American League

Angels

• Jake Lamb (.561 OPS) is playing first base against righties.

• Gio Urshela has started in five of six with two games at shortstop.

Astros

• David Hensley (Util-only) has started five of seven with three games at second so far. Mauricio Dubón is getting the other starts at second base.

• Two outfield spots are still are being split between Chas McCormick (1.016 OPS), Corey Julks (.668 OPS), and Jake Meyers (.473 OPS).

Athletics

• Seth Brown didn’t get platooned against the two lefties.

• Ryan Noda has started three straight at first base. He might be on the strong side of a platoon with Brent Rooker.

• Jace Peterson might be on the strong side of a platoon with Nick Allen on the weak side.

Blue Jays

• There looks to be some platoons forming with Brandon Belt and Cavan Biggio only facing righties.

• Kevin Kiermaier (5 starts in seven games), Whit Merrifield (5), and Santiago Espinal (2) don’t seem to have full-time roles.

Guardians

• Gabriel Arias has started in three of the last four games, all against a lefty starter.

Mariners

• Kolten Wong (vs RHP) and Sam Haggerty (vs LHP) seem to be in a second base platoon.

• Jarred Kelenic sat against both lefty starters.

Orioles

• Adam Frazier (1.127 OPS) has started in five of the last six games.

• Ramón Urías has only started in three of six games.

Rangers

• Josh Smith (.875 OPS), Brad Miller (.857 OPS), and Ezequiel Duran (.333 OPS) are splitting time between two lineup spots.

Rays

• A mess as normal.

• Isaac Paredes (vs LHP) and Taylor Walls (vs RHP) appear to be in a third base platoon.

Red Sox

• They’ve only faced one lefty and Rob Refsnyder played instead of Triston Casas.

Royals

• It’s Rays-like with a new lineups everyday, but with worse hitters.

Tigers

• Matt Vierling (1 HR, 1 SB, .885 OPS) is leading off against lefties and has sat only once.

• Nick Maton (vs RHP) and Jonathan Schoop (vs LHP) seem to be in a third base platoon.

• Ryan Kreidler (6 K in 13 PA) has started three straight games.

Twins

• Michael A. Taylor has starter every game as the centerfielder while batting ninth.

• Trevor Larnach has started every game.

White Sox

• With Eloy Jiménez out, it’s not obvious who will take his place with the candidates being Jake Burger, Romy Gonzalez, and Gavin Sheets.

Yankees

• One and a half (Stanton) outfield spots is being shared by Franchy Cordero (.556 OPS), Oswaldo Cabrera (.646 OPS), and Aaron Hicks (.125 OPS).

National League

Braves

• Travis d’Arnaud (.806 OPS) has started every game (four as DH).

• Eddie Rosario has only started against righties while Kevin Pillar and Marcell Ozuna have started against lefties.

Brewers

• Luke Voit, Owen Miller, and Mike Brosseau (leading off) have only started against lefties. Garrett Mitchell and Brice Turang have sat against both lefties they faced.

• Joey Wiemer (1.009 OPS) had started five straight.

Cardinals

• With Lars Nootbaar out, Alec Burleson (.938) has started in five of the last six games. He sat against the one lefty.

• Brendan Donovan sat against the one lefty with Tommy Edman then hitting leadoff.

Cubs

• Eric Hosmer (.706 OPS) has started in four of the five games.

Diamondbacks

• Josh Rojas (vs RHP) and Evan Longoria (vs LHP) are in a third base platoon.

• Alek Thomas (vs RHP) and Kyle Lewis (vs LHP) are in a platoon.

Dodgers

• Mookie Betts has three games so far at second base.

• Some nagging injuries (i.e. Vargas and Rojas) has mixed things up that last few days.

Giants

• They haven’t faced any lefty starters so the potential platoons aren’t obvious.

• Catcher-qualified Blake Sabol (.722 OPS) has started every game.

• Wilmer Flores has only started in two games so far.

Marlins

• Jon Berti has has started three straight at short with Joey Wendle on the IL.

• Bryan De La Cruz and Jesús Sánchez are splitting one outfield spot. It doesn’t seem to be a handedness platoon.

Mets

• Tommy Pham (vs LHP) and Daniel Vogelbach (vs RHP) seem to be in a platoon.

