In addition to the analysis I conduct using my xHR/FB rate equation, I also still look at ESPN Home Run Tracker after the season ends. As usual, I identified a group of hitters before the 2016 season that based on the Home Run Tracker data, appeared to have serious HR/FB downside. Let’s find out how these hitters performed.
We’ve done a good thing for those of you that still care about fantasy baseball right now. The Auction Calculator now has 2016 stats as an option so that you can look backwards at what has just happened. That’s going to be part of our effort, on the way to the end of the year, to look at last year to learn more for next year.
This is an important part of fantasy that usually gets ignored. Not only does the league itself change year to year, so retrospection is important in that way, but we can learn things about fantasy itself that will improve our ability to value players going forward.
The fourth-best player in the game last year, by this list, has already inspired a possible change to the auction calculator going forward. Let’s see what else it jars loose.
Yesterday, I review the five hitters with major HR/FB rate downside. Today, I’ll recap the list of hitters that would have been more actionable and beneficial for fantasy owners — the eight guys with serious HR/FB upside. As usual, I used my xHR/FB rate equation to settle on these names. Let’s find out how they performed.
The 2016 preseason recaps continue and we’re going to move to hitting for the rest of this week. In late January, I used my xHR/FB rate equation (which is likely to get an overhaul this offseason) to identify five hitters with major HR/FB rate downside. Let’s find out how the group performed.
I will continue to help define how to value a prospect for fantasy purposes. Last week, I examined how major league position players’ production lines up with the standard scouting grades. Today, I go the other way and look at how graded prospects perform in the majors.
I believe I am making this study about two years too soon. I would love for there to be more MLB information after the player received his grades and his 4-5 year production. I don’t have that luxury right now. I feel any answer I come up with will be a nice anchoring point but will need to be adjusted later.
To do this study, I took the grades given by Baseball America (2011 to 2014) and MLB.com (2013 to 2014). With each of these players, I looked at those who had 300 plate appearances in their career. With this fairly encompassing group, I would only able to match of 118 seasons. In some of these cases, the same player was compared. For example, both BA and MLB had their own 2013 grades for Xander Boegaerts. Like I said, a person can shoot about 20 different holes in this study, but I am just working with what I have been given so far.
Joe Camp won his league, probably because he reads us and listens to our podcasts here, I dunno, but that’s my guess, totally not because he’s an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. Anyway, he won his league, and his leaguemates started chirping about a couple trades he made that year that may have appeared lopsided at the time — my personal opinion is that vetoes suck, and are a dampener on league activity, and we should all be active and talking to each other as much as possible, so if you were on it, you would have made that lopsided trade first — and so Mr. Camp set out to prove he would have won the league anyway.
The way he did it? He took the worst team in the league and replaced everyone on the team with the best free agent pickups of the year. He then compared that team with everyone’s originally drafted teams. The free agents easily won — 96 points to 87 for the best drafted team.
First, a few words about my offseason writing at Rotographs. Besides reporting any possible relevant fantasy news, I plan on systematically going through two groups of players and work on their 2017 values. I will start at the top of the 2017 rankings and also somewhere in the middle and work my way down each list. I may be able to do a handful of players each article or I might by limited to just the two players. Either way, I will start putting together a 2017 draft ranking.
Additionally, I will try to follow Eno’s schedule for the other writers (e.g. players on playoff teams for the next couple of weeks). If they are looking at outfielders for that specific week, I will also look at outfielders.
The other project I will work through is being able to put a better evaluation on prospects for fantasy purposes. I will use the evaluations of various prospect writers and publications and put their evaluations into something which can be used in fantasy circles. I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish, but I am sure there will be some roadblocks and detours on the way. I will start this series Friday.
Today’s MASH edition is brought to you by some questions I hand listening to Ringer’s The MLB Show podcast featuring Ben Lindbergh and guest Stan Conte (former head Dodgers’ trainer). I would recommend listening to the entire podcast as there is quite a bit of information on injuries. From the podcast, a couple of pieces of information were mentioned by Conte I just wanted to verify them.
I’m finally back from my two week Slovenia/Croatia jaunt (feel free to discuss the wonders of either of those countries in the comments) and what else does one write about when not totally in the loop? More home run surprises, of course! I continue to be in shock at some of the home run total, so let’s discuss more of them.
Baseball is a long and glorious season and as we near the finish line, I’m more inclined to push for a longer season* than a shorter one just because I don’t want to let go, but one of the downsides of the six-month grind is that some seasons go unnoticed. A big April can overshadow regression down the road and a bad one can leave the turnaround overlooked. Sometimes a guy just comes up midseason and never really hits the radar despite performing.
*kidding (sorta)
Here are three solid seasons you might’ve missed:
Hernan Perez [MIL, 3B/OF]
Perez didn’t suffer through a bad April because he only played three games that month. The issue with him is that he was just so far removed from anyone’s radar that if you’re not a Brewers fan, I’m not sure how you would’ve noticed him until the numbers reached a level where we all had to give it a look. Perez has been a counting category stud with 13 homers and 30 stolen bases and the most impressive aspect is that he has needed just 371 plate appearances to reach those marks.