Power often comes with punch outs. When homers aren’t tied to strikeouts, that’s usually the profile of an elite hitter. In 2016, only six players with more than 250 plate appearances recorded a Hard% north of 40% and a K% south of 20%. One of those six players, David Ortiz, is now retired. Joining Big Papi in that group of hitters was Josh Donaldson, Miguel Cabrera, Matt Carpenter, Jose Bautista and Kendrys Morales.

Using the NFBC ADP data, Donaldson and Cabrera require roughly a top-15 pick for their services with the former carrying an 11.16 ADP and the latter sitting at 15.58. Carpenter has an ADP of 70.58 and Bautista’s ADP is 118.16 after a down year. Lagging way behind this group is Morales with an ADP of 178.21, a minimum pick of 116 and a maximum pick of 213. Yes, Morales’ utility only eligibility at most fantasy sports sites is less than ideal and should be baked into his ADP, but it looks like there’s plenty of wiggle room for a profit. Read the rest of this entry »

As we continue our tour of the NFBC average draft data by position, I want to reiterate something I may have been unclear about early on: this isn’t a ranking list and as such, not every player will be mentioned. Additionally, every position header after these intros is a link to the ADP data of said position.

Previous Editions:

• C/1B
• 2B/SS
• 3B

OUTFIELD

I have to go two parts on outfield, it’s too robust. I’ll go first 50 today and then the rest in another piece.

• For someone reason Mike Trout (pick 1) has a max pick of 2, meaning he was not taken first in a draft.
• You are trying way too hard if you’re taking any hitter but Trout at #1. I can listen to the Kershaw #1 camp, especially since we’re not going into the season thinking there are upwards of 20 aces like last year.

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This season, I was lucky enough for a couple print publications, Lindy’s and The Fantasy Baseball Guide, asked me to contribute their fantasy preview magazines.  While the quality of both magazines is top notch, print publications have limited room for explanations and no ability for back-and-forth discussions. Today, I am going to go over my contributions which I feel could use more explanation and will answer any questions on my thought process.

Lindy’s

For Lindy’s, I participated in their 12-team mock draft ( standard team except 1 C, 4 OF, 8P) and I picked out of the 3rd position. Here is my team

Position – Name (Round Drafted)
C – Buster Posey (3)
1B – Hanley Ramirez (7)
2B – Rougned Odor (2)
3B – Adrian Beltre (4)
SS – Marcus Semien (12)
MI – Jung Ho Kang (17)
CI – Albert Pujols (10)
OF – Andrew McCutchen (5)
OF – Mark Trumbo (9)
OF – Marcell Ozuna (14)
OF – Matt Holliday (16)
Util – Mike Moustakas (18)
P – Clayton Kershaw (1)
P – Chris Archer (6)
P – Rich Hill (11)
P – James Paxton (13)
P – Michael Pineda (19)
P – Jharel Cotton (20)
P – Andrew Miller (8)
P – Shawn Kelley (15)

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There is a palpable unreliability to ADP data that we usually forget about until it punches us in the face three rounds into every draft. This has pushed me toward a “get your guys” tactic that I’ve been employing for a few years now. It’s not new, I didn’t make it up, but I used to get hung up on taking a guy “too early” because ADP says he’s a 10th rounder. Until one day I told myself, “hey dummy, you do realize the A in ADP stands for average, right?” I’m very rude to myself it seems.

It was then I started to look more at the highest a player has gone just to get a feel for where the most aggressive believers are on a player. By the way, this isn’t to say Min Pick (as it’s titled on the NFBC data) is a perfect guide, either. It’s the outlier, but it prepares you for what could happen in your draft. In short, a reach or a bargain really varies between the fantasy players. My reach is your bargain and vice versa… well, assuming I didn’t have perfect rankings, but theoretically you could deem one of my bargains a reach.

Just get your guys. Be reasonable, but get the guys that you want. You did the research, you have players you think will greatly outdo expectations, so lock them in. Again, being reasonable is the key part here. This means going a round or two higher within the top 150 picks and then you can stretch it to 2-4 rounds in the double-digit rounds.

I’m only looking at third base today because outfield is going to be a biggie and pairing the two would’ve been a bit much. I’ll go deep here to make up for doing just one position.

