Archive for Featured

November ADP Market Report: Third Basemen

With drafts beginning to ramp up, it is important to monitor where players are being draft 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.

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Late-Round Evaluations: Lester, Voth, Velasquez, & Others

I’m continuing my attention on fringe starters. They are the starters who once the season starts, managers are going to have to make a quick decision on adding or dropping. These pitchers will be in play all season. I’m using NFBC’s ADP and starting at the bottom and selecting any starter drafted by half the teams. Here is an evaluation of the six more starters (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6).

Note: I had been using the player’s ADP rank and I moved to the actual ADP for clarity.

#623 Shane McClanahan

The 23-year-old lefty is a member of the Rays organization who pitched OK through the minors until getting hit around (.450 BABIP, 1.5 HR/9) in AA (8.35 ERA). Drafting him seems like a desperate dart throw on playing time and talent. Pass.

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 873 – Lots of 3B Talk; Santana to KC

12/10/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

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Beat the Shift Podcast – Teaser

Introducing the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Throughout the year we will be discussing various topics such as drafting methods, hotspot drafting, auction strategy, game theory, risk/reward and return on investment. We will be doing data driven deep player dives. We will reccomend waiver wire players to consider rostering and we will provide key injury updates with timetables.

The focus of this podcast is on strategy.

We will answer questions such as: What types of players should you avoid in the first round? How should you deal with risk in drafting? What is the right amount of draft budget to spend on pitchers vs. hitters? How much FAAB should you spend in your first month? What should you budget for the last month? Should you bid more FAAB on prospects, on hot players or on relievers? What is the optimal way to trade in a league? How to know when to bench a player? When do you cut a player? What key metrics let you know when to add a player? What are the best metrics to look at? And much much more.

The Beat the Shift Podcast has joined FanGraphs.

Who are we, and what is the show about? Find out more on this teaser episode of Beat the Shift.

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November ADP Market Report: Second Basemen

With drafts beginning to ramp up, it is important to monitor where players are being draft 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.
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Hurt Hitters are Outperforming Healthy Ones. Why?

I started diving into the dividing out the effects of injuries limited ramp time for the short season and didn’t get far. Some league-wide rates didn’t add up. Hitters who head to the IL are outperforming the healthy population.

Note: This analysis is math-heavy. I summarized my findings and questions at the end.

To start with, here are the league-wide OPS values for all nonpitchers as I compare the first month as players might have been ramping up.
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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 872 – White Sox Improve; Start of 3B Preview

12/8/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

2021 THIRD BASE, PT. 1

The King

The Stars

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed. Please rate & review the show in iTunes letting us know what you think!

Approximately 67 minutes of joyous analysis.


Fantasy Baseball Chat With Jeff Zimmerman

11:00
Jeff Zimmerman: Welcome everyone

11:00
Jeff Zimmerman: It’ll be a few more weeks of fantasy football and then everyone can focus on baseball drafts.

11:01
Ji Man Soy: Most intriguiging OF outside of the top 300 redraft

11:01
Jeff Zimmerman: Let me look

11:01
Jeff Zimmerman: Mitch Haniger if healthy

11:02
Jeff Zimmerman: Adam Eaton depending on where he signs

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Any Hope for These 2020 Flops?

Calling someone a flop in two-month season requires some serious caveats, air quotes around “flop”, or both. That doesn’t mean there weren’t several disappointing players that deserve a deeper look to see what’s going on. We will investigate some of them today and if you find this exercise worthwhile, we can make it a series!

Victor Robles | WAS – OF – 65 wRC+

Robles had the standard “better in fantasy” season in 2019 as his 17 HR and 28 SB overshadowed his uninspired .255/.326/.419 line. His proponents (of which I am one) acknowledged the poor batted ball profile but felt that it was premature to lock the 23-year old into his 2019 levels. Oh, he wasn’t locked in… turns out he could get worse!

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Mr. Glass

Being a big comic book and superhero fan I couldn’t help but think of Mr. Glass when it comes to Tyler Glasnow (besides the obvious pun). For those who don’t know, Mr. Glass is a character played by the prominent actor Samuel Jackson in the hit movie Unbreakable. The character’s name derives from a rare condition that brittles his body leaving him able to break every bone in by just falling over. While Tyler Glasnow is injury prone, this correlation more so derives from the make up of his skill set, one that might be more fragile than we think. 

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