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*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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10/9/23

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

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TOP 50 BARGAINS

• Zach Eflin – 272 ADP, 4th pitcher rk
• Justin Steele – 293, 14th
• Tarik Skubal – 450, 15th
• Sonny Gray – 188, 19th
• Kodai Senga – 162, 24th

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• Jung-hoo Lee 이정후 might get posted this offseason.

Lee doesn’t have Yamamoto’s high profile and he’ll come at a significantly lower price tag, but Lee could very well land a healthy contract himself during an offseason that is generally short on premium free-agent position players. Like Yamamoto, Lee is also 25 years old, would be subject to a posting fee, and has impressed observers over seven seasons of international ball.

Lee has hit .340/.407/.491 over 3946 career plate appearances for the Heroes, with 65 homers and 244 doubles. His resume includes KBO League MVP honors in 2022, five KBO Gold Gloves for his defense (mostly in center field), and a standout performance for South Korea’s team in the last World Baseball Classic.

• Reliever Yariel Rodriguez is now a bullpen option for teams to consider.

Per reporter Francys Romero, Cuban right-handed reliever Yariel Rodriguez has been granted his release by the NPB’s Chunichi Dragons. Rodriguez figures to apply for MLB free agency in the near future, which could put him on the radar to sign with a big league club ahead of the 2024 season. The Dragons have not confirmed the report.

He pitched for Cuba during the WBC but took this past season off.

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When analyzing closers and the Saves they produce, this season’s results were mixed. Some trends continued (e.g. lots of pitchers getting Saves) and some bucked recent trends (e.g. more keeping the role for the full season). To start with, here are the initial (i.e. drafted) closers and how long they kept their job. Read the rest of this entry »

To qualify for this totally made-up award, a player must have earned at least $5 by the end of the season and accumulated at least $5 more than expected. This query logic allows for players who we already knew would be good but just didn’t know would be this good.

2022 Finalists: Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, and Freddie Freeman

2023 Finalists: Matt Olson, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Corbin Carroll

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With the season over, it’s to find out how hitters performed who didn’t let an injury heal and played through the pain. Whether these hitters cause permanent damage to their bodies or pick up bad habits, they continue to underperform their projections. Besides collecting the names myself, I’ve asked for some help (article and Twitter) for this past season’s list.

I first determined the decline in an article covering 2017 to 2019 and have continued collecting names and results (2020, 2021, and 2022). Read the rest of this entry »