Archive for Arizona Fall League

The LIVE from First Pitch Arizona 2025! episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guests: Derek Carty & Tristan Cockcroft

Strategy Section

• Projections
  • Are projections more accurate in this more steady state of baseball?
  • Are projections more important to use than ever?
    • ADP is getting smarter
  • What are the best reasons to ignore projections?
  • Are postseason stats factored into projections?
• Outstanding rookies/prospects – 2026 outlook & drafts
  • Trey Yesavage
  • Cam Schlittler
• 2025 Postseason
  • World series wrap-up
  • Shohei Ohtani
    • All time game performance
    • 2026 outlook
• Stolen bases
  • Juan Soto & Josh Naylor
    • How many stolen bases will they regress to in 2026?
  • How can you identify players that will suddenly have a jump in stolen bases?
  • Do you have to “pay for steals” anymore in fanatsy baseball drafts?
    • Do you now have to “pay” for power in drafts?
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Aaron Judge
  • Are the Yankees wasting Judge’s best years?
  • Comparison to Albert Pujols
• Cal Raleigh
  • What round should Raleigh be drafted in?
  • What round will Raleigh be drafted in?
  • What rounds should you be drafting catchers in two catcher leagues?
• Injury Risk
  • Were we too low on the players that overcame injury risk in 2025 (Buxton, deGrom, Story, etc.)?
  • Yordan Alvarez & Spencer Strider – where should we be drafting them in 2026?
  • Expectations for pitchers who had a big innings jump in 2025
    • Yoshinobu Yamamoto
    • Bryan Woo
    • Garrett Crochet
  • How should last year’s innings totals be factored into 2026 innings projections?
  • Other injury risk pitchers for 2026

Audience Questions

2026 First Round

• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2026 that is undervalued?
• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2026 that is overvalued?
• Who is a player that will not be drafted in the first round of 2026 that should be?

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The LIVE from First Pitch Arizona episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guests: Tristan Cockcroft & Derek Carty

Strategy Section

• Which is more important – the draft or in-season moves?
• Is it more important than ever to bank low-risk players in the early rounds of drafts?
• What makes a risky / consistent player?
  • Is Shohei Ohtani risky for 2024 as a hitter?
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • How should we determine what constitutes a consistent player, and how should we value consistency?
• Young players
  • Should we be cautious to roster young players with limited experience?
  • How should we value the playoff experience of young players?
• Stolen base landscape
  • How should we value SBs in 2024 drafts?
• Closers
  • Optimal strategy in retrospect for 2023
  • Prospective strategy heading into 2024
  • Should we be drafting middle relievers?

2024 First Round

• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2024 that is undervalued?
• Who is a player that will be drafted in the first round of 2024 that is overvalued?
• Who is a player that will not be drafted in the first round of 2024 that should be?

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I covered the first 12 rounds of my AFL draft last week and today I’ll show the rest that we did in Arizona. We will finish the remaining 27 rounds online in January.

13.193 – Scott Kingery | OF/3B, PHI

I liked the positional flexibility and power-speed capability here with Kingery. His 2018 was a flop (.605 OPS) and while he couldn’t sustain his early-2019 success (.889 1H), he still hit eight homers and stole 10 bases in the second half. I still think there’s more here, but a full season of 2019 would essentially be a 20/20 season.

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10/17/19

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.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Joe Maddon to LAA
• Buck Showalter candidate for NYM/PHI
  • Are tms trending back toward classic mgr?
• Who does gm4 rainout help more?

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Last week I wrote up the first 8 rounds of my NFBC draft from the Arizona Fall League and I did say rounds 9-23 would come on Wednesday… it is technically Wednesday so even though I clearly meant last Wednesday, let’s count it. It’s not like I didn’t write in the meantime, I did profiles on David Dahl (here), Harrison Bader (here), and Ronald Acuña Jr. (here), so feel free to check those out, too. At any rate, it’s time to finish up this draft recap so let’s roll!

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Can you believe it’s already November? I always lament the end of the season, but the gold lining is my annual trip to the Arizona Fall League for BaseballHQ’s First Pitch Forum event. This was my 10th year attending, and I absolutely love it.

Not only do we get to watch live baseball from some of the best prospects in baseball, but there’s also nonstop fantasy baseball talk as well as the beginning of a 50-round draft and hold NFBC league. We run the first 23 rounds live in Arizona and then pick it up in January online for the final 27. Let’s take a closer look at the team I put together on Friday night.

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11/03/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
• @enosarris – Co-Host
• @emilycwaldon – Guest

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

AFL Prospects

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In November I used the Prospect Scorecard to take an early look at the top 100 fantasy prospects for both Roto leagues and Ottoneu’s wOBA-heavy FanGraphs Points leagues.  In February I also added a quick fantasy spin on Eric and Kiley’s great preseason work ranking the top 100 prospects in baseball. Later this summer (July) I’ll update the top 100 for fantasy purposes, but today I want to briefly check in on a number of prospects that I think are rising (⬆) or falling (⬇) in value for various reasons in 2018.

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It’s tough to get excited about this year’s batch of rookie pitchers. One reason is that most of the top arms (Reyes, Gohara, Buehler, Flaherty) have already debuted in the majors. Many of the other top-ranked arms have not pitched in double-A yet.

With this year’s class looking down, there always seems to be a few pitchers who come out of nowhere like Luis Castillo did last season. He wasn’t picked among the top 600 players in NFBC and now he near a top-100 pick. Jake Faria and Dinelson Lamet were a couple other arms who were off owner’s radars. It just takes a pitcher gaining a couple ticks on his fastball or developing a new pitch to shoot up in talent.

I found it best to be aggressive on this these mid-season call-ups. They may be getting promoted because they are ready. Investigate any recent scouting reports and don’t be afraid to roster them if they’re talented.

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Eric and Kiley have graciously taken the time to give us some of the best prospect content on the net, but today as prospect week continues I’ll provide a quick fantasy spin for each of the 2018 Top 100 prospects. The goal here is simply to each prospect’s grades and scouting reports and then translate those skills into “what could be” for fantasy context (for example where “upside” might represent an 80%+ outcome on a prospect’s potential).

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