The following process is how I create my rankings each season. I start with the hitter’s talent from projections and then adjust the playing time and talent. With no projections currently available, the talent aspect uses the rest-of-season Steamer600 projections. As more and historically better projections become available, I will transition to them. I’m just setting a baseline and can already guess I’m going to get some blowback on Esteury Ruiz (insane stolen base projection), Jose Siri (has 20/30 potential but on the Rays), and Seiya Suzuki (insane projection from Steamer).

Again, my valuations start with projections and then take other factors into account. I will include the same information and adjustments for each player. I try not to pick and choose what applies to who and remain consistent.

I’m going to try to fit as many of the factors into the rankings. I want to include about 10 items on each hitter, but the display page becomes too crowded. With the help of the others at FanGraphs, we are working on aesthetically inserting all the information. Possibly I’ll end up with a separate page like Roster Resource. Read the rest of this entry »

Each year, in addition to my bold predictions, I also predict the league leaders in each of the five traditional fantasy categories, in each league, and for both hitters and pitchers. Let’s begin by reviewing my bold hitter league leaders.

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To qualify for this totally made-up award, a player must have earned positive value by the season’s end (2022) and show the largest difference in projected value versus end-of-season value. Simply put, I subtracted earned value from projected value, called it ‘Diff’, and sorted descending. It should be noted ahead of time that these three players were negatively valued due to very low plate appearance projections.

Finalists: Jon Berti, Brendan Donovan, Brandon Drury

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Finalist #1: Jon Berti, Projected: $-27, Earned: $6

PA projection average: 183, 2022 PA: 404

In his age-32 season, Jon Berti stole 41 bases. He did it in 404 plate appearances. The next four hitters with the most stolen bases in at least 400 plate appearances (Jorge Mateo, Cedric Mullins, Tommy Edman, and Randy Arozarena) averaged 620 plate appearances. Berti swiped the most bags in the majors this season and did it in significantly fewer PA’s than his competition. He was only caught stealing five times. Unfortunately, Berti’s value was driven solely by base-stealing production. Though he finished the year with a .240 average (MLB: .243) and a .324 OBP (MLB: .312), his four home runs squashed his run production. He finished the year with only 47 runs and 28 RBI. If you go to the Auction Calculator and sort by mSB, you’ll find that Jon Berti is the first on the list, but that the next 16 players all returned more overall value. Regardless, a $33 difference in what was projected and what was earned means that if you paid $1 for Berti, you made a profit and that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

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Finalist #2: Brendan Donovan, Projected: $-32, Earned: $3

PA projection average: 19, 2022 PA: 468

Check Donovan’s FanGraphs blogroll and you’ll see that he’s been written about thoroughly in the past few months. Eric Longenhagen’s July 1st ranking of Donovan placed him 7th in the organization and he really nailed this bit:

“Donovan grinds out great at-bats, he is tough to make chase and even more difficult to beat within the strike zone”

Donovan’s profile and prospect write-ups may eliminate him from the “Nobody Saw Him Comin'” qualifications, but I certainly did not see/hear anyone touting him prior to the 2022 season. Like Berti, Donovan was limited to one single category when it comes to returning a positive value, but he certainly helped fantasy managers playing in OBP leagues who rostered him. Among hitters with at least 450 PA’s in 2022, Donovan placed 7th in OBP with .394, finishing right behind Juan Soto who finished the year at .401. He did so with an excellent 12.8% BB%, well above the league average 8.2%. One more great quality of Donovan’s in 2022 was his ability to play all over the field. Here’s a count of his games played at each position from his player page:

2022 Games Played:

2B: 38    3B: 31    RF: 20    LF: 19    1B: 16    DH: 16    SS: 7

While Donovan’s year was a success from a player standpoint, it would be hard to consider him a full roto fantasy asset in 2023.

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…and the award goes to…

Finalist #3: Brandon Drury, Projected: $-31, Earned: $17

PA projection average: 56, 2022 PA: 568

Drury cooled off some between the first half (133 wRC+) and the second half (107 wRC+), but stayed above average to end the season (123 wRC+). During the trade deadline, Luke Hooper detailed Drury’s improved batted ball skills, including an increased barrel rate coupled with a career-low swinging strike rate. But realistically, Drury finally found consistent playing time. His 568 plate appearances beat his career high of 499 back in 2016 and blew his 2020 49 PA’s and 2021 88 PA’s out of the water. But Drury also tapped into some pull power in 2022, pulling 22 of his 28 home runs over the fence. Yet it would seem like an easy route to take to boil Drury’s production down to simply increased pull power. Yes, his batting average on pulled balls was .385, good for a 237 wRC+, but he also showcased above-average (SLG .457) production on opposite-field batted balls at .523, most of which came off of line drives:

Finally, like Donovan, Drury played all over the field and gave fantasy managers flexibility:

2022 Games Played:

3B: 67 1B: 30 2B: 27 DH: 26 SS: 2 RF:1

In truth, it’s hard to look at Drury’s 2022 stats and notice huge sweeping changes beyond the steady accumulation of PAs. Sometimes, players get opportunities and make the most of them.

