Now that almost 50% of the season is in the books, it’s a good time to check in on baseball’s top hitting prospects from a projections-based perspective. You can see the preseason list here and last year’s midseason list here. Those articles also feature more methodological detail if you want to read more about the projections process. Briefly, the projections capture prospect performance across the (non-DSL) minor and major leagues in recent years, making use of aging curves, major league equivalencies, league environment adjustments, park factors, regression, and more, to project peak (late-20s) prospect performance in the majors. They do not capture scouting, defense, or amateur performance. Starting this offseason, they also capture bat speed, which was made available for a decent handful of prospects this spring training.
• With Jorge Soler banged up (back), there has been some player movement. It doesn’t matter because the guys buried at the end of the lineup aren’t good and aren’t regulars. Read the rest of this entry »
The chart includes their performance for 2025, their opponent’s wOBA rank versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far, my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s a much riskier stream for those spots.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more valuable focusing on roto.
An updated version of the board went up at 9:45 am CT. Several cells were misaligned causing some issues.
While the NFBC Main Event garners most of the attention, there are a handful of leagues with even larger entry fees ($2.5K to $15K). They are named “High Stakes Leagues,” and there are eleven of them. With so much money on the line, these fantasy managers try to gain any advantage. Most of the time, these managers will be a week or two ahead of everyone else on their adds. Here are the players and some information on the ones added in five or more leagues. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of weeks ago, I examined four starting pitchers using a small sample of predictive data. It was a half-hearted comparison. I’m correcting that today with a simple FanGraphs download to spreadsheet comparison.
I decided on the stats to use based on work I did for The Process. Here is a look at what early-season stats are most predictive of rest-of-season stats (R-squared values).
I used the two overall STUFH values (BotOverall, Pitching+) and the top two ERA estimators (SIERA, xFIP). Additionally, I wanted to weigh the stats that immediately stabilize (Ball%, SwStr%, Fastball velocity).
One major change, I put all the values on an ERA scale for easier comparison. Three values came in an ERA format, but the others need to be calculated. Here are the formulas I used (also in the provided spreadsheet).
Not all the values are in the download, so I created a copyable spreadsheet (File, Create a Copy) to paste the pitchers’ stats (cell L4), and then the various ERA values are calculated along with an overall value. The average ERA can be ordered by using the promote option in cell J4.
In this instance, Brandon Walter stands out with everything looking great, except his 92 mph (4.32 ERA) fastball. He could bomb, but the goal is to make the best decision with little information.
One possible change is to adjust the weightings. I equally weighed the values. Someone can always give more weight to certain values (Pitching+) or just remove others (FBv). For me, the table allows for easy comparison of pitchers. If I were to evaluate each pitcher, I’d look at the above stats. This makes the analysis easier.
Two additions could be included: the first is to add a projection based on the preseason prospect rank (overall and team), the other one is to include the pitcher’s ERA projection (via xlookup).
Let me know if you have any questions on setting up the spreadsheet to help evaluate pitchers with a small MLB data sample.
The chart includes their performance for 2025, their opponent’s wOBA rank versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far, my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s a much riskier stream for those spots.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more valuable focusing on roto.
The chart includes their performance for 2025, their opponent’s wOBA rank versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far, my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s a much riskier stream for those spots.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more valuable focusing on roto.
I’m happy to answer any questions you have about those outside the 3-x group (or even inside it if any of them are giving you pause). There’s a group of lower upside guys with great matchups like Yarbs, Parker, Corbin, and Ginn v. another group of higher upside arms with scary matchups like Taj, Ober, Heaney, Miz, and E-Rod. Pick your poison there. Generally, I lean toward talent so I’m inclined to go for someone in that Taj to E-Rod group. Lauer still hasn’t hit 5 IP yet, but he’s interesting to me with good ratios and a capable 15% K-BB in 30.3 IP. Spencer Turnbull is going to pitch Wednesday, too, but I haven’t seen who will open or follow yet. Obviously, the follower is better for fantasy purposes with a chance at the win and I’ll be keeping tabs on whoever fills that role if they consistently pair these two up.
