The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

The honor for first 2016 Pod Projectionee goes to Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager. He came to the plate just 113 times in his Major League cup of coffee, but man did he impress. He posted a robust .421 wOBA and displayed elite underlying skills across the board. I wrote him up in mid-November, concluding with the following:

With all the other exciting sophomores getting more attention, it’s possible Seager slips under the radar, even with his excellent September performance. Normally, he’s the type of player who would be a near lock to be overvalued. But I’m not so sure about it. In fact, I’m rather curious where fantasy owners will peg his value. I don’t expect a big breakout, but he could very well be a solid across the board contributor.

“…it’s possible Seager slips under the radar”, ha! He’s currently the 55th player off the board and third shortstop selected according to NFBC ADP. Surely fantasy owners haven’t forgotten about him and are putting an awful lot of stock into his prospect pedigree and a tiny sample of MLB performance. Are they justified in their optimism?

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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

The Cardinals starters — and even their reserves — are mostly set. Jedd Gyorko was acquired in return for Jon Jay and should serve as the primary backup to Matt Carpenter at third base, Jhonny Peralta at shortstop and Kolten Wong at second base. None of the starters ahead of Gyorko are in danger of losing their starting jobs, but should any of them suffer an injury, the former Padre could have modest deep-league value as a middle infielder with average to above average power (.158 ISO and 49 homers in 1,426 career plate appearances), albeit with an ugly average (.247 last year and .236 for his career). That said, there’s no playing time battle at second base, shortstop or third base. There is, however, a fierce battle to be waged at first base. The outfield is essentially settled, but there is one position worth monitoring during the year. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

Fresh off 98 wins and a third consecutive post-season appearance, the Pirates enter 2016 with an elite outfield and one of baseball’s preeminent pitch framers behind the dish. But the infield, like the Allegheny that flows just beyond PNC’s walls, is both murky and shallow.

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Three years ago, I conducted an exhaustive study of ESPN Home Run Tracker data. At that time, it was the primary tool I used to validate a batter’s power, before we got into the sexy new batted ball distance, and then combined that with standard deviation of distance and average absolute angle. The short story is I found that hitters with an unusually high percentage of “Just Enough” (JE) homers saw their HR/FB rates decline the following year, significantly more than the rest of the player population. On the other hand, those who hit a high percentage of “No Doubt” (ND) homers maintained their HR/FB rate much better than the rest of the group.

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Three years ago, I conducted an exhaustive study of ESPN Home Run Tracker data. At that time, it was the primary tool I used to validate a batter’s power, before we got into the sexy new batted ball distance, and then combined that with standard deviation of distance and average absolute angle. The short story is I found that hitters with an unusually high percentage of “Just Enough” (JE) homers saw their HR/FB rates decline the following year, significantly more than the rest of the player population. On the other hand, those who hit a high percentage of “No Doubt” (ND) homers maintained their HR/FB rate much better than the rest of the group.

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Yesterday, I used Alex Chamberlain’s xBABIP formula to determine which hitters most underperformed in the BABIP department, if you believe in xBABIP, of course. Today, I check in on the other side of the coin — those hitters whose xBABIPs were well below their actual BABIP marks. Since we’re dealing with an equation here that still has much room for improvement (it’s r-squared is the best I’ve seen, but still only in the mid-0.40 range), it’s possible, heck quite likely, that it’s missing things.

So let’s not take what it says as gospel, but it would be foolish to ignore what it suggests. Though you might not agree that these hitters all have the type of downside xBABIP hints at, everyone should agree that there’s far more downside here than upside and elevated risk if fantasy owners are paying for a repeat BABIP, or close to it.

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Seemingly every year, we try to develop a new hitter xBABIP equation. Obviously, the goal is to improve upon the previous iteration because BABIP is really hard to predict. We can be reasonably sure that some hitters own high BABIP, average BABIP or low BABIP skills, but that’s about it. In any given year, the metric could swing wildly. As more granular data continues to be made available to us, we could use it to keep bettering our ability to predict BABIP and understand which underlying skills drive it.

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Yesterday, I whipped out my xHR/FB equation and compared its calculation to every player’s actual HR/FB rate to come up with a list of eight hitters destined for a HR/FB rate spike off their 2015 marks. Today I visit those on the opposite end of the spectrum, the guys who outperformed their xHR/FB rates the most.

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How does one project a power breakout? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to develop a system that more often than not uncovers a player due for a power spike. So rather than sift through an array of underlying metrics searching for clues, there’s an easier way. It’s the same thing we do when we look at a hitter’s BABIP and compare it to his xBABIP or check a pitcher’s BABIP and assume better/worse fortune the following year will lead to improved/decreased performance.

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August Fagerstrom did a fantastic piece of the most promising platoons for the upcoming season. They were focused on WAR which of course includes defensive value and that doesn’t really do us any good. August kindly included a wRC+ column in the piece so we can isolate the offense and pick out the best platoons for fantasy purposes. These are best deployed in a deep league (ideally an AL/NL-Only league) with daily transactions. They require diligence to pay off. The internet age has cut out or minimized a lot of the hustle advantages in fantasy baseball and this is still one of them.

These are my 10 favorite platoons for the upcoming season. Note that these are my favorites so in some instances I expect them to do better than their projected wRC+ so this isn’t just a list of the 10 best projected wRC+ totals.

TAMPA BAY RAYS OF: Corey Dickerson v. RH, Steve Pearce v. LH [124 wRC+]

This one just so happened rank highest on August’s list by wRC+ (his calculation was 67% for the v. RH player and 33% for the v. LH player). Dickerson has owned righties in his career with a .934 OPS in 728 PA, though a lot of that is no doubt influenced by Coors Field (1.085/.695 home/road split). There will be a piece later this week by new writer Justin Mason on Dickerson that outlines why I’m not afraid of him outside of Coors.

Pearce didn’t do his normal work vs. lefties last year (just .623 OPS in 124 PA), but he has a career .824 OPS against them. He only comes into the season with OF/1B eligibility, but he played 18 games at 2B and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rays gave him some time there. He hasn’t been terrible against righties lately, either. In fact, he was flat out good in 2014 (.856, 12 HR) and while it dropped to .765 in 2015, he still hit 11 HR. Both of these guys could end up as full-time plays ,but if they happen to struggle against same-handed pitchers, they’re a perfect platoon.

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