06/23/20

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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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Latest Proposal
  • Owners using March agreement
  • Target of 60 gms, starting 7/24
  • MLBPA likely to agree today by 5 pm CT
  • Universal DH likely for ‘20, uncertain for ‘21
  • No expanded playoffs
  • Dumbass runner on 2nd rule in extras
  • No jersey ads

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If we do in fact get some sort of 50-ish game season, finding any small edge could be the difference between winning and losing your league. One potential edge is platoons. Let’s take a look at the starting pitching handedness breakdown on the assumed rotations for each division. This assumes they stick to this mega-division plan by combining the East, Central, and West division from both leagues.

We’re also going to grade the pitchers using the FIP from their BAT projection. My arbitrary scale is as such: sub-4.00 is good, 4.01-4.70 is solid, and 4.71+ is bad.

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06/16/20

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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• @sporer – Host
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• @longenhagen – Guest: Eric Longenhagen

DRAFT REVIEW

• How likely is Spencer Torkelson to debut at 3B?
• You had Heston Kjerstad as a potential Balt. pick, how much of a “reach” was it?
  • Did they maximize the deal w/their other picks? (Westburg, Haskin)
• What’s Nick Gonzales’s offensive outlook in PIT?
• His whole profile made him a potential 1.1, but what kind of fantasy profile did TOR get w/Austin Martin?
• Best fantasy future of the 3 Ps taken early: Max Meyer, Asa Lacy, Emerson Hancock

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06/11/20

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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• @sporer – Host
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Latest Proposal
• Brief Draft Coverage

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I haven’t been this excited to announce something since I first created THE BAT.  Today I get to announce a brand new projection system I’m calling THE BAT Experimental (or THE BAT X)! These are now available on the FanGraphs player pages and as sortable projections.

THE BAT X is going to serve as a sort of drawing board for new ideas and innovations that I’m not quite ready to replace the tried-and-true, classic version of THE BAT with yet.  Basically, it will be a set of projections that should be the best possible version of THE BAT, but which I’m not 100% certain of yet. The first of these THE BAT X innovations: Statcast data!

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We know that the previous season has a major impact on the following season’s ADP, but I wanted to take a closer look at a comparison between the two and highlight the hitters who have the biggest difference between their 2019 finish on the Auction Calculator and their 2020 NFBC ADP (you can go to the NFBC website, but it’s also built into the Auction Calculator). I used the top 200 ADP players as the cutoff because that captures the group likely to go in virtually every draft.

Let’s take a deeper look and see if these large disparities between the ’19 finish and ’20 are merited or if there’s some value to be mined here. I’m bypassing those with obvious reasons like injury or in the case of the 2nd-biggest faller – Yasiel Puig – not having a team yet.

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05/31/20

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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• @PitcherList – Nick Pollack/Producer

PitchCon Fireside

• An ace to fade (a top 15 SP you think will be outside the top 45 SPs)
• Favorite tier 2 riser (someone in SP 25-40 you think will be top 10)
• Best unproven breakout: Glasnow, Luzardo, Fried, Urias, Gallen

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Over the past couple years, I’ve really started paying more attention to multi-positional eligibility. As someone who plays almost exclusively in FAAB leagues, I love the added flexibility as it often allows me to target the best free agents every week because I can move pieces around to fit them in. Positional flexibility could take on an added importance in a shortened season so let’s take a look at a team of players with an extra position or two.

Here are the studs being drafted in the top 50 with an extra position: Cody Bellinger (OF/1B), Alex Bregman (3B/SS), Gleyber Torres (2B/SS), and Ketel Marte (2B/OF). You could probably land a couple of them without bending over backwards in your draft, but I’m trying to focus beyond the top 50 outside of one inclusion that I’ll point out when I get to him.

(I’m using the standard 20-game eligibility threshold)

CATCHER

Yasmani Grandal, CWS | Extra Position: 1B

I don’t really think you should ever put catchers at non-catching positions as so much of their value comes from catching, but there’s also the fact that the dual-eligible Cs usually only have 1B as their secondary and that’s often one of the deeper positions available. I said I’d make a full team so I had to include a catcher.

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Last year saw some really remarkable breakouts from unexpected candidates. Ketel Marte had a power explosion, Tim Anderson collected hits at an obscene rate, Hunter Dozier reminded everyone why he was a top 10 pick back in 2013, and Marcus Semien transformed into one of the game’s best players with offensive and defensive improvements. All four of them were in their mid-to-late 20s which made the surges even more surprising as we had locked these guys in at a certain level.

We’ve all heard the phrase that “growth isn’t linear” but given how much we lean on the previous season when studying for drafts, it’s easy to look for that linear improvement. That can leave some players overlooked and make breakouts more unexpected than they should be if we took a broader view.

Here are 7 hitters in their mid-20s poised for a breakout (though a half season mucks things up quite a bit):

Dansby Swanson | SS, ATL

If he doesn’t get hurt last year, the former #1 overall pick probably doesn’t make this list. Swanson was pacing toward a 28 HR/11 SB season with a .265/.330/.468 line before a late-July injury cost him a month. He returned with a .552 OPS and 0 HR in his final 114 PA. There were improvements on the whole, but still netted just a 92 wRC+. He has back-to-back double-double campaigns with top-flight speed and burgeoning power. There’s a .285/25/15 season in here, but he’s overlooked at the insanely deep shortstop position.

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05/19/20

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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• @sporer – Host
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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• 2020 Season Outlook

ADP FALLERS

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