Archive for Fantasy & Reality

You may remember, in the before times, a game called Beat the Streak. The game challenged baseball fans to hypothetically beat one of the greatest records of all time. The idea was to pick one player each day to get a hit and to do that 57 consecutive times, beating Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hit streak record. Way back in preseason 2020 I wrote about my ambitions of becoming a millionaire by using predictive, machine learning models to aid in winning the competition. The game’s 2020 cancellation gave me time to think, time to read, time to learn how noisy my upstairs neighbors are, and time to build a better model.

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The following tidbits are the most fantasy-relevant news I’ve found so far this offseason.

• Lots of information in this article to consider about Shohei Ohtani. One item that finally clicked with me was that his late-season injury was a knee issue.

Ohtani, though, proved he’s still a strong hitter, batting .286/.343/.505 with 18 homers and 62 RBIs in 106 games, but he saw his season end on Sept. 11 after undergoing surgery to address a bipartite patella in his left knee. The injury began to flare up in Spring Training, but Ohtani played through it, as it mostly only affected him as he ramped up his throwing program off the mound.

Tommy John recoveries need to get their new tendon from somewhere and it’s usually the knee. I wonder if the knee wasn’t healed from the elbow operation.

Also, his 2019 value seems limited by just pitching once a week and batting in just half the games.

Ohtani remains on track to return to two-way status in 2020, as he’s expected to pitch once a week and serve as the DH roughly three to four times a week. But he has to get his rehab done with both his knee and elbow this offseason, as he’s yet to fully complete his throwing program.

He is expected to be cleared to finish his throwing program in December and the hope is that he’ll have enough time to be ready for the start of the season. Ohtani is likely to be behind the other pitchers early in Spring Training, but it’s still too early to know the full plan heading into next year.

He’ll be limited to about 25 starts and in weekly lineup leagues, he’s just a half-time bat. Owners in bi-weekly lineup moves (e.g. NFBC leagues) can hope he hits during one of the two weekly blocks and not split time.
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Today, I am going through some fantasy-relevant information which could change several player projections.

• Dan Hayes of The Athletic ($$) stated the following on Martín Pérez.

The Twins believe the keys to Pérez’s great early performance this season were working with increased velocity and filling up the strike zone. For the past few weeks, Twins pitching coaches have encouraged Pérez not to worry about conserving energy in order to pitch deep into games.

Air it out. Let them worry about the late innings. And on the days when the velo isn’t there, locate and attack.

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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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We could begin this post by spending some time getting to know Niko Goodrum and Tony Kemp. Instead, let’s start with some generalizations. They’re both in a weird sweet spot on the talent curve – good enough to start on a bad major league team yet not so talented that they must be in the majors. From a fantasy perspective, they have the potential to produce average or better numbers in multiple categories. This makes them interesting to us.

There are a lot of these players in the professional ranks. The difference between one and another often amounts to a single noticeable hot streak. Reaching into the past a bit, do you think Ryan Raburn has a 14-year career (parts of 12 major league campaigns) if he didn’t light September on fire a couple times? I don’t.

Goodrum and Kemp did enough in 2018 to lay the foundation for a solid major league career. However, their 2019 opportunities are strikingly different. The reason? Context.

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Over on Twitter.com, Phillies prospect guy Matt Winkleman had an interesting thought. Behold.

You know what is really funny in a way. Given the way the offseason has gone, everything would have started falling the Marlins way if they wanted to contend

— Matt Winkelman (@Matt_Winkelman) March 9, 2018

Indeed, the Marlins could have had a very fun offseason. Jeets would be feted as the savior of Miami. If team failed to get off the ground, he could have sold all the same assets at a mid-season mark up.

By now, you may notice this isn’t about fantasy baseball. Strictly speaking, it’s a fantasy about baseball. Kinda adjacent, right? Sure.

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This is probably a main blog fantasy masquerading as a fantasy blog post. I’ll analyze zero players, discuss no strategies, and only once reference a draft (<—there it is!). Instead, let’s talk about the future – specifically how millennials (and whatever post-millennials are called) will want to consume televised baseball. It’s a future that’s simultaneous brilliant and illegal.

It’s time for micro-broadcasts.

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Eric and Kiley have graciously taken the time to give us some of the best prospect content on the net, but today as prospect week continues I’ll provide a quick fantasy spin for each of the 2018 Top 100 prospects. 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).

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Marcell Ozuna had a breakout year in 2017. If you haven’t been following him much over the past few years, Ozuna had a terrific year in 2014 which set high expectations for him going into 2015. Unfortunately, he had a terrible 2015 season and was eventually demoted to AAA. Some say it may have been related to his maturity or attitude. Michael Hill, Marlins President of Baseball Operations, had this to say about the incident:

“I’ve seen him since he was 16, and it was the first time I had ever seen him hang his head. We spoke after the game, and I was like, ‘Ozo, what’s up?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ He had no answers. He was completely lost. That was when we decided it was in his best interests to send him down. It’s hard when you don’t see Marcell Ozuna with a big smile; that’s who he is.”

Source: Miami CBS Local

Ozuna described being sent to the minors as a “jail sentence.” To his credit, he appears to have used the experience to propel his career forward. In 2016 he had a bounce back year. He matched his then career high 23 homers, posted a solid 106 wRC+, improved peripheral stats (more walks, fewer strikeouts), and played pretty decent defense on top of it.

He took another step forward in 2017, hitting 37 home runs, with a 142 wRC+, even better peripherals, and great defensive numbers. This career year, combined with the extra year of control the Marlins “earned” in 2015 by keeping Ozuna in the minors (nothing to see here) made Ozuna a valuable trade chip. The Cardinals, aiming to consolidate their resources, were happy to trade Sandy Alcantara, Magneuris Sierra, Zac Gallen, and Daniel Castano for an upgrade. So let’s see what sort of player they acquired. Read the rest of this entry »

• Strikeouts = Shoulder Injuries?

Lindsay Berra discussed the increased risk of a shoulder injury to Ohtani because he hits.

As a left-handed hitter, Ohtani’s pitching arm, his right, is his front shoulder when he is at the plate. In recent memory, we’ve seen several players battle injuries to their lead shoulder — Aaron Judge and Michael Brantley included.
…
When a batter makes contact, the counterforce from hitting the ball activates the stabilizing muscles around the shoulder. If he misses, the lack of counterforce means that all the forces generated by the swing are absorbed by the shoulder. And as Ohtani adjusts to Major League pitching, it is likely he will swing and miss more than he did in Japan.
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“Imagine a left-hander swinging out of his shoes and missing,” says Eric Cressey of Cressey Performance in Hudson, Mass. “The right arm continues to come back, and when the arm goes into external rotation or horizontal abduction, the ball tends to fly forward in the socket, which can irritate the front of the shoulder and cause anterior shoulder instability.”

Ohtani will put slightly less stress on his front shoulder, because he has a two-handed finish — at least at the moment — but there will be stress on his pitching shoulder nonetheless.

First, go read the whole article or at least this section. I listed just some highlights but there are more details on hitter shoulder injuries in the full reading.

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