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Every Sunday, in my waiver report I rank lowly rostered closers that might be worth a pickup. I add a note to each closer, in the following format:

Relievers: Saves-based ranks

Grant Taylor: Good reliever who could be the closer.

Andrew Kittredge: Good reliever who seems to be the closer.

Clayton Beeter: Average reliever who is the closer.

I don’t go into details on a pitcher’s talent, but use adjectives like “Good” or “Below-Average” to give readers a sense of how I value view that pitcher’s talent. I’ve winged those values using the season’s results from our Closer Depth Charts.

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Join me as I draft a midseason Gladiator league live! Live stream will begin at 9:45pm EST and the draft begins at 10pm EST. Read the rest of this entry »

The All-Star break is here! That means it’s time to get polling. As has become an annual tradition, I’m going to start by comparing batter wOBA to xwOBA and pitting the xwOBA overperformers against the underperformers during the pre-all-star break period.

We know that xwOBA isn’t perfect (for example, it fails to account for horizontal angle, which certainly impacts results). Neither are SIERA, xERA, and the rest of the ERA estimators. In fact, no estimated/expected/forecasted equation is going to be perfect, because there will always be players that do something we have a difficult time quantifying. Furthermore, there will always be players each year that fall into either end of the extremes for no other reason than complete randomness (luck). So let’s keep that in mind when reviewing these two groups.

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Every Monday, this column will break down the most popular waiver wire and free agent acquisitions of the weekend. I dig into the top adds on the ever-popular Fantrax and in the NFBC Online Championship (OC), a national mid-stakes contest with 240 total leagues of 12 and a six-figure grand prize. Reviewing player adds between the two should provide us with a well-rounded perspective and barometer of the fantasy baseball marketplace.

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“I think you know my opinion on RP.”

• Trusted leaguemate and fellow fantasy writer Sam Lutz

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Here is today’s chat transcript:
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Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman know better than most that baseball is a haunted sport. Downright spooky even. Curses range from the Bambino to the Billy Goat to Seattle-area Etsy witches, baseball fans subscribe to and are victims of decades long vexing hexes.

And by baseball standards, the Home Run Derby Curse is akin to the curse of being on the cover of MLB the Show. FanGraphs writers have taken hacks at diminishing this curse over the years, but the popular consciousness still loves to tout it. Their theory is fairly straight forward, relying on the idea that derby participants change their swing to try and win the derby, and can’t find their game swing again in the second half, leading to a slump.

In this article, I’ll seek to answer two questions:

In recent years, has there been a fall off between halves for derby participants?

And is there a way to try and predict who will fall off to help us humble fantasy managers sell high?

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In this article, I cover the players using CBS’s and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS uses a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now, while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed. I start players being added at CBS who started the week on less than 40% of rosters.

The players are ordered for redraft leagues by my rest-of-season preference, grouped by hitters, starters, and relievers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Note: Any noted rostership rates come from the NFBC RotoWire Online Championship, the same rates we use on the FanGraphs Player Rater. For reference, these leagues are 12-team Roto leagues with 30-man rosters (2 C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, MI, CI, 5 OF, UT, 9 P) and weekly add/drops. This rate can be compared to other rostership rates found in this article. Additionally, I’ve explained why I like to focus on OPS to evaluate hitters in this article.

American League

Angels

• Jorge Soler might not DH as often with Mike Trout off the IL. Trout might also cut into Jose Siri’s playing time.

• Vaughn Grissom (vs LHP) and Nolan Schanuel (vs RHP) might be in a first base platoon. Read the rest of this entry »