10/17/19

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

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Joe Maddon to LAA
• Buck Showalter candidate for NYM/PHI
  • Are tms trending back toward classic mgr?
• Who does gm4 rainout help more?

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The Arizona Fall League moved up the Fall Stars game to mid-October this year which in turn moved up Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Forum conference. As you may know if you’ve been following me for a while, we conduct some early NFBC Draft and Hold leagues out there where we select our first 23 players live and then finish the remaining 27 rounds online in January. This is always fun because of how fresh we are off the regular season and it’s interesting to see how much recency bias owns the draft. Plus, there’s the bonus of being at the AFL meaning some of the prospects on the cusp get pushed up as well.

Here’s a quick rundown of my first 23 picks conducted out of the 13 spot. I’ve long aimed for a late pick in order to be early in the first round (actually the 24th) when we resume in January as news and moves often create some big-time values to be garnered that late in the draft.

1.13 – Justin Verlander | SP, HOU

I figured picking late would leave looking at a starter in the first round and I have no problem with that. There is some trepidation with taking a 37-year old pitcher for some, but I don’t share those reservations because there is literally nothing in Verlander’s profile that makes him look like a risk outside of his age.

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Today, I move onto reviewing my preseason BABIP calls, starting with the surgers. In late February, I used my xBABIP equation to identify eight hitters whose actual BABIP marks were significantly below their xBABIP marks, suggesting a potentially dramatic BABIP jump in 2019. Let’s find out if that did indeed occur for these hitters.

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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.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
• @pitcherlist – Co-Host
• @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.

Follow us on Twitter

• @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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