Justin’s Top 126 SPs.

Note: these are catered for a roto league of 12-15 teams

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Who Might Outperform Mike Trout?

On Monday, I laid out my thought process for selecting Mike Trout first overall in 2020. To summarize, we have several legitimate choices. Absent secret information, they’re all a shrug away from the same, albeit in slightly different shapes. Trout stands out because he’s been so consistently good for so long. The alternatives all have shorter track records or a chance to fall out of the top 30 players – even without an injury. By comparison, we know a healthy Trout is a monster fish.

Today we’ll take a peek at all the players you could reasonably select over Trout on draft day. Let’s toss them into a few buckets. ADPs are from NFBC.

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Steamer vs NFBC 2020 – Home Run Bargains

In last week’s edition of this series, we uncovered several undervalued speedsters for 2020 drafts. We did so by comparing the Steamer projections to current NFBC Average Draft Position reports. Today, we will go through a similar exercise for potential power bargains.

For this article’s draft value comparisons, I look at:

  • The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
  • The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from November 27, 2019 to present).

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