Archive for Draft

Let’s resume our sweep through MLB in search of deep-draft value without our customary throat-clearing. This week, we’ll finish the AL and start the NL, with the remaining NL coming next week.

Angels. The Angels starter who’s being kind of ignored is Dylan Bundy (NFBC Average Draft Position 308), who’s worth a buck, maybe two if that’s what it takes. He gets plenty of strikeouts, and last season became a ground ball pitcher. Unfortunately, he did this while pitching for the Orioles and their ultra-porous infield. Now we get to see him with an infield of Fletcher-Simmons-Rendon behind him, and if we get our wish, Tommy La Stella plays first base. If not, leaving the position vacant would be an improvement over having it occupied by Albert Pujols. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year a group of fantasy analysts from the Bay Area gather together in San francisco’s best sports bar The Wreck Room for a day of drafting. When I say it is a day of drafting, I mean it also. The combination of booze and Eno Sarris’ indecision on EVERY pick made the draft go seven hours. That being said, it is a fantastic time. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m like everyone else out there, grinding away from every little nugget to gain an edge. The following players I’ve heard something intriguing about during various podcasts or discussion. While I should trust the analysts, I don’t. I prefer to verify what they said and see if I’ll need to adjust my projections.

The Rockies Garrett Hampson reworked his swing in the second half of last season.

Hampson was a late-round darling in the previous draft season for those hoping to get some late steals. He did nothing until September when he went off with a .903 OPS and nine steals. Several people mentioned a swing change and a quick search later, I found out about the toe tap.

“I was thinking of way too much mechanically in the box this year,” Hampson said. “What (the toe tap) has allowed me to do is just be way more in rhythm with the pitcher and (get) started, and my hands and everything else are natural from there. I don’t think about what my hands are doing. There’s a lot of things that weren’t synching up with my leg kick, and now they seem to synch up more naturally.”
…
Beginning with that Aug. 25 game, Hampson has hit .344 (21-for-61) with a .397 on-base percentage and a .905 OPS in 22 games (16 starts). His 19 percent strikeout rate during this span is a marked improvement from earlier. And Hampson has two homers, six RBI, 10 runs scored – he scored 23 runs in his previous 74 games – and six stolen bases without being caught during this stretch. Indeed, with 11 stolen bases in 14 attempts, Hampson is the sixth Rockies rookie with at least 10 steals in a single season and the first since Eric Young Jr., in 2010.

So what did the top tap change in his profile Here is his season divided up into three sections with his demotion on May 12th is the first division and the August 25th game mentioned in the article being the second. Try to find a smoking gun.

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As a rule, we’re not Science Guys, but we’re suckers for the kind of real-life story wherein a crew of geeks takes a submersible to the Abyssopelagic zone and discovers a giant squid big enough to swallow Yankee Stadium whole or a new species of sea slug shaped like a double helix. And that’s how we think of ourselves—geeks in the Fantasy Baseball abyss. Except what we’re looking for is exotic deep-draft specimens—at the very least, guys whose NFBC Average Draft is above 330, thus making them no more expensive than $1 players. Better still, we want players who figure to go in the 40th round or later. And best of all, we want the equivalent of new species—players we actually do like, but who have been taken by nobody else.

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02/05/20

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.

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

Paul and Justin take you through their entire LABR Mixed league draft. You can find the full results here:

• Draft Board
• Tweet thread

Read the rest of this entry »

02/05/20

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/Producer
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host

Paul and Justin set up their gameplan for Tuesday night’s LABR Mixed league draft (a 15-team 5×5 league).

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of slow drafts. Even if you’ve never seen one in action, it’s a slow… draft. Ya draft slowly. Got it.

As a writer, I’m contractually obligated to explain it in excruciating detail. Instead of allowing one to two minutes per pick, a slow draft grants owners a much longer period – often three or four hours. The clock usually “sleeps” during the overnight hours (picks can still be made). I guess that wasn’t too excruciating.

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In my last two columns, I uncovered potential undervalued speedsters and power bats by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. The exercise now continues this week for batting average.

In 2019, there were 55 qualified players with least a .280 batting average. There were 36 players above the .290 mark, and 19 above .300. Tim Anderson led all of baseball with a .335 BA, followed by National Leaguers Christian Yelich and Ketel Marte who each hit .329.

Though 2019 had almost two dozen players who hit at least .300, you won’t find a projection set that will have that many BA studs. Projections are typically more conservative. Steamer only projects 17 regular players to bat over .290 in 2020, and only 5 players to eclipse the .300 mark.

For this year’s potential batting average bargains, we will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of a .278 BA or more. This will give us a number of players who can greatly help your fantasy team’s batting average in in 2020.

For these draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from December 4, 2019 to present).

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In last week’s edition of this series, we uncovered several undervalued speedsters for 2020 drafts. We did so by comparing the Steamer projections to current NFBC Average Draft Position reports. Today, we will go through a similar exercise for potential power bargains.

For this article’s draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from November 27, 2019 to present).

Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

I thought it would be an interesting exercise today to look at fantasy baseball in a different way – profitability at the major league team level. Certainly, the better real-life clubs consist of not only more fantasy relevant players, but also of the higher quality ones.

But what else can be said about the profitability of the fantasy player pool at the team level? Does a higher spend translate to more value for fantasy owners? Does winning ball games correlate with higher levels of fantasy profitably? What can we learn from looking at player investments from this unique ball club perspective?

Let’s dive in and see …

Definitions & Methodology

For today’s analysis, I have used the same pre-season pricing and full-season valuations as in my game theory projections comparison. There are three specific quantities that are relevant here:

• $Value – This is the 2019 full season rotisserie value that each player provided this season. I use my own auction calculator which employs a Z-score methodology to generate the $Values. Standard NFBC 15-team settings are assumed (Mixed AL/NL, $260 budget, standard NFBC positions). I assume that players are only eligible at their original 2019 positions + any positions that they were expected to gain in the first 2 weeks of the season.
• $AAV – Average Auction Value – This is the average of what NFBC owners paid to acquire players during the heart of the 2019 draft season. These values come from all NFBC auctions between March 15, 2019 and March 25, 2019.
• $Profit – The difference between the $Value and the $AAV per player.

Read the rest of this entry »