This past weekend, a collection of fantasy baseball veteran nerds gathered in New York City for our annual Tout Wars auction and after-party fun. It’s always one of the best weekends of the year, and this year I got to hang out with fellow RotoGraphers Paul Sporer, Jeff Zimmerman, Al Melchior, and Justin Mason. We represented! Oh, and dare I forget my AL-Only league competitor and representer of every fantasy baseball site on the Internet, Jason Collette.

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We’re entering the final stretch of draft season. For many of you, the so-called advice in this post may be too late. However, it’s my hope that everybody will enjoy discussing the options for good-natured trolling in auction drafts. The nomination process offers several ways to mess with your rivals.

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This post was inspired by Trey Baughn’s Bargain Shopping: Five for $5 from December. With just days remaining before the start of the 2017 baseball season, most fantasy auctions and drafts are completed. However, since some will take place this week, and since most fantasy owners are always interested in making savvy moves to improve their rosters, now is as good a time as any to talk about fantasy bargains. To qualify for this list, players must simply cost less than $6 on the Ottoneu Average Salaries page (sorted by “All game types”) and be beyond rookie status. Getting right into the list: Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody knows whether the great novelist Joseph Conrad played Fantasy baseball. He died in 1924, so perhaps not, but a passage in one of his novels suggests that he envisioned it. In The Secret Agent, a character entertains the “horrible notion that ages of atrocious pain and mental torture could be contained between two successive winks of an eye.” We can now attest to the accuracy of that notion, because we had such an experience in a Fantasy baseball auction last Sunday. We had neglected to stock our catching staff, and, as a result, between those two successive winks we were compelled to place a $7 bid on Francisco Cervelli. “Pain” and “torture” were indeed the centerpieces of our experience in that instant.

We were going to report on the above-referenced auction in this week’s installment, but frankly it’s just too embarrassing. Consistently undervaluing catchers until we were stuck with a $7 Cervelli and a $2 Jason Castro was just the most egregious of our errors. But our loss is your gain, because we decided to write something useful for a change: a review of auction market prices.

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Last night I completed my third straight ottoneu auction in as many nights, and sixth overall so far this draft season. Every year the auctions I’m a part of seem tighter and more difficult, but the massive hours I’ve spent participating in ottoneu auctions the past two seasons has given me a good feel for what to expect. Let’s take a look at the different auction phases, and the strategies for dealing with them.

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The 2017 World Baseball Classic has been riveting thus far. Many of the teams are loaded, and the players and fans have been wildly into it. Saturday’s game between the Dominican Republic and the United States was perhaps the greatest heavyweight match-up the game has ever seen. The lineups on both sides were absurd, and the game lived up to the hype. The Dominicans overcame a 5-0 deficit to win in dramatic style, 7-5.

The Dominican lineup could be the best ever, but the United States gives them a run for their money. Since the majority of FanGraphs readers are, presumably, American, and pulling for Team U.S.A., it struck me that it would be fun to analyze the roster from a fantasy perspective. Although many on the roster are undisputed stars, there are overrated players, players to avoid for other reasons, and potential bargains mixed in. Let’s get right into it, analyzing the starting position players on Team U.S.A.: Read the rest of this entry »

3/8/17

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

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @almelchiorBB
• @paulkastava
• SPECIAL GUEST: @dougdennis41

Doug is on the phone so it’s phone-soundy, but that’s just the risk/pitfall of a phone call. It’s still quite listenable, especially because the content is lit. Yes… it’s lit.

Strategy Section: NL LABR Breakdown

• Gameplan going in
  • Catcher focus
  • Low-dollar pitching
• Billy Hamilton and his in-season tradeability
• David Dahl’s injury
• Favorite buy on your team
• Biggest regret
• Favorite buy leaguewide
• League Trends
  • Cheap Reliever market
  • Corner Infielders
  • Middle Infielders
  • Starting Pitchers Read the rest of this entry »

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In fantasy auction leagues, among shortstops, many in the top- and middle-tier are either extremely pricey, or risky, or both. There are important question marks about some of the players that should give owners pause before making hefty financial commitments: Can we trust less than a full season of data on Trea Turner and Aledmys Diaz? Are Brad Miller and Jonathan Villar really worth their hefty price tags? Is Troy Tulowitzki just OK now, and can he stay healthy? Is this the year Addison Russell breaks out offensively?

If you don’t want to spend a fortune on one of the very best shortstops, it may be worth considering some of the names at the bottom. Among those are two shortstops who quietly had breakout campaigns in 2016.

Elvis Andrus has had a very strange career. He burst onto the scene as a 20-year-old rookie in 2009, and helped the Rangers win back-to-back American League pennants in 2010 and 2011. Andrus’ elite defense and contact skills earned him an 8-year, $120M contract with Texas in 2013, despite the fact that at the time of the signing Andrus had just an 87 wRC+ and .314 wOBA in his career. After he signed the contract, Andrus had just a 78 wRC+ and .292 wOBA from April 2013 through the end of the 2015 season.

However, in 2016, things changed in a big way. Andrus batted .302/.362/.439 with a 112 wRC+ and .344 wOBA. It was his first wRC+ above 97 and his first slugging percentage above .378. His .136 ISO was also a career high, easily surpassing his previous high mark of .099. The following tables help explain Andrus’ breakthrough season: Read the rest of this entry »

3/6/17

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

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @almelchiorBB
• @paulkastava

Strategy Section: AL LABR Breakdown

• Speed market
• Closer market
• Shiny new toys
• David Price
• Positional review

LABR Links

• AL results
• AL sequential order
• NL results
• NL sequential order

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We’ve been rolling through our ottoneu FanGraphs points league rankings. This year the rankings will include values from myself, Justin Vibber, and Chad Young. We are presenting our individual dollar values, the average of all three individuals, plus the ranking of that average. In addition the tables below include Ottoneu eligibility (5 games started/10 games played in the prior year). Players are ranked at their most valuable position, and the hierarchy we are using is C/SS/2B/3B/OF/1B (with 3B and OF being a coin toss in terms of replacement level, we chose to include 3B/OF eligibles at 3B).

Prior Rankings: C/1B/3B, 2B/SS, OF

Key:
Split – Difference from highest to lowest $ value
Otto.– Average price across Ottoneu FGpts leagues
AVG. – Average $ value from the four of us
(+/-) – Difference between Ottoneu average price and our average $ value

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