Recently I created a new dynasty baseball league customized around the basic game of Ottoneu.  The more you play Ottoneu the more you come to appreciate how deep the player pool really is, and the longer I play fantasy baseball the more interested I become in the minor league development process.  While there is still plenty of luck involved, the satisfaction of “discovering” the next Rhys Hoskins before everyone else is a feeling that keeps me coming back to the game over and over.

In addition to the standard economics of Ottoneu where each league consists of twelve owners and 480 rostered players (minors and majors), our league will roster an additional 180 minor leaguers (15 extra per team) in an attempt to “develop” successful franchises for years to come.  Since the regular MLB season is wrapping up soon and many fantasy owners are starting to look towards 2018, I thought it might be helpful to review our prospect draft over the next several posts to give you some insight into the valuation of these minor league lottery tickets.  If nothing else, this draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward.  If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.  

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It’s a little crazy how deep third base is this year. Perusing the NFBC average draft position list, there are nearly twenty players whom, in most years, I’d be happy to roll with in standard leagues. Most surprising though was seeing Nick Castellanos languishing all the way at 19^th off the board in NFBC drafts (Note: I had originally considered anointing him just The Greek God of Contact but unfortunately that moniker implies a certain frequency of contact that the 25-year old simply cannot be bothered with). Castellanos won’t win any OBP-titles but in 2016 he did one thing well. And that’s hit a baseball really, really hard.

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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 »

In the middle to late rounds of a draft, pitchers seem to blend together. Picking between two similar pitchers can be difficult. To help with these decisions, I have created a simple cheat sheet to determine which pitcher has an easier path to success based on several outside factors like schedule strength and bullpen quality.

The chart is simple. I went through each factor which may influence a pitcher’s prediction in which they have no control over. I collected projections on each metric and then found the z-score for each value. Greater than 0 is good, less than zero is bad. Then for each team, I added up the z-scores for a final overall value.

The cheat chart is not perfect. It’s to be used as a guide. For example, if a pitcher is a heavy groundball pitcher, the user may not want to add the team’s outfield defense and home park home run factor. A different user may have the perfect projection set except for bullpen and defense. They can ignore the rest of the information. Additionally, a user may want to create their own category weightings. Again, this is just a guide.

To start with, here are the categories and the where I got the values.

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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 »

Over the last several weeks, we’ve taken a look at available deep league options at catcher, first base, and second base. In this latest edition of Deep League Draft Targets, we move onto shortstop. Previous installments can be found below:

Deep League Draft Targets – Catcher

Deep League Draft Targets – First Base

Deep League Draft Targets – Second Base

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Sometimes we know something is a bad investment, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Cars – especially new cars. Hideously expensive and they hemorrhage value as you sink more and more dollars into them. But with a few exceptions, you have to either buy one, waste a couple hours per day on buses, or live in the only U.S. city with a viable subway. So I pay to own a car even though I work 40 feet from my bed. I bought it for something like $15,000 a little over four years ago, and now it’s only worth half that. Soon I’ll have to perform expensive maintenance like replacing all the tires. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

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It’s hard to believe this is my fourth season writing these monthly tiered rankings for second base. As the old adage goes, time flies when you’re forming position-specific tiers of real baseball players for fake baseball purposes.

A clear trend that formed over the last three years of writing this column is that second base keeps getting deeper and deeper. While there are elite options at the position, the list of players that I would be okay with rostering is plenty long.

With this in mind, I decided to implement a new feature to my tiers this year, motivated by a piece I wrote on Yahoo’s average auction prices a couple weeks ago. By including this data, I hope to help you identify where hidden value lies at the position. Whether your league does an auction or a traditional draft, understanding how your fellow owners value players is vital to any preseason preparation.

Without further ado, here are your preseason second-base tiers for 2017. As always, if you disagree with my rankings — or if I missed anyone who should be ranked — feel free to sound off in the comments section. (For reference, I’m using Yahoo’s position eligibility requirements).

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