I find the season’s first few weeks tough to analyze since no stats besides velocity are even close to being significant. Instead, I will look through the first week’s lineups for hitters whose value may be changing depending on preseason expectations.

Angels

• Mike Scioscia has a lineup and he’s sticking to it unless Shohei Ohtani is the DH.
• Of note, Zack Cozart’s leading off and Kole Calhoun is batting 5th.
• The only question will be Kinsler slot once he comes off the DL. Albert Pujols should be the one dropping out of the cleanup spot but I bet it’s Cozart because, you know, veteran presence.

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Even if you don’t own a turntable, it’s time to shop for some 33s.

Each Thursday, I’ll be recommending hitters to pick up who are owned in 33 percent of leagues or fewer on CBSSports.com and Fantrax. I’ve chosen to use these sites’ ownership rates as a guide, as they tend to be higher than those on ESPN or Yahoo. If I were to use the latter two sites as a guide for identifying players who are available in at least two-thirds of leagues, in reality, some of those players would be unavailable to many owners who play on CBS and Fantrax.
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It’s still way too early to be analyzing anything. Heck, after Tuesday’s games, the league leader in plate appearances sits at just 33! That said, batted ball type distribution does stabilize relatively quickly, compared to other metrics. So even though we’re still not even halfway toward our 80 balls in play stabilization point, it’s worth checking in on batter fly ball rates. Perhaps we’ll get an early indication of which hitters have joined the fly ball revolution and are poised for a home run surge.

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Last week I wrote about a few lesser known opportunities within Ottoneu to maximize salary cap space, which is important to understand before your fantasy season begins.  However, by the time you read this post the fantasy season will have already begun, so I want to focus your attention today on strategies that will help you in-season as you attempt to squeeze every bit of value out of your team during what is sure to be a long but very fun Ottoneu season.

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Today’s article is mainly facts with little to no narrative. I’m investigating possible changes that can be used in fantasy valuation with just a small sample, fastball velocity and lineup position.

Fastball velocity changes from 2017 to 2018 with new pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Opening Day, the teams are drafted and excitement is bubbling over! You have to exhibit a measure of patience to have success in fantasy baseball, but the balance is difficult to strike between that patience and actively acquiring quality players off the free agent wire. The patience should be given primarily to the core of your roster, let’s say the top 15 picks or so, but after that you should identify at least a name or two on your roster that you’re ready to cut if you find someone on the wire.

Here is a look at 10 overlooked names who could become early season waiver gems:

Addison Russell | Cubs, SS

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions, I up the ante with my bold league leaders. If you thought nailing a bold prediction was tough, the bold league leaders are even more difficult! Just getting one right is worthy of celebration. Because these are bold, I automatically disqualify players I don’t personally believe is considered bold or is projected to finish top five in the category. So I challenge myself and it typically causes me to bat .000. This is more for fun and dreaming of what could be than any serious attempt at being right.

We’ll start with the hitting league leaders in each of the five categories, split up by league.

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Every year after we post our positional rankings, I run my Pod’s Picks series, highlighting the players I am more bullish and bearish on compared with the consensus. I didn’t want to completely skip the series this time, so because I’m strapped for time before opening day, I’m going to do a hitter version that lumps all positions together. I’m also only going to discuss my picks, which are the players I am most bullish on versus the rest of the rankers. I figure advice on who to draft, rather than who to avoid, is a bit more valuable.

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This means we’re actually getting close to official baseball, right? It’s bold prediction season and you know the drill (with an Ottoneu context), so let’s get started.

1. Freddie Freeman achieves 8.0 WAR

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On Monday, we launched Fantasy Baseball Week on The Hardball Times, and I started things off by researching whether last season’s breakouts were solid investments the following year. Spoiler alert: they are actually terrible investments. Of course, that’s as a group. That means that not every breakout from the previous season is going to fall flat the following year. So let’s discuss some of the big breakouts from last season and try to figure out whether they end up as part of the poor investment bust group or hold onto their gains.

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