I look at each lineup to find any recent changes. Big thanks to Baseball-reference.com for tracking the lineups.

Angels

• Since Ian Kinsler has returned, he’s led off three of the four games with Cozart moving down to the 5th/6th spot.

Astros

• Since returning, Yulieski Gurriel has batted in the 4th and 5th spots.
• Last night, Alex Bregman dropped from the 2nd spot to the 5th spot with the normal players in the lineup. The likely reason is Bregman’s struggles (.214/.321/.300).

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In November I used the Prospect Scorecard to take an early look at the top 100 fantasy prospects for both Roto leagues and Ottoneu’s wOBA-heavy FanGraphs Points leagues.  In February I also added a quick fantasy spin on Eric and Kiley’s great preseason work ranking the top 100 prospects in baseball. Later this summer (July) I’ll update the top 100 for fantasy purposes, but today I want to briefly check in on a number of prospects that I think are rising (⬆) or falling (⬇) in value for various reasons in 2018.

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Yesterday, I discussed the early fly ball & line drive exit velocity surgers. Today, let’s dive into the decliners. Explanations for such a dramatic drop in exit velocity ranges from a small sample cold streak, playing through injury, or good old deterioration of power skills. If only we knew which of those explanations applied to each player!

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On Friday, I examined hitters with new plate approaches focusing on launch angle and plate discipline. I notice Brad Miller, Javier Baez, and Leonys Martin had each dropped their groundball rate but I didn’t have an idea of what is the ideal value. After spending way too much going down way too many paths this past weekend, the simple answer is average 20 degrees (32% GB%) with weak and/or fast hitters needing to push the value down to 15 degrees (42% GB%).

There is no need for readers to hang around any longer if they have more pressing matters like setting their daily or weekly lineups. For those looking for a little more explanation, thanks for staying around. I went through several methods I’m not going to discuss. I like simple useable answers and that’s what I’ll provide today.

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Saying that Dan Vogelbach is on the verge of fantasy relevance takes some storytelling cues from “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Back in 2016, it seemed like only a matter of time until Vogey was a regular fantasy contributor. In the first half of 2016, Vogelbach hit .318/.425/.548 in Triple-A Iowa, with 16 homers and 18 doubles in 89 games. However, with Anthony Rizzo entrenched at first base, Vogey didn’t seem to have a role with the Cubs, so they dealt him to Seattle in exchange for Mike Montgomery.

Mostly because of his poor defense — but certainly also due in part to his non-athletic body — Vogelbach was never a darling of top prospect lists, but for fantasy purposes he seemed like a relatively sure thing for production in Seattle. As it turned out, he slowed down a bit after joining the Mariners system, hitting .240/.404/.422 over the final 44 games of 2016, and with Adam Lind performing at an okay-ish rate for the major-league club, it seemed Vogey would have to wait until 2017 to strut his chubby stuff in the big leagues.

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Exit velocity is an underlying skill that drives results. I like analyzing underlying skills. So let’s check in on the average fly ball and line drive exit velocity (FB/LD EV) surgers. Though the metric didn’t make it into my newest version of xHR/FB rate, it still correlates with offensive output and power.

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To hell with reliable hitter sample sizes for the day and probably the rest of the season. I’ve waited long enough. It’s time to start figuring out which hitters are changing their approach and who should be targeted or dumped. By examining plate discipline and launch angle, the investigation can begin.

Last season, I kept diving into which stats point to sustainable breakouts. Two concepts stood out, plate discipline and launch angle. Concentration on changes in just these approaches removed 95% of the noise. If these two areas don’t point to a change, an owner can then see if power (exit velocity, HR/FB) or pull rate. Otherwise, just ignore the current stat line and expect some regression.

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Welcome to the first 2018 edition of the deep league waiver wire! This is where I recommend two players with ownership rates that don’t exceed 10% in CBS leagues. These recommendations are geared toward deep leaguers, which is mostly mono leagues (AL-Only or NL-Only). But, sometimes I feel they are worthy of shallower league consideration, and I’ll note when that happens.

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Yesterday, I examined the American League lineups. Today it’s the National League’s turn.

Braves

• Their lineup has been consistent with Nick Markakis hitting cleanup and Preston Tucker batting 5th. I sort of wrote Tucker off coming into the season and need to re-evaluate him and his .467 BABIP.

Brewers

• A major platoon has been used so far with Eric Thames facing righties and Domingo Santana going against lefties. Otherwise, it’s tough to find any reasoning behind some of the changes.
• I’m a little worried about Orlando Arcia’s stolen base chances as he’s getting slotted into the 8th spot in front of the pitcher.

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One of the great things about Ottoneu is the high level of engagement by the growing community of owners.  Few topics get the masses talking more than crowd-sourcing feedback on recent league trades, so today I want to highlight a few of the more interesting trades I’ve seen recently to get a pulse on how some player values are already shifting early this season.

As a quick reminder, Ottoneu is a keeper system by design that shifts the balance just short of traditional dynasty leagues, and offers a variety of scoring systems (including H2H this year).

Few players have seen their value shift as wildly as Shohei Ohtani over the past few weeks.  What he’s managed to do to start the season with both the bat (1.286 OPS) and off the mound (97.8 mph fastball) has at least verified that he’s as talented as the world thought he was, but the fact that he now looks less raw than he did just a few weeks ago in spring training tells you everything you need to know about the upward trajectory of his value in fantasy baseball leagues.  If you don’t happen to own Ohtani already, he’s going to be one of the hardest players in the game to acquire over the next 30 days.  He’s young, exciting, and just for the cool factor of clicking between batting and pitching stats on his FanGraphs page makes him the hottest commodity in the game right now, especially if you have the flexibility of slotting him into your daily lineup or your rotation like Ottoneu provides.

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