Archive for Dynasty

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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A few years ago I posted an article about designing fantasy league incentives.  While the popularity of customized, add-on incentives is hard to measure across the fantasy community, it’s clear that leagues conceptually understand the potential value of features and rewards that attempt to keep owners engaged over the course of a long baseball season.  In the standard winner-takes-all format of many points leagues, commissioners are often left to mitigate the wreckage of AWOL owners that sell off and check out early, so carrots, even small ones, can help in cross-checking drastic, standings-shaking transactions if designed thoughtfully. But designing the right league incentives is easier said than done because owners are motivated by different values.

The purpose of this article is for you, the reader, to help me design the right incentive structure for the very first 20 team Ottoneu league (more on this soon), an exciting experiment that will dramatically alter the traditional economic model that serves as the foundation of standard 12 team Ottoneu leagues. Your feedback will be critical to building a league that lasts, but the discussion will hopefully be a helpful reference for others attempting to structure leagues that are as engaging as possible.

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Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the best baseball prospect in the world. He’s better than most recent #1 overall prospects. He’s the best offensive prospect since at least Kris Bryant (ROY + MVP), and many would say you’d have to go back much further to Miggy or even Pujols to get a true comparison. For some scouts he possesses the seemingly impossible combination of both an 80 grade hit tool and an 80 grade power profile. His batter’s box skills have HOF lineage and yet somehow he has done nothing but exceed expectations (batting .402 in AA at age 19 helps). He already has the look and potential of an all-time great.  Best of all, Vlad, Jr. will debut in 2019.

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It’s Prospect Week at FanGraphs, the most exciting “week” outside of the one dedicated for sharks. I’ll have a chat at 4:00pm ET where we can talk all about prospects for fantasy purposes. In the mean time, let’s lay out some food for thought courtesy of the Dynasty ADP Project.

Please note: my standard for “prospect” may be slightly inconsistently applied. I didn’t bother to confirm rookie eligibility for all players with minimal major league experience. I just eyeballed the list. I might have incorrectly included or excluded a name. Feel free to call me out.

There appear to be a few areas where prospects clump together. You can think of these as tiers. What stands out to me is that with the exception of Vladito and possibly a few others, there isn’t a lot of difference in (my) perceived value between the early prospect picks and the guys around pick 300.

What do you think? Let’s chat about it here and at 4:00pm.

Looking over the depth chart for the defending NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers, one is reminded that Ryan Braun, 35 years old and entering his 13th major league season, still projects as the team’s starting left fielder. Some observers, perhaps even Brewers fans, might feel skeptical about Braun’s chances of a bounce-back season, considering how things have gone these last few years:

Here we see steady decline in every category. After reviewing this table, it would be easy to conclude that age has caught up with Braun, that he will probably contribute nothing more than league average offense in 2019, and that the Brewers should perhaps even consider upgrading in left field. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s prospect season (thank goodness, as nothing else is happening).  Nearly one year ago I borrowed from the great work by Eric and Kiley here and applied some fantasy context to their overall Top 100 prospect rankings from 2018.  We’ll do something similar for 2019, but before the full frenzy of this season’s prospect rankings reaches it’s peak, I thought it prudent to review prospect perceptions from this time last year to see if we can learn anything.

From last year’s post, the same purpose applies:

The goal here is simply to each prospect’s grades and scouting reports and then translate those skills into “what could be” for fantasy context (for example where “upside” might represent an 80%+ outcome on a prospect’s potential).

For comparison, last year’s comments are at the top, followed by a value trend and general update on where things appear to be for each prospect heading into 2019.

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At first glance, Max Kepler had a very Max Kepler year. In several key categories, he was pretty much the same player he’s always been, which is to say that he once again came close to, but failed to achieve, league average offensive output:

Where it really counts, in wOBA and wRC+, Kepler has been consistent—but consistently underwhelming. Skimming over these results, one would be inclined to conclude that the Twins are still waiting for Kepler to break out.

But ask anyone in the Twins front office, and they’d likely say that Kepler broke out last season, beneath our noses. And indeed, looking under the hood, we find several reasons to reach that same conclusion for ourselves:

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Hello and welcome. A couple weeks ago, I promised to work on Average Draft Position (ADP) for deep dynasty leagues. It’s a segment of the fantasy baseball community that is underserved by industry resources. Yes, there are a few dynasty specific sites that provide helpful coverage, but nearly all of the analysis is based on a given writer’s personal rankings and preferences.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. However, you would always check redraft rankings against ADP, right? Why not do the same in a dynasty league? Today, we take our first step in the right direction.

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Why does redraft get all the nice things like a helpful Average Draft Position (ADP) to indicate the most auspicious time to target a specific player?

To my knowledge, ADP basically doesn’t exist for deep dynasty formats – and probably for a good reason. Deep dynasty is a snowflake ecosystem. Every league has its own unique nooks and crannies. They’re conducted on a variety of different fantasy platforms with offline components. More to the point, there probably aren’t very many first year drafts. Most dynasty leagues have been rolling for years.

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Deep dynasty leagues are becoming increasingly popular. Today, I’d like to talk about my experiences with the format, things to look for when joining a league, and what this means for the fantasy baseball industry.

Let’s start by defining a “deep” dynasty league. This is a flexible concept. In a recent poll, I said the following: “Let’s define “deep” as any mixed league that rosters 700 or more players leaguewide or any AL/NL Only with 350 or more players. At least half of players are kept.”

Again, the exact definition can vary. What matters is that the league operates on a completely different level than the most common fantasy formats. Those are 12-team redraft with roto or head-to-head scoring. There are also dynasty leagues with similar dynamics to these more common formats. Participants in these leagues can use existing resources for redraft leagues with a little mental tinkering. The norms of the industry still apply in a general sense even if there are some specific quirks.

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