• Luis Guillorme (vs RHP) and Eduardo Escobar (vs LHP) are in a third base platoon.

Nationals

• Keep an eye on Alex Call, he might be on the short side of a platoon (Note: He is in Friday’s lineup versus a righty).

Padres

• David Dahl (.556 OPS), Rougned Odor (.422), and José Azocar (.844) are splitting time with one outfield spot.

• Nelson Cruz has only started twice, both times against a lefty.

Phillies

• Looks like Jake Cave (vs RHP) and Edmundo Sosa (vs LHP) are in a platoon.

Pirates

• Several guys are playing enough to be relevant (Suwinski, Smith-Njigba, Joe, Choi) but Ji Hwan Bae (1 HR, 2 SB, .708 OPS) has started five of six with three games at second base.

Reds

• Kevin Newman (.600 OPS) and Jose Barrero (.250 OPS) are sharing time at short. I’m not sure it’s a platoon.

Rockies

• Since joining the team, Jurickson Profar has leadoff every game.

American League

Angels

• Gio Urshela got the start at short with David Fletcher on the bench.

• Brandon Drury played first base with Jared Walsh on the IL.

Astros

• Mauricio Dubón started at second base with David Hensley as the DH.

• Jake Meyers started in center instead of Chas McCormick. Read the rest of this entry »

I always get excited when a hitter either signs with or gets traded to the Rockies. The latest such transaction occurred on Sunday when Jurickson Profar signed a one-year contract with the team. He’s expected to serve as the team’s starting left fielder and we have him slotted into the leadoff spot. Does the move suddenly make him worthy of rostering in shallower mixed leagues? Let’s consult the park factors.

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Let’s return without delay to the second half of our exploration of the Quadrinity: players who satisfy certain statistical criteria and, we have found, do better in the aggregate than the market thinks they will. Last week, we looked at pitchers, who were the species on which this experiment was first conducted. But we have found over the years that it works well with hitters, too. We are, as you might imagine, looking for hitters whose achievement is the opposite of that of the qualifying pitchers: guys whose walk percentage and hard-hit percentage are above-average, while their strikeout percentage and soft-hit percentage are below-average.

There are usually about twenty such guys. This year, there’s a bumper crop of 26, although one of them, Brendan Rodgers, blew out his shoulder earlier this month and is likely out for the season. So let’s wish Rodgers a speedy recovery and name the other twenty-five, divided according to position, along with their average auction prices in auctions conducted under the auspices of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship. One of the oddities of the Hitter Quadrinity is that we’re usually able to construct a full 14-man Roto roster from among them—as we would have been this year as well, but for Rodgers’s misfortune : Read the rest of this entry »

Rostering minor leaguers in any Ottoneu format is super fun. It’s fun because you get to take a chance on a player. Build your roster now in order to plan for the future. Isn’t that what so many real-world teams are doing? Yet, it can be cumbersome to hold onto a player for a few years while paying them a $1 or more in salary when you really don’t know when and even if they will pan out.

A few months ago, I was up against this very challenge. Rostering Jack Leiter was exciting. He was a college pitcher with a lot of hype and talent and now a minor leaguer who has held onto both of those traits. But, I needed to try and quantify how much he would be worth in a few years. His MLB ETA isn’t until this season and likely the end of this season. Looking for a range of reasonable salary expectations, I used ZiPs’ 2024 and 2025 projections to get a sense of how to value Leiter in a few years. My analysis concluded that Leiter would likely only return somewhere around $4 in 2023 and that’s if he meets the higher end of likely outcomes. I was paying $6, too much for this year, so I cut him.

Rostering Leiter at $6 doesn’t make sense for 2023. But now that he is back on the waiver wire, should I attempt to re-roster him for $1? In order for that to make sense, two things need to happen. First, he needs to return over $1 of value in 2023. Second, he needs to return over $1 of value in 2024 and pass through arbitration untouched at the end of the 2023 season. Only then is he worth selecting for a $1. In this analysis, I’ll look at the players who are most likely to pass through those qualifiers. Choo! Choo! All aboard the hypothetical train! Here’s a map of our journey:

Step 1: Take a deep breath. A lot of assumptions are going to be made here. This is not an exact science. Please, do not rush to your player page and start auctioning off these players at these exact prices. Use these values as a jumping-off point.

