Some might have you believe we just finished the most wonderful time of the year, but it’s actually coming up. Sleeper season is about to kick off for the 2016 fantasy baseball season and it promises to be another fun year of debating what actually constitutes a sleeper, who’s asleep and who’s just going at-cost, and whether or not you should include injury comebacks on your list. Another fascinating feature of Sleeper season is the group of guys who appear on virtually every list thereby negating their sleeper status by the time Draft season actually gets here: the wide-awake sleepers.

Examples from last year include Carlos Carrasco, Marcus Stroman before his injury, Michael Wacha, and Matt Harvey (especially by mid-Spring Training). They were all in 40s or later among starters in the winter magazines (which are written in the fall), but all were early-30s or higher by March. Stroman obviously fell off once he suffered the torn ACL, but Harvey surged all the way through draft season, winding up 14th among starters and top-50 overall. Being a part of this list isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Paul Sporer reviewed NFBC average draft position (ADP) data. The week prior, I posted 2016 Fantasy Baseball Rankings using Steamer Projections and the FVARz approach to valuation.

With our powers combined, here I will depict how current value and draft position match up:

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 294

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette are back for one more 2015 episode! Yeah, I thought the last episode would be their last of 2015, but y’all got lucky! Today they’re talking the Chapman trade, some mid-tier signings (Murphy, Leake, etc…) and their early thoughts on the NFBC ADP data released over the weekend.

Who stands out to you based on their early draft position?

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I discovered a Christmas treat over the weekend: NFBC average draft position data is now up for 2016 drafts! I don’t know exactly how many drafts have taken place just yet, but it’s still nice to get an early look at things and see what’s going on. I’ve got some thoughts for every position:

CATCHER:

• Buster Posey is far and away the top catcher for 2015. The 89-pick gap between Posey and Jonathan Lucroy is more than double the next-biggest at any position – which happens to be 42 picks between Carlos Correa and Troy Tulowitzki.
• I like Lucroy for a rebound, but I’m not chasing him so if I don’t take Posey then I’m waiting a bit on catcher. It’s not an endless trove, but Blake Swihart, Yasmani Grandal, Derek Norris, Nick Hundley, Miguel Montero, Wilson Ramos, and Welington Castillo are all going after pick 200.
• Don’t wait too long, though, dollar catchers are the worst investments in dollar days. The Baseball Forecaster by Ron Shandler tells us that dollar backstops return negative value on average.
• Edit: I just realized Kyle Schwarber is listed under OF despite qualifying at C (21 games played) so his 33 ADP makes for just a 13-pick gap between the first and second catcher. 

Read the rest of this entry »