10/13/19

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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• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
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• @GoJPG – Huge thanks to producer James Gale

NEWS

• The playoff ball

2020 DISCUSSION

• Two Key Takeaways from 2019 
• Stephen Strasburg (44 Too Early ADP) v. Jack Flaherty (43)
• Frankie Montas (165) v. José Berríos (81)

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I had a rather middling season in my fantasy leagues this year. My Main Event team was a nightmare, but everything else meandered around the middle (save a tough finals loss in my H2H league), looking like a real competitor for weeks at a time and a lost cause in others. Whether you win big, lose big, or land somewhere in the middle, you should learn something from the eight-month grind (including February and March).

Sometimes the Players Fail, Not the Strategy

Gee Paul, really starting off with some self-examination here by blaming the players! I don’t say this to shirk responsibility, but rather to remind myself that a strategy falling short doesn’t automatically mean it’s a loser. That’s where running a similar strategy across multiple leagues with different players can be useful. I really wanted two big arms to headline my rotations this year, but when Noah Syndergaard’s nauseatingly inconsistent year was one of them in many leagues, I was doomed.

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For today I just wanted to conduct a quick little exercise regarding stolen bases. So I looked at the top 20 finishers in the NFBC Main Event and tabulated all the players they got at least 10+ stolen bases from and then figured out how often each player showed up. As we turn our attention to 2020, I’m finding what I believe is too heavy of a focus on speed to the point of pushing down otherwise excellent players simply because they don’t run.

I understand the value of someone who does it all, but I’m not bypassing the brilliant contributions of someone like Nolan Arenado just because he nabs 2-3 SBs a year. There’s always a balance, right? You can’t completely ignore speed, but with premium SB contributors dwindling, you also don’t need as many at the draft table. At any rate, let’s get into it and see how it panned out.

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Note: For my next few articles, I’m going to examine the hitters and pitchers who underperformed and overperformed in 2019. Each article may spawn off others since some areas may need to be explored in more detail. After performing horribly in 2019, I need to take take a hard look at why I missed last season and what I can do to improve.

I’m going to start with the one player class every owner hopes to hit on, breakout hitters. A couple of these cheaply acquired star hitters can help carry a team. It could be a prospect turned uber-prospect (e.g. Pete Alonso) or just a hitter displaying new skills (e.g. Ketel Marte). I’m going to dig into the reason these breakouts were not draft-day targets and look for any common themes.

To get the test subjects, I ran our auction calculator for end-of-season production and then compared the auction dollars to the values created from their ADP. I didn’t want to just use the difference in ranks because the gap from #1 to #15 could be over $10 but the difference between #250 to #300 might just be $1. Using this method, I found 62 hitters who outperformed their value by $10 or more.
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10/08/19

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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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• NYY stomps MIN
• TB forces game 4 v. HOU
• ATL/STL & WAS/LAD game 5s
• Joe Maddon likely going to LAA

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I knew the final prediction result tally was going to be rough but it was worse than expected.

Note: I used the default league setting in our auction calculator to determine the final ranks.

1. Jung Ho Kang will be a top-10 starting third baseman by season’s end.

Whoa, not a good start. I’m not even sure if he was a top-10 third baseman on his own team.

0 for 1
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We knew coming into the season that shortstop was deep, but it even exceeded the expectations from the spring. Studs being studs, rookies coming through in a major way, development for several others, and of course the ball created an explosion at the position. Even more impressive is the fact that we have another wave of potential gems on the horizon.

Other 2020 Rankings:

• SP
• C
• 1B
• 2B

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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After doing an overview of the juiced ball and a focus on pitchers, I started down a path to find out which hitters would be most affected by the juiced ball. I didn’t know it was going to be overrun with thorn bushes and misleading signs. The process was nearly impossible for the simple fact that the league’s hitting profile changed. Besides even considering the ball, batters were hitting more flyball, hitting the ball harder, and pulling it over short corner fences. I tried to find one answer but ended finding another.

One key to this analysis is that I wanted to keep it simple. I didn’t want to pump the data into some neural network for a more “correct” answer where I’d not sure of the factors in play and how each one was weighted. I wanted some clarity.

One set of factors I initially used was the StatCast information but I didn’t use it for the final analysis because it didn’t add any accuracy. Groundball rate is almost a perfect proxy for Launch Angle. Home run per batted ball is basically a Barrel. Also, StatCast data has only been available since 2015 when the juiced ball started. There is no baseline data for the deadened ball period.
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With the 2019 season in the books, it’s time to go back and look at my bold predictions and see how they fared. I had to get a little liberal with the scoring last year for my 2.5 out of 10, but let’s see if we can best that without playing fast and loose with the rules.

Ramón Laureano goes 25 HR/40 SB

I’d like to blame injury for missing this one, but even if he played more than the 123 games we saw, he wasn’t chasing down 40 SB. I even vowed to stop making SB predictions after last year and yet my very first one of 2019 included the notoriously fickle stat. Laureano went 24 HR/13 SB in his 481 PA and might’ve gone 30/20 with a full season. The point of bold predictions is to highlight players who could far exceed their draft value (and won’t come close to it if it’s a negative one) and Laureano did that so I feel like it’s a win, but it’s not worth a point here.

0-for-1

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… but not by much for teams I just owned …

My 2019 fantasy season did not live up to my standards with most of the struggles being self-inflicted. Here are some overarching themes I spotted with each league plus some additional points at the end.

Horrible FAAB management

I ran out of money in almost every league and spent too much FAAB on worthless assets. Looking back over the leagues, the root cause was chasing week-only plays. From my work writing “The Process”, I found out how valuable it is to grind out each week. Additionally, I ran the weekly FAAB projections here so I knew around what it would take to get each. Initially, I got the players and but dropped them a week or two later for better options with little to show for the FAAB spent

I need to set a FAAB limit for chasing week-only plays and just accept it’s fine to miss out on a few players. A week’s advantage is worth the same in week 1 or the final week. The rest of my FAAB can be used for chasing long term improvements. Some players may straddle the long-term and weekly play so the FAAB may come from both the weekly and long term pools. I need to have a plan and stick to it.
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