I blame my podcat mate Rob Silver for today’s study. First, he stated this:

The history of 35-year old first basemen having seasons like what everyone think Votto is gonna do is almost non-existent.

Now Hall of Fame players do Hall of Fame things but everyone just assumes the curve goes back up – and I hope it does but man….

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) February 6, 2019

And then he said this:

Nelson Cruz hit 41 homeruns last year.

He’s awesome.

Super safe player to draft.

He’s 39 this year.

In the history of baseball one player has hit more than 40 homers at 39 or older – Barry Bonds.

Three players hit > 36 (Bonds, Hank Aaron, Papi)

Only 7 hit > 30.

— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) November 18, 2019

Of course, players age. Some quickly. Some not as fast. While few hitters remain productive into and past their mid-30’s, I needed a simple rule on how to deal with these vets. I found one and since I need to provide content to be paid, so does the world.
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Last week, I reviewed an article I published in the preseason discussing the breakouts from 2018 and whether I felt they would be a 2019 bust or were for real. Today, I will be reviewing the 2018 busts. Like for the breakouts, I discussed seven busts from 2018 and determined whether or not they would remain a bust (meaning earn similar depressed fantasy value) or rebound.

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Introduction

On the latest episode of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational Podcast, I posed the following question:

In 2020 fantasy baseball drafts for roto leagues, which will you do early on?

A) Draft Speed Early
B) Pound the Power

Simultaneously, I posed the identical question on Twitter, yielding the following results:

The Twitter responses, as well as the members of the TGFBI Beat the Shift Podcast panel were pretty evenly split on what was more important to focus on. Obviously, fantasy owners need to focus on both; players who can amass a broad base of stats are ideal. But the question is still a valid one – in a vacuum, all things being equal, which player type should you favor in a draft?

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Yesterday, I discussed a bunch of preseason top 100 hitters who are off to slow starts. Today, let’s go over the starting pitchers with ERAs in the stratosphere. The analysis is primarily going to to focus on velocity and pitch mix, and perhaps SwStk% and maybe strike percentage, though the latter two are heavily affected by the tiny sample size and opponent. I’m going to stick with starters generally projected for sub-4.00 ERAs.

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About two and a half weeks in, we know it’s way too early to panic about slow-starters, yet many of you are itching to click that drop button. While I won’t be advising you to drop any of the players I discuss here, let’s evaluate their skills during their slow starts to see if there’s anything worrying to monitor over the next couple of weeks. I’ll stick with hitters that CBS ranked within its top 100 in the preseason.

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Spring is the time for optimism. That’s why you see a lot more articles about breakouts and sleepers than busts. It’s easier to see the good in a player and how things can go right. But not today. It’s time to journey over to the dark side.

The truth of it is that many flops have some sort of injury component tied to them. The obvious ones are where they miss a ton of time and don’t really perform once they return. But then there’s ones like Brian Dozier’s 2018. We didn’t learn until late in 2018 that played most of the season with a deep bone bruise that undoubtedly played a role in his 90 wRC+, a six-year low. Sometimes a player just falls back and fails to meet expectations, though.

I’ve identified 10 players within the top 100 that I’m fading. Cost plays a major role here as I could see myself buying some of them if they became available several rounds later. In addition to their draft cost, I’m going to focus on their skills profile for reasons why I’m fading them and not just lean on potential injury.

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Few aspects of fantasy baseball deviate more from the reality of major league baseball more than the speculation of prospects.  Like most aspects of market-based economics, you often have to buy early on limited information if you want to get the best return on investment before the rest of the industry influences supply and demand.  Perception is reality until prospects actually get the chance to contribute (or fail) on a major league field, and the outcome of those small but important samples can swing values wildly in short cycles.

The goal today is to identify up and coming talent well before the masses of most leagues, so here are five prospects primed to see a big increase in value in 2019.  You won’t find these prospects sitting on many Top 100 lists (yet), but you’ll want to at least keep them on your radar as they rise in the future.

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Yesterday, I discussed seven of last year’s breakouts and concluded with a verdict on whether I expect each to hold onto at least 80% of their 2018 end of season (EOS) dollar value this year. Today, I will discuss nine of 2018’s busts and conclude each blurb with a decision on whether they are likely to rebound.

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A year ago during Fantasy Baseball Week at The Hardball Times, I researched whether last season’s breakouts were solid investments the following year. Spoiler alert: they are actually terrible investments. Of course, that’s as a group. That means that not every breakout from the previous season is going to fall flat the following year. So let’s discuss some of the big breakouts from 2018 and decide whether each ends up as part of the poor investment bust group or they hold onto their gains.

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The 2018 season opened my eyes to the risk of young players losing playing time because of massive platoon splits. Usually, it’s the established major league veterans like Matt Adams who get platooned. Manual Margot was such a player who usually led off against lefties but was dropped in the batting order or even to the bench against righties. Those lost plate appearances can add up over the course of a season whittling away a hitter’s value. Today, I’m going focus the most talented hitters who are most like to be platooned.

For Tanner’s and my book, The Process, Steamer projections were kind enough to include every hitter’s projected OPS versus right and left-handed pitchers. From the book’s research, we found teams have historically started platooning hitters when one side of the platoon’s OPS drops below .650 and definitely at .600. Here are some the hitters who may end up in a platoon situation if their team decides to go that route. Besides the risk of sitting out games, some teams move these players up and down the lineup based platoon differences. I’m likely going to give some of these hitters a playing time adjustment.

Note: The projected platoon OPS are league and ballpark neutral and may seem off compared to the current projected OPS.

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