One of the keys to fantasy success involves finding when projections can be systematically off. The hard part for fantasy owners is that most of these findings, like pitch velocity, get quickly incorporated into projections. Since it’s difficult to find these discrepancies, I was intrigued when I saw this quote by Mitchel Lichtman (MGL) in an article he wrote:

So, the substantial under-projections seem to occur when a player gains speed but his wOBA remains about the same.

And by substantial, it was a 22 point difference is wOBA. This is a major difference and could point owners to some nice upside plays. I decided to go ahead and dive in.

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Looking back, Jesus Aguilar had so many forces working to hold down his pre-season value, I’m amazed some teams rostered him (566th in NFBC ADP). While he had the tools for a breakout, it’s tough to find actionable pre-season moves to prevent similar players from slipping through the cracks. Once he got the opportunity to play, owners should have jumped in to roster him.

The first item to consider in the miss is that Aguilar’s projections weren’t glowing. Of all projected hitters in our pre-season depth charts, he came in at 245th by OPS. Not the best ranking for a 1B, especially compared to his teammate Eric Thames.

Here are the pair’s various OPS projections coming into the season.

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In the #2earlymock drafts run by our own Justin Mason, Javier Baez is going 17th and Trevor Story is going 20th among all hitters. The picks are quite high considering Baez was the 58th hitter taken, and Story was 65th in NFBC drafts last year. The pair didn’t have must-draft preseason hype and their suspect plate discipline limited their perceived value. Both exceeded all expectations as they came in at 6th and 7th overall this year. This was a huge miss by the industry and I’m going to see if some traits point to why some low plate discipline players break out and others don’t.

For every Baez and Story, other bad plate discipline hitters failed like Byron Buxton (.383 OPS), Chris Davis (.539 OPS), Miguel Sano (.679 OPS) and Jonathan Schoop (.682 OPS). No obvious difference stood out. While Chris Davis is old, Buxton, Sano, and Schoop should be in their primes. To find out who may break out, I decided to start with the 2018 Bad Plate Discipline Class.

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Every fantasy owner should sit down in the next week or so and reflect on what went right and wrong in their leagues. More than reflecting, they need to take a few notes on the journey to help themselves improve next season.

The process doesn’t need to take a while but an owner should at least get a couple points, good and bad, on each league. It’s time for a little humility because some owners need to continue to take positive small steps forward. The rest of us need to start catching up. Hopefully, the following will nudge a few owners to take some notes before going into offseason mode.

Reviewing My Leagues

Overall, my season was a huge disappoint and I knew it was going to be a rough finish a couple months into the season. I made so many preseason and early season mistakes, I could never recover. Here are my leagues in order of finish.

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While going through my Tout Wars league’s transactions, I noticed Robbie Ray was released. While I felt Ray’s price was too high for me during draft season, my gut assumed he should still be rostered. My head said to dive in and find the reason for cutting a seemingly valuable resource. Today, I’ll examine how the actual and perceived values differ and how these moves can help make future decisions.

To start with, here is a quick dive into how Ray has done this season and spoiler alert… it’s not pretty. Even though his 11.7 K/9 is the 5th highest (min 80 IP), his 5.0 BB/9  is also the 5th highest. The walks, along with his 4.73 ERA, are tough to absorb. Additionally, his ERA is about a run higher than his xFIP and SIERA. The 26-year-old lefty has always been hittable with a career .316 BABIP and 1.2 HR/9.

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Yesterday, I examined hitters who owners missed on preseason and what could be done to prevent such mistakes in the future. Today, the underachievers go under the microscope. In my previous article, I used Paul Sporer’s “All First Half” articles for reference. With no underachieving articles out yet, I will look for players with differences in ADP and current rank using our auction calculator.

Extended Injury Stays

Daniel Murphy

I lamented last offseason about missing out on J.D. Martinez’s great 2017 season. I didn’t want to miss out again and was willing to take a chance on Daniel Murphy’s discount.

When I created his projection, I account for six weeks off but it was on the short side. Additionally, once he returned, he wasn’t productive for a few weeks but has a .859 OPS in July.

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The All-Star game has come and gone, but the festivities are ongoing here at RotoGraphs. It’s time to rank the first half’s “All-Sell-High Team.” These are players who had big first halves, but who aren’t necessarily the best bets to repeat that performance in the second half. Without further ado, let’s get right to the list: Read the rest of this entry »

The MLB Draft is unique in that it happens during the season. For the football and basketball drafts, they happen well before the season starts because the players can contribute for the upcoming season. With baseball, the odds are against one single player getting the call this season. That doesn’t mean fantasy owners, especially those in keeper and dynasty formats, shouldn’t possibly be making some moves depending on their needs.

The biggest key for anyone considering rostering a just drafted player, know your league rules. First, some leagues may not allow the drafted players to be rostered until the next offseason draft. Other leagues don’t allow owning a player until they’ve at least played a minor or major league game. In some other leagues, the players are rosterable this next FAAB period. Each one is unique. Let me start the discussion with the last league type.

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The phrase “Buying Low” gets thrown around in the baseball community. I’m not sure if owners can actually buy low on many of these frustrating but talented players. Owners need to be willing to sell. I going to try to redefine the concept of buying low concentrating on drop rates and go over a few potential targets.

When I hear or read about buying low on a player, the touts are focusing on buying a good player during a cold streak. Paul Goldschmidt fits this label with his .208/.324/.380 slash line. Owners paid first round prices for replacement level production. But are Goldschmidt’s owners selling low? Probably not.

Going over some recent trades at the Yahoo trade tracker, Goldschmidt is being traded straight up for players such as Clayton Kershaw, Joey Votto, Patrick Corbin, and Shohei Ohtani.

His value is down some (and should be with the K% spike) but not horribly. He’s still owned in 99%+ of leagues at ESPN, Yahoo, Fantrax, and CBS. Even the most frustrated owners in shallow leagues aren’t moving on. So why should owners focus their time and energy on players who even the most frustrated owners aren’t moving on with?

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Last week, I wrote about the expected power from JaCoby Jones and Lewis Brinson. In the article, I mentioned the hitter’s rank compared to other hitters with no context resides just the rank. Today, I correct this flaw in my analysis by finding the league averages and putting the data on the 20-80 scouting scale.

While overall ranks do provide some information, it’s tough to put the rankings into context. Nelson Cruz is first in average exit velocity (EV) at 97 mph. Dropping down 2 mph in exit velocity is Luke Maile at #10. Two more is Jacoby Jones at #26. And another two is Francisco Lindor at #75. The first 4 mph in drop was just 26 players while the next 2 mph was 49 players. The batted ball decline rate is not linear and just a few tenths of a mile-per-hour can jump a player 20 spots in the rankings.

I need a way to label hitters and had to invoke some math. I took the hitters with 100 batted balls per season from 2015 to 2017 and found the overall average value. Using the 20-80 scouting scale, I gave the average values a 50-grade.

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