Hello Draft Season!
Here are my top 50 3rd basemen for 2020. Paul and I will be discussing the position on the Sleeper and the Bust on Wednesday, so definitely check that out. For more ranks of mine for 2020, you can click the links below: Read the rest of this entry »
| 8:02 |
: It’s time to get started.
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| 8:03 |
: Any recommendations for first time players in the NFBC. Asking more about what’s a good level to start playing at?
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| 8:04 |
: An online championship. The FAAB process and bi-weekly lineup setting can be learned with one.
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| 8:04 |
: 14 team dynasty points. I have an excess of 1B. Should I trade A) 5 years of Pete Alonso for 2 years of Story, 2 years of Conforto, 6 years of Tony Gonsolin B) 5 years of Pete Alonso for 1 year of Mookie, rookie roster Ian Anderson, Trevor Larnach, Astudillo or C) Hold
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| 8:05 |
: I like A a lot.
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| 8:05 |
: How many plate appearances for Miguel Andujar this year?
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01/20/20
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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2020 SHORTSTOP PREVIEW
Studs (2:22)
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01/17/19
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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10 PLAYERS WHO COULD SURGE IN MARCH DRAFTS
Current Price is January 1st-17th Draft Champions ADP
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I’m finally able to mine a few useful bits of information with players, coaches, and owners talking at Fan Fests and caravans.
• Maikel Franco played through a hand bruise last season. When I collected information on players who played through an injury, he didn’t come up. The injury happened in early August and initially, his production suffered (.572 OPS). It bounced back in September (.703 OPS) hopefully meaning it’s not major.
• Brandon Nimmo is another hitter I missed who played through an injury.
Dragging down the above numbers is Nimmo’s performance last April and May, when he played through a bulging disk in his neck.
• Also, while investigating all the hitters who played through an injury, I found this nugget on Matt Carpenter from 2017.
Carpenter sat out the Cardinals’ final three games and underwent a follow-up MRI to the one he had a month ago. The exam showed the same thing now that the doctors knew then, which is that Carpenter is dealing with inflammation and not a structural issue.
Since then, he has missed a considerable amount of time with back injuries. I just can’t pay for any kind of rebound with what seems to be a chronic injury.
01/16/19
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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Sprint Speed values have been publicly available for a few seasons. While I see it mentioned for this or that, I don’t know how predictive it is or if should I care about it at all. After analyzing the data, Sprint Speed might need to be ignored in favor of Time-to-First. The stopwatch still rules.
The key, in my opinion, is if the ability to run fast can be predictive in any way. No one that I know of is playing in a Sprint Score league, so the speed with have a secondary effect. If a player is running slower, do their stolen bases drop? How about how many infield hits they can leg out? Generally, how will the players change in speed affect their stolen bases and batting average.
One factor to keep in mind is that the aging curve for stolen bases is just a drop with all humans reaching their peak sprinting speed in their early 20’s. There are going to be a lot of negative speed values coming up but that’s just aging pulling players down.
A second factor to remember is that teams are not allowing hitters to run as much. In 2015, there were over 2500 stolen bases league-wide. Last season, the value was under 2300 for a 9% decline. Again, more negative numbers.
Sprint Speed was first introduced in 2015 at Baseball Savant (links to Time-to-First values) and it is widely cited. Sprint Speed is not the only measured speed metric available. For one fewer season, Baseball Savant has each hitter’s run times to first base which have been the traditional measure of a player’s speed and it’s still used in scouting players. With the two metrics, it’s table time to what conclusions can be drawn.
01/15/19
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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*Bad in this case is a 4.50 ERA or higher^ in 2019
^Except for one guy, who had a 4.49
Yesterday I looked at some quality four-seamers, sliders, and cutters coming from these so-called “bad” pitches – again, we’re talking about bad in the fantasy realm as most leagues won’t have major use for someone with an ERA north of 4.50 – and today we’re looking at changeups, curveballs, and splitters.
CHANGEUP
Lg. average: .653 OPS, 22% K, 17% SwStr, 38% Chase
Daniel Norris, DET | .532 OPS, 31% K, 20% SwStr, 42% Chase
Here’s our guy with the 4.49 ERA, by the way. Norris also had a solid slider, but like so many guys I covered yesterday, his fastball held him back. He allowed a 1.024 OPS with his heat including 19 of his 25 home runs. Homers have been a career-long issue for Norris, too, but especially the last two years with a 1.6 HR/9 in both seasons.
Yesterday, I noticed someone slid into my DM’s and I got my hopes up but instead I got this:
Maybe. Many of the Astros players didn’t think it helped.
Some Astros players told my investigators that they did not believe the sign-stealing scheme was effective, and it was more distracting than useful to hitters.
We just don’t know for sure of the effects of cheating so I guess I better take a stab and find out.
To start with, I went to the projection sources to find out how the projections weigh each year’s results. The weighted averages, along with some aging adjustments and regression, create the final projections. ZiPS is up first.
Dan Szymborski uses individual weightings for each component (strikeouts, doubles, etc) but at the end, the weighting is close to 8-5-4-2 where ‘8’ is the last season. According to the commissioner’s report, the Astros “only” cheated at home in 2017 so only 2 units (half of four, the third value) of the weighting will be boosted. The percentage of the projection’s input from the cheating is 10.5% (2/[8+5+4+2] or 2/19).
