Here is today’s chat transcript
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2/16/24

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

PATREON

• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
• Watch the video feed replay on YouTube

INJURIES/TRANSACTION NEWS

• O’s interested in Luzardo

OF PREVIEW Pt. 3

Power-Focus

• Anthony Santander 142
• Jorge Soler 168
• Kerry Carpenter 225
• Max Kepler 283
• Will Benson 305
• Brent Rooker 307
• Matt Wallner 310
• Giancarlo Stanton 320
• Luke Raley 330 (discussed at 1B)

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The Starting Pitcher Preview (Part II) episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Paul Sporer

Strategy Section

• Relievers moving to the rotation
  • Good source to find fantasy players?
  • Candidates for 2024
• San Francisco Giants plan for 2024
• Total Solar Eclipse
• Spring Training
  • Red Flags
  • Green Flags
  • Injuries in Spring Training
  • Spring training stats on FanGraphs !!!
• How to value older / aging pitchers
  • Survivor Bias
  • How cost plays in to the risk
• Supermodels
• How to value pitchers coming over from a foreign league
  • Foreign pitchers vs hitters
• 9 Pitcher roto roster – how to split SP/MR/CL?

Starting Pitchers

• General player pool observations
• Lower tiered pitchers
  • What to look for?

ATC Undervalued Players

• Starting Pitchers
  • Jordan Montgomery
  • Nestor Cortes
  • Eduardo Rodriguez
  • Ryan Pepiot
  • Aaron Civale
  • Griffin Canning
  • John Means

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As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.

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2/15/24

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

PATREON

• Join our Patreon for live video feeds of each show
• Watch the video feed replay on YouTube

INJURIES/TRANSACTION NEWS

• Kyle Bradish UCL sprain
• John Means behind schedule
• Justin Verlander sore shoulder

OF PREVIEW Pt. 2

Top 100 Leftovers

• Mike Trout 73
• Kyle Schwarber 92
• Bryan Reynolds 93

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Last season around this time I wrote an article showcasing a recipe that would help select starting pitching in drafts. I queried the heck out of a dataset containing 2022 end-of-season pitcher data and 2023 projected data, slicing and splicing the list down to an interesting group of pitchers, each having done or expected to do the following:

• A SwStr% in 2022 of at least 11%. (2022 MLB SP average – 10.7%)
• A K/9 projection (steamer) of eight or better. (2022 MLB SP average – 8.18)
• Positive pVals (Pitch Info) on at least two pitches in 2022.
• An ADP greater than 100.

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I don’t consider busts to be players who have no fantasy value but guys who will disappoint compared to where they are being drafted. There is no reason to take a chance on the player with similar options at similar costs.

Usually, the market will find any flaw in a player and bury them. Because of this, it’s easier to find a reason for a player to beat his draft cost than exceed it. But just as many players will be under their projections than over them by the season’s end.

For busts, we divided the players up by 50 spots of ADP so fantasy managers could consider the players in their league depth. 

Changelog

• 2/14/2024: Initial list

Ranking Methodology

• ADP is based on 30-day rolling NFBC Draft Champions Leagues.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net (though that’s not a big deal at SP).

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Introduction

In 2018, I introduced a game theory approach for comparing baseball projection systems. Proudly, the original article was nominated for Baseball Article of the Year by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA). Today, I am proud to release the same in-depth research for the sixth consecutive year!

This is not a typical statistical analysis. There won’t be any Chi-squared tests, nor will I calculate Type I or Type II errors. Forget about mean squared errors or any hypothesis testing.

My methodology does not incorporate a statistical model. Instead, it looks to determine the profitability potential of each projection system by simulating what would have happened in a fantasy auction draft. It games the projections.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s think about what happens in a real fantasy [pun intended] baseball draft auction.

Suppose that Jared Cross himself (or anyone exclusively using the Steamer projections) walks into a rotisserie auction prior to the 2023 baseball season. Let’s say that Jared decides to participate in an NFBC auction league. Mr. Cross would take his projections and run a valuation method through them to obtain auction prices. He would generate a list that looked something like this …

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As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.

Read the rest of this entry »

American League

Angels

• Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com still sees Carlos Estévez as the closer.

Estévez is expected to be the closer again this season, although he did struggle in the second half. Stephenson was the club’s biggest addition in the offseason, signing for three years and $33 million. He’ll be the club’s top setup reliever, and could take over as closer if Estévez falters.

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