10/23/23

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2H HITTING STUDS

• Royce Lewis MIN
• Triston Casas BOS
• Nolan Jones COL
• Seiya Suzuki CHC
• Will Benson CIN
• Zack Gelof OAK

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American League

Blue Jays

• Alek Manoah has not requested a trade and will be fighting for a rotation spot next year.

The GM also said Manoah hasn’t requested a trade. Realistically, the Blue Jays might explore deals for the starter, but his trade value is at an all-time low, so the return may not be better than the upside of hoping he can rebound in 2024. Odds are, Manoah will be competing for a spot in Toronto’s rotation next spring.

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Thank you, thank you. Welcome back to the next round of fantasy baseball awards that nearly no one was asking for! I’m talking, of course, about the Firsties! The Firsties first came into our lives over 40 years ago and we here at the Academy would like to thank all of you for continuing to care super, duper, deeply about these fake awards. But before we get into these hotly contested awards, the committee would like to make one small announcement, as there seems to have been some earlier confusion about acceptable levels of shenanigans.

Just so we’re crystal – we are currently operating at a 0% Shenanigan Level. Not 10%, not 5%, not even 1%. Zero. Anyone not adhering to said policy will be asked to go inside and stop letting the sun warm your face for a minimum of one month because it’s time to get cereal. Super cereal.

Let the show continue – it’s the Firsties! Read the rest of this entry »

Bigger bases in 2023 allowed for more stolen bases overall this year. More players reached the 20+ stolen base mark than ever before in the Statcast era. In fact, the 51 players who reached 20+ SBs in 2023, more than doubled last year’s mark of 24. The increase in stolen base output is explainable, MLB changed a rule. The flux of home runs in the past few years, however, is not as explainable, though many have tried to explain it with an analysis of the make-up of the actual baseball. But, both of those statistics are up individually and in combination.

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• Yuki Matsui is considering signing with an MLB team.

Star closer Yuki Matsui looks to be interested in a potential move to Major League Baseball, as a Yahoo Japan report (Japanese language link) indicates that Matsui has exercised his international free agent rights, as well as his rights to freely negotiate with other Nippon Professional Baseball clubs.

• Here is a full list of all players with some form of an opt-out that must get decided this winter.

• Rich Hill plans on signing after the season has started, hopefully with a contending team.

Hill might not sign over the winter, however. While he’d previously expressed an intent to play in 2024, the 43-year-old (44 in March) now tells Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune he’s giving some thought to waiting until midway through the campaign before joining a new team.

…

There are a few reasons behind Hill’s decision-making. The most straightforward one is health. MLB’s oldest active player, Hill conceded to Acee he has “a pretty good gauge and a monitor on my body” and considers “half a season … much more palatable than a full season.” Hill also pointed to a desire to spend more time with his family, noting that he’d like to watch his 12-year-old son play during his final year of Little League baseball next spring. By waiting until midseason, he’d also have a chance to survey the competitive landscape and look to land a spot with a playoff contender.

If a contending team signs Hill, they won’t be contending for long. Read the rest of this entry »

*Small smattering of applause that sounds a lot like my wife imploring our kids to “please just clap for Daddy doing his dumb thing”.*

Thank you, thank you – and welcome back to the nation’s most premier(est) fantasy baseball award ceremony! We’ll be starting our offseason festivities off with the tools of ignorance – and no, I’m not talking about my projection methodology (awkward pause)…

*obviously canned audience laughter*

There it is! Now, please, just sit back, relax, and get ready for more bad jokes and lots of talk about the grown men who play on our pretend baseball teams.

It’s the Catchies!

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The following Asian player comps came about because I was tired of not having a reference when a player signed in the stats from Japan or Korea. The projections seemed off as either being too enthusiastic or just hated the player. This is my solution.

First off, this method is far from perfect. It’s not even close. The main problem is that the largest group to make the jump, pitchers from Japan, only have a sample size of 50 players with most of them being bullpen arms. Those who make projections are using the same sample. I wanted to know who was in that sample. One fact I fact I found while compiling this list is that any projection will have wide error bars so being close is a major achievement.

To create a reference I could use, I took all the players who made the jump from Japan or Korea. I took their single-season stats before the jump to their major league stats. I grouped similar players using z-score on a few core stats. Read the rest of this entry »

First, I know no one, and I mean absolutely no one besides myself cares how I performed this year. While I needed to do a final inventory of my teams, the following should be more of a guideline on how fantasy managers should evaluate their season. First, try to find any systemic holes in a strategy. Second, make a list of what worked and what didn’t work for you.

I always look back on my season and really try to figure out what went right and wrong. Over the season’s last few weeks, I was disappointed in my season with many of my teams out of contention and the few in contention were just scraping by. In the end, I turned a nice profit thanks to winning my NFBC Super, but overall I was disappointed with my performance. Here is a look at those teams. Read the rest of this entry »

This past season, the minor leagues experimented with several rules including pre-tacked baseballs and automatic strike zones. The following is a look at how those rules changed the amount of expected production from players.

First off, I’m not going to weave a narrative around this data dump. There is no polishing this turd. The information can be referenced later as fantasy managers begin to dive into 2023’s results while preparing for next season. Read the rest of this entry »

2022 was the worst year I have ever had as a fantasy player. I played in 16 leagues and did not cash in a single one. The hard part is that I didn’t  even know what went wrong. I had teams I really liked coming out of the draft and some that were doing very well throughout the season. I could have easily brushed it off as a bad season or beaten myself up over it. However, I worked my butt off to get better. 

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