Archive for 2021

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

This smaller slate is pretty straightforward:

Shane McClanahan is the best pitcher on the slate and it isn’t remotely close. We’re just playing him on FanDuel. A lot of him to get overweight on the field.

Zac Gallen is the next-best play, but he’s a pretty expensive pivot on FanDuel, and we’re not exactly getting a discount on DraftKings, either.

Miles Mikolas is probably the spend-down SP2 pivot off of Gallen.

José Berríos is the other SP2 pivot to whom we can spend down, but he’s very risky.

Then, we have Framber Valdez, Andrew Heaney, and Lucas Giolito in high-risk spots we don’t wanna play, but should in MME for differentiation with a bunch of upside.

Read the rest of this entry »

Short answer: No.

Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

In 2018, I introduced a game theory approach for comparing baseball projection systems. Proudly, the original article was nominated for Baseball Article of the Year by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA). Now, just days ahead of the release of the 2022 ATC Projections, the projections comparison article is back for its fourth consecutive year!

The approach used in this article is not the standard projections comparison analysis that most others use. The standard analysis involves calculating least square errors, performing chi-squared tests, or perhaps even hypothesis testing. Some type of statistical measure is used to determine the most accurate projections.

For example, late last year – my fellow RotoGraphs colleague Jeff Zimmerman put out a series of in-depth projection comparison accuracy articles. His study centered around the root mean squared error test applied to all projection sets surveyed. The first installment of this excellent series can be found here.

My methodology does not incorporate a statistical model. Instead, it looks to determine the profitability potential of each projection system by simulating what would have happened in a fantasy auction draft. Instead, it games the projections.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s do some experimenting. Let’s imagine you drafted a team using only one statistic. What style of baseball are you? Do you love the hitters with speed, bat control, and an eye for tactics? Or, are you more of the home run or strikeout kind of fan? Why can’t you be both, you ask? Well because it’s an experiment and you have to choose one or the other. So…go ahead. Which do you choose? The K% Kings or the Barrel Brothers?

Read the rest of this entry »

Machine learning allows human eyes to take a break from the mundane scrolling and sorting through spreadsheets while still gathering useful insights. What made a top-five pitcher (from a fantasy perspective) so great in 2021? You could answer that easily by sorting through our leaderboards. Robbie Ray? Well, he had an excellent K-BB% (25.2%, league-average 14.6%) Corbin Burnes? His K/9 was a huge 12.61 while the league was only at 8.9. These underlying metrics are important to take note of but can be difficult to analyze all at once. Don’t get me wrong, it can be done. Just look at Michael Simione’s latest piece where he compares pitchers’ underlying metrics. In fact, that’s a lot of fun to do! But, as you come out of your fantasy hibernation and are ready to begin making your draft rankings, you’ll want a quicker way to analyze large data sets all at once. Enter the decision tree. 

Read the rest of this entry »

The End of Season Recap Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

The focus of this podcast is on fantasy baseball strategy.

Today, we look back at the topics and highlights of our season-long coverage, and give thanks to all those that made our show extraodinary this year.

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)

In a former life, I had the time and energy to keep up with Peripheral Prospects on a semiweekly basis. That dream hibernated in 2020 when the pandemic killed the minor league season and died for good this year when I simply failed to uphold my end of the bargain.

But I love Peripheral Prospects and the inexact science/exact art of digging up breakout fringe and non-prospects with potential to make waves at the big-league level despite lacking the requisite hype. These breakouts make for feel-good stories, but for fantasy baseball purposes they’re market inefficiencies that can change the trajectories of dynasty (or even redraft) teams.

So, I want to spill at least a little bit of digital ink in honor of my favorite Peripheral Prospect hitters (and pitchers, coming in a separate post). A year-end catch-all post loses the dynamics of the ebb and flow of player performance; I benefit from these slash lines being etched in stone. But that hindsight should make the selections here a bit tighter than might have normally been picking five fresh names every other week for six months.

Anyway, here’s my list of top-8 Peripheral Prospect hitters from 2021 (because 10 was too many—this is rarefied air, y’all). The only rules: (1) They played in the high minors (Double-A or Triple-A) but not the MLB level, and (2) they cannot be featured on any prominent top-100 list. I’m going to rank them loosely from favorite to least-favorite. Let’s go!

Read the rest of this entry »

The Live Episode from First Pitch Arizona 2021 of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Derek Carty

What’s new in THE BAT X for 2022?

Strategy Section

• Risk
  • How to deal with injury risk
  • How to discount for binary risk
  • Low risk players / consistent players
    • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Categorical Risk
    • Who would you rather draft – Bo Bichette or Vladimir Guerrero Jr.?
  • Replacement Level Risk
    • The risk of paying up for a super elite catcher (Salvador Perez / J.T. Realmuto).
  • Ace Pitcher Risk – Should you draft pitchers in the first few rounds?
  • Stacking Risk – Doubling up in one league vs. spreading out in two different leagues
• Auction
  • Spread the Risk vs. Stars & Scrubs
    • League depth matters
    • Grab value in every price tier
  • The value at the corner infield position
  • The Joey Votto nomination strategy

Read the rest of this entry »

The Season Wrap-Up Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ian Kahn

Most memorable moments of the baseball season

Strategy Section

• Which is more important at the draft – Having better knowledge of the players, or better valuation & auction/drafting skills?
• Which is more true?
  • Leagues are won on draft day vs.
  • Leagues are won with great in-season moves & pickups
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Do you have to walk away with speed in the first few rounds?
  • 1st Round Pick – Bo Bichette vs. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
• The Case for An Ace – Do you need to walk away with an ace (or two aces) in the first few rounds?
• Is it worth paying up for a super elite catcher (Salvador Perez / J.T. Realmuto)?
• Is it worth paying up for closers?
• Can you wait on corner infielders?
  • Should you disregard positions in the first few rounds?

Our successes and failures in 2021

Sandy Alcantara – Is he a top 10 pitcher for 2022?

Read the rest of this entry »

The full one hundred and sixty-two major league season has now concluded. After two whole tumultuous years, it is with great joy, that I am able to utter this sentence once again. After just a 60-game short season in 2021, completing the full schedule docket is a sparkling achievement.

It is now time to check back on how we fared during the past season. Here at RotoGraphs, that tradition starts with reviewing our pre-season bold predictions.

As always, I will remind my readers that we will never succeed in perfectly mining all of our bold predictions, nor should we. If this was simply a contest to obtain high precision, then we would have filled our lots with easy guesses. “Gerrit Cole will strike out 180 batters” – is an amazing baseball accomplishment, but it is far from bold. In fact, ATC was the low projection system on Gerrit Cole, and predicted an expected 257 Ks. Forget bold – the statistics may have suggested a probability of circumstance close to 60-75%.

Bold predictions are meant to be a far more remote event. They are meant to be unlikely.

At the other end of the spectrum, bold predictions are also not meant to be impossible. “Albert Pujols will steal 25 bases,” is not within the realm of any reasonable possibility. That is a prediction into the weird or absurd – which is NOT the purpose of these columns.

This author perennially suggests that bold predictions should lie in the 70^th to 90^th percentiles. In other terms, we should be boldly calling events that are 10-30% likely to occur. In return period speak – an occurrence that should unfold every 1 in 3.3 to 1 in 10 years. It should be a prediction that would happen once, twice or thrice a decade.

The point of the exercise is to highlight certain undervalued (or overvalued) players by choosing a few unlikely, but achievable outcomes. By doing so, the goal is for the reader to pay the player(s) in question a bit more (or less) attention than the market would suggest.

Read the rest of this entry »