Congratulations to Brandon Drury on an amazing season and to any fantasy managers that rostered him. Next week, I’ll take a look at the overall largest differences in projections versus earned value with the Don’t Call Me a Rabbit Award.

In addition to my starting pitcher poll comparing 1st and 2nd half SIERA marks, I also polled you fine readers during the all-star break about hitters. The hitter poll pitted the 10 greatest xwOBA overperformers against the 10 most significant underperformers. I asked you which group would post a higher second half wOBA and which range each group’s wOBA would fall into.

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To qualify for this totally made-up award, a player must have earned at least $5 by the end of the season and accumulated at least $5 more than expected. This query logic allows for players who we already knew would be good, but we just didn’t know would be this good.

Finalists: Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, and Freddie Freeman

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Finalist #1: Paul Goldschmidt, Projected: $19, Earned: $34

The man has never really been bad, but if you had faded him in your rankings headed into his age 35 season due to some of the dips witnessed in 2o21, it’s likely that no one gave you a hard time.

If you didn’t fade, you came out with a player who exceeded his z-scores in every single category excluding stolen bases, but even his stolen base value was nearly average with 7 on the year. Here’s a look at his projected and earned value:

Goldschmidt has very little in his skills profile that would indicate an age decline. There is hardly anything that has gone through significant change or deviation from his career averages. Simply put, he has been one of the most steady and productive fantasy players in history and if you had him on your team, you were likely one of the top teams in your league.

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Finalist #2: Freddie Freeman, Projected: $26, Earned: $33

Freeman was the 12th most valuable player listed on the preseason auction calculator (steamer, default settings) and the fourth best player with 2022 YTD settings. It should not be a surprise that he finished as a top-five hitter, but if you got Freeman and you didn’t overpay, you generated some good value. There was very little time this season that Freeman’s 15-game rolling wRC+ was below 100.

Freeman outperformed his z-scores in every category except for home runs. He was projected for 32 and he only hit 21. While his HR/FB rate may indicate that he was unlucky, his HardHit% declined this season and has been declining over the span of the last four seasons. Freeman ended the year with a 12% HR/FB while the league averaged 11.4%:

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…and the award goes to…

Finalist #3: Aaron Judge, Projected: $27, Earned: $55

Are you surprised? Judge was slept on this season. I write that knowing his ADP was in the third round, but I think many fantasy managers were hesitant due to his injury history. Sure, Judge outperformed all of our projection systems’ home run totals by over 20, but did you see those 16 stolen bases?! This was one of the most dominant fantasy seasons by a single player in a long time. The only player to come close to his end-of-season $55 value was Miguel Cabrera’s 2014 $44.8 and Mookie Betts‘ 2018 $44.0. That’s just what happens when you break the American League (AL) single-season home run record and make a push for the AL triple crown. It is truly remarkable what Aaron Judge did this season from a fantasy perspective. To think that he could have been a 20-20 player with only four more steals is somewhat mind-boggling. Anyone who rostered Judge was taking a risk. Here’s a look at his “Five-Year Injury Log” courtesy of Ron Schandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster:

18 – 50 days, right wrist fracture

19 – 62 days strained L oblique

20 – 34 days strained R calf

21 – 12 days COVID-19

Fantasy managers who realized the potential in a healthy Aaron Judge season likely gambled and took him early. If you saw his $27 pre-season projected value and thought, “No, that can’t be right”, and you tacked on an additional $20, you would have still underpaid by $8. Simply amazing.

Congratulation to Aaron Judge on an amazing season and to any fantasy managers that rostered him. Next week, I’ll take a look at the overall largest differences in projections versus earned value with the Nobody Saw You Comin’ Award.

So it is time for the annual article examing how hitters performed who didn’t let an injury heal and played through the pain. Whether these hitters cause permanent damage to their bodies or pick up bad habits, they continue to underperform their projections. Besides tallying the results, I have started collecting next year’s player list.

I first determined the decline in an article covering 2017 to 2019 and have continued collecting names and results (2020 and 2021). Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the potential final edition of new everyday players for the 2022 season…that is if there are no new names worthy of discussing for the final four games of the season next week!

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Let’s review another four hitters with recent everyday jobs.

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With a week and a half left, playing time is king. With all the recent promotions and new hitters joining starting lineups, it’s easy to miss one or multiple new faces. So let’s get back to reviewing new everyday players as we finish out the 2022 season.

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Last week, I discussed players from four teams to bump up in value as their teams were scheduled to play seven games. I realized that my local CBS league in which I commish for is actually combining this week with next week’s half week, so we’re no longer comparing seven game teams to five game teams. Instead, we’re looking at teams that are scheduled to play as many as 10 games versus some teams only scheduled for eight games.

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