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This time of year, I love perusing the NFBC ADP data and identifying potential late-round targets. For the sake of using a round number as a cutoff, I opted to focus on players who were select after pick 300 on average. Three players stood out as especially intriguing to me. Read the rest of this entry »

My article today spawned after listening to The Sleeper and the Bust podcast when Paul Sporer interviewed NBFC’s Main Event champion Rob Silver. The entire podcast is a must listen, but one part sparked my interest. Rob mentioned he uses infield flyball rate plus strikeout rate minus walk rate to value pitchers (55:45 point). Silver successfully targeted Kevin Gausmann, Marco Estrada, and Rick Porcello late in his draft by using this stat combination. I will create the same filter to find 2017 sleepers.

There is no easier ball to catch than the infield fly. It’s an easy out. In those few instance when they errantly fall to the ground, a fantasy owner shouldn’t worry since the rest of the inning’s runs won’t count because of the error.

Besides being an easy out, a player’s infield fly rate stabilizes with just over a half season’s data. While infield flies don’t stabilize as fast as strikeouts, they do become stable within a season.

Infield fly rate (IFFB%), especially as we represent it here at Fangraphs, misleads the user. The IFFB% listed indicates the percentage of flyballs (FB%), not all batted balls, which are hit in the infield. To get the infield popup rate, the IFFB% must be multiplied by the FB%. The confusion doesn’t end yet.

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I have been playing in dynasty and keeper leagues as long as I have been playing fantasy baseball. There is something satisfying about being able to attempt to build long term contending teams and scour the wire for future talent. I also find that they stay the most active from the beginning to end of a season and in the off season. For a fantasy junkie like me, that is a fix I often need. However, there is a dark side to leagues like this…

*Cues the gloomy music* Read the rest of this entry »

Can you feel it? Baseball is inching closer and closer. I realize the country was just punished with devastatingly low temperatures almost everywhere (it was in the 20s here in Texas), but STATS recently released the early NFBC average draft data to keep us warm. You better believe I’ve got some thoughts, but I can’t fit them all in one piece, so I’ll cover two positions per and knock this out throughout the week.

CATCHER

• It’s basically Buster Posey (pick 35), Gary Sanchez (47), and Jonathan Lucroy (50), then everyone else. Even an ailing Posey finished second to only Lucroy among catchers last year.
• I want to preach caution on Sanchez, but he was so otherworldly, even accounting for the small sample. There just aren’t any comparisons. The only other catchers to put up a 150 or better OPS+ in their rookie seasons were Carlton Fisk and Mike Piazza and they both did it for way more than Sanchez’s 229 PA.

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Minor Trades

The Royals traded Jarrod Dyson to the Mariners for Nate Karns

The trade’s current winner is Jarrod Dyson’s playing time. While I wasn’t able to grab our playing time projections before the trade, Dyson’s playing time was likely projected at a half season of at bats. In the Baseball HQ Forecaster, they projected 259 at-bats and now we have him slotted in for 441 at bats. The additional playing time could help to push up his stolen base numbers into the forties.

I’m worried the Mariners may limit Dyson attempts. Last season, the Mariners were 24th in stolen base attempts. I tried several ways to see if team philosophy or talent controlled stolen base attempts.

A key factor I found was success rate which helped ease my concerns. A .44 r-squared exists between stolen base attempts and success rate. While the correlation isn’t perfect and some survivor bias exists in it, if players are successful, they continue to get the green light. Dyson had a sky-high 85% success rate over the past four seasons. If he can keep up the rate, he should be able to keep running.

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Time to talk a little Kyle Schwarber

I touched on it yesterday, but Schwarber’s fantasy value is going to fluctuate a ton depending on each league’s settings. In all my keeper leagues, he is getting the Utility tag because he didn’t make the minimum five games played last year (just two games in the outfield). I can’t emphasize enough, know your league settings. Most leagues require five starts until a player is eligible at a position, so I see him getting outfield eligibility the first or second week depending on the schedule and weather.

For him to get the five games at catcher to gain eligibility, let me say I am skeptical of him catching just one game, let alone five. Just to make sure I wasn’t off kilter, at least on this subject, I ask my Twitter followers when they thought he would reach the five games.
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