Step 2: Grab a pool of minor league players who have not yet debuted from “The Board” with a Future FV value greater than or equal to 30 and subset it down to players with a “Current Level” not equal to “MLB”.

Step 3: Download ZiPs 2024 projections for the players in Step 2 and calculate their Ottoneu FanGraphs points totals based on those projections.

Step 4: Add those players into the auction calculator’s outputs, sort by rPTS, and see what the value is for players in that same rPTS area. Keep in mind, player value is altered by positional adjustments.

This process ultimately tells us what these players’ auction value could be if they play to their full zips projections in 2024 and the league looks identical to this season’s (2023) player pool. It tells us how much they should be valued for next year.

Out of the 271 prospects I downloaded from the board, 242 had a “Current Level” other than MLB. Of those 242, only 60 have been projected by ZiPs for 2024. Of those 60, only 15 (but number 1 on the list kind of doesn’t count) end up with a positive projected value in 2024. Here they are:

Now, it’s very, very possible that this process excluded some highly touted prospects. Hopefully, I was clear enough with my process that you can hypothesize as to why they were left out or replicate a version of this for yourself. This is not a top draftable prospects list. I repeat; This is not a top draftable prospects list. For example, where is Jordan Walker? Well, ZiPs doesn’t necessarily project Walker to be roster-able in 2024. Here’s where the Cardinals prospect stands in this process:

Now, to see why Walker falls out of a roster-able projected salary, let’s look at his 2024 ZiPs projections compared to a couple players high on this list, Colton Cowser and Christian Encarnacion-Strand:

You can see why Cowser has more projected value in 2024, but you can also see how this system has some flaws. Walker has already been creating a lot of buzz in Spring Training and many might look at that 2024 projection and scoff. Projecting players who haven’t appeared in the MLB yet is hard. Time is money and if I had more of it, I would go about the valuation a little more scientifically. Rather than comparing rPTS and suggesting a value range, it would be interesting to iterate through runs of the auction calculator, each time removing the player the minor leaguer would be replacing and determining value from a more believable player pool. I think I’ve gotten close enough for now. Roster any of the players listed above for $1, make it through the end of the 2023 season arbitration without their salaries increasing, and you have a good chance at value in 2024.

Yesterday, I continued my 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X forecasts against Steamer projections in the various fantasy categories, by comparing fantasy value projections and identifying the hitters THE BAT X valued more highly. Let’s now turn to the hitters that Steamer values significantly more than THE BAT X.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I debuted and published the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X forecasts against Steamer projections in the various fantasy categories. Now let’s combine everything we have reviewed and compare projected dollar value. Really, that’s all we care about as fantasy leaguers! Does THE BAT X think the player is more valuable than Steamer, or not?! So let’s now find out which hitters THE BAT X is projecting to earn a higher value than Steamer. These are the hitters THE BAT X believes to be undervalued, at least compared to someone using Steamer forecasts to draft.

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Join us now on our third and final sojourn among the players upon whom Fortune smiled or frowned in 2022, and whom He/She/It figures to treat differently in 2023. Our method is simple: We look  for players whose underlying stats are significantly better or worse than their overlying ones, and who therefore figure to do better (if unlucky) or worse (if lucky) than the market and/or the projection systems think they will. For hitters, we invert the approach we took in the two preceding installments for pitchers: the lucky guys are the ones whose BABIP and HR/FB% was high while their Hard-Hit Percentage was low, and the unlucky guys are the ones with a high HH% but low BABIP and HR/FB%. It’s simple, and it’s not infallible, but by and large it works.

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Yesterday, I identified and discussed five hitters with an ADP of at least 300 who THE BAT X is more bullish on for wOBA than Steamer. You might call these hitters “sleepers”. Let’s now flip over to Steamer’s implied sleepers. I made a small change to my filters here, adding a maximum of 450 PAs, to go along with my 300 PA minimum. This was to remove some names that have appeared multiple times in these showdowns, as there’s no sense in discussing them yet again.

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Last week, I identified and discussed the hitters THE BAT X was most bullish on for wOBA compared with Steamer. While typically not a fantasy category, wOBA is still extremely important to pay attention to since it drives playing time and spot in the batting order, both of which fuel counting stats. So let’s now flip over to the hitters Steamer is more bullish on compared to THE BAT X.

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