I like the hot corner this year. There is a superstar top tier, some up-and-comers, some quality depth, and plenty of deeper league options.

• Justin’s list

I’ll have an update in early March to account for any moves, news, and/or injuries. Let me know what you think in the comments: how are you building your 3B plan? do you want an extra 3B for CI or do you prefer 1B? who is your sleeper at the position?

Here’s my list.

Other positions:

• 1B
• 2B
• SS

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

Guest: Nick Pollack

Strategy Section

• Simple analytics vs. advanced analytics.
• Offseason information – what is noise, what is real?
• Blind spots of projections for pitchers.
• 2021 Season
  • 6-man roations
  • Starting pitcher inning limits
  • The Tampa Bay Rays
  • What if the season is delayed?
  • Ramp-up from 2020 short season

Starting Pitcher Strategy

• General strategy
• Pitchers that we would more likely roster in auctions vs. snake drafts (& vice versa).

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Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

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2/11/21

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

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Andrew Benintendi, Franchy Cordero, Khalil Lee trade (1:11)
• Jake McGee to SF (18:53)
• Adam Duvall to MIA (26:35)
• Greg Bird to COL (34:41)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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American League

Athletics

• The second base job is up in the air since the team traded for Elvis Andrus.

This is an area that Forst still believes can be addressed internally — and another area that could see a position player battle over in spring training. Forst mentioned Chad Pinder, Sheldon Neuse — he said Neuse would get a “long look” in spring training — Tony Kemp and Vimael Machín. All of these candidates can play multiple positions, and two of them, Kemp and Machín, are left-handed hitters. Pinder and Kemp are the veterans of the group, while Neuse and Machín have limited big-league experience. Neuse projects to have the higher ceiling of the two young players offensively, has good footwork and a strong arm defensively.

Right now, four below-average players are fighting for one spot. Just stay away until there is some clarity.
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The 2021 ATC Projections have arrived at FanGraphs!

The Average Total Cost projection system (ATC) gets its name from the fact that it “averages” many other projection systems together. ATC also happens to be my initials.

ATC is a “smart” projection aggregation model. While most other aggregation systems typically apply equal weight to all underlying data sources, ATC assigns weights based on historical performance. The method is similar to what Nate Silver does with his political forecasting at www.fivethirtyeight.com. Read more about how ATC works in last year’s introductory ATC article.

ATC’s advanced methods have paid off. Last year, FantasyPros ranked ATC as the most accurate baseball projections, even more accurate than their own. Annually, I conduct my own projections review using a game theory method, which has consistently shown that ATC has outperformed other projections. You can read the results of last year’s study here.

Starting this year, ATC will include three new volatility metrics to be described later in this article. Aside from introducing the concepts behind these new metrics, we will also discuss how a fantasy manager might use them in practice.

First, let’s quickly remind everyone on where to find the ATC projections at FanGraphs.

Viewing ATC

There are currently three ways to view and utilize the ATC projections on the site.

• Full Projections
• Individual Player Pages
• Auction Calculator

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Drafts are in full swing and now I am 10 drafts into the season, here are my current ranks for the third base position for 2021. I will post updates every 2-4 weeks as things change with signings, injuries, or news in Major League Baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Shortstop is a rich position with 12 of them are going in the Top 100 picks during winter drafts with 9 of those slotting Top 40 or better. I think 2B actually has a bit more depth with some big overlap in the middle globs that carries into the 40s as far as draftable players (assuming deep leagues, obviously) whereas shortstop starts to peter out around the mid-30s.

• Justin’s list

I’ll have an update in early March to account for any moves, news, and/or injuries. Let me know what you think in the comments: how are you building your SS plan? do you want an extra SS for MI or do you prefer 2B? who is your sleeper at the position?

Here’s my list.

Other positions:

• 1B
• 2B

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Over at Reddit, zoomzilla asked:

Is there a place I can import a player ranking list of my choosing that I can take drafted players off as they are drafted?

And I provided an answer (I’m TucsonRoyal) that can be used once someone has a set of rankings. First, it’s simple. Second, it’s on Google sheets so fantasy co-managers can share it.

I’m hesitant about even posting this because there is a subset of fantasy managers who want their hand held along each step. I’m not here for that. Sorry, I’m here to teach fishing, not to hand them out. The following will produce a simple tracker that takes just a minute or two to set up.
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Drafts are in full swing and now I am 10 drafts into the season, here are my current ranks for the shortstop position for 2021. I will post updates every 2-4 weeks as things change with signings, injuries, or news in Major League Baseball.  Read the rest of this entry »

The keystone is an interesting position in 2021. It definitely has some depth that you really start to see once you get in the trenches and start drafting. There are also a ton of bargain versions of players where they are slightly worse and thus projections are a bit lower, but their talent profiles are close enough that you have a real shot to spike the star-level season from the cheaper version. This isn’t unique to 2B and I’ll likely point it out in a few comments in the upcoming SS and 3B rankings, but it was almost unavoidable here as I saw it popping it up a lot.

• Justin’s list

I’ll have an update in early March to account for any moves, news, and/or injuries. Let me know what you think in the comments: how are you building your 2B plan? do you want an extra 2B for MI or do you prefer SS? who is your sleeper at the position?

Here’s my list.

Read the rest of this entry »