One of the keys to fantasy success involves finding when projections can be systematically off. The hard part for fantasy owners is that most of these findings, like pitch velocity, get quickly incorporated into projections. Since it’s difficult to find these discrepancies, I was intrigued when I saw this quote by Mitchel Lichtman (MGL) in an article he wrote:

So, the substantial under-projections seem to occur when a player gains speed but his wOBA remains about the same.

And by substantial, it was a 22 point difference is wOBA. This is a major difference and could point owners to some nice upside plays. I decided to go ahead and dive in.

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Dammit. For a few years, I followed an old study showing hitters who played through an injury would outperform their next season’s projections, especially in relation to power. Last offseason, I collected a list of 26 such hitters. When I went to compare this group’s projections to their actual performance, I found no overperformance and I’m not sure how I’ll value them going forward.

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Mitch Haniger surprised about everyone this season with top-25 production when his average draft position was over 200 in NFBC leagues. In all fairness, he should have made several sleeper lists but the industry failed to pick up on his productive but ignored 2017 season.  He’s the type of hitter owners need to focus on rostering, late-round injured hitters.

His stats speak volumes. Here are some of Haniger’s projections and results over the past two seasons.

His projection coming into 2017 was decent with a 20 HR and 8 SB profile when prorating to 600 PA. The season started out great until he went on the DL with an oblique injury which lasted for over a month. He came back from the DL, struggled, got hurt a coup of times (finger and face), and finally turned it on over the last month. This profile screams sleeper and everyone slept on him.

By just prorating his 2017 season to 600 PA, he would be at 23 dingers and 7 bags with an acceptable .282 AVG. His results were similar to another pre-season unknown, Marwin Gonzalez (23 HR, 8 SB, .303 AVG). Gonzalez’s average ADP was 123, about 100 picks before Haniger went off the board.

As for Haniger’s 2018 season, he showed the value of a well-rounded player. A near .300 batting average, over 20 homers, and about 10 stolen bases placed him as a  top-25 overall batter. Unexciting stats can still be good.

Going forward, owners can take several lessons from this failure. First, dig into hitters after pick 100 who struggled with injuries but showed positive production when healthy. Most owners are going to hope the top names like Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve will rebound. They aren’t going to surprise anyone. Instead, players like Kyle Seager (toe), Steven Souza Jr.(pec), and Jorge Soler (rib) might be acquired for nothing and end up being a top-50 player.

Another item is to prorate each player’s previous season to 600 plate appearances to see if anyone pops up if given more playing time. With Haniger’s nearly identical pro-rated 2017 and 2018 seasons, his 2017 season would have stood out and owners could have taken notice. Instead, he was relegated to the reserve rounds.

Missing on Haniger’s points to some obvious projects for me later in the offseason. Until then, let me know of any players who the industry missed on and there was no obvious cause.

When I hear or read about a hitter playing through an injury my interest perks up and he becomes an immediate draft target. Standard projections have no idea these players played hurt and the lower production keeps down future estimations. Savvy owners can give these players a small talent bump and reap some nice rewards. My current request to create a detailed list of hitters playing through injuries for 2019 preseason research and to test after next season.

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In my last article, I contemplated if fantasy owners care too much about who to add and not enough on who to drop. I’m going run an experiment over last few weeks of this season to see what can be extracted from league drop trends.

For reference, I’m going to analyze the 34 leagues in the NFBC Main Event. These are 15-team mixed leagues using batting average and no trading. With each team putting $3K on the line, more of these owners haven’t thrown in the towel than in most leagues.

This first week, I went through the 30 most dropped players. The reasons behind the most dropped players were obvious, mainly they were hurt, lost a role, or demoted. Next week, I may concentrate on the players dropped between 5 and ten leagues. These players aren’t the most obvious drops and analyzing them may be the most helpful.

Name: Number of teams who dropped him (of 31)

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This past weekend, I attended the always incredible SaberSeminar in Boston. It was great time catching up with friends (Dave Cameron sighting) but also to take in some innovative ideas. I decided to share some fantasy applicable topics which were discussed.

Pitch Tunneling

Experimentally determining the “Commit Point” – Evaluating the time it takes a hitter to check his swing by William Clark and Joe Petrich

Pitch Tunneling, Pitch Calling and Expected Outcome: A Former Pitcher’s Perspective by Dan Blewett

Pitching tunneling was brought up several times by several speakers but these two came to the same conclusion. The reaction time for a batter to determine the pitch type may be less than previously calculated. It was thought that a hitter had around 225 ms to 275 ms to decide to swing. It’s possible that the time may be under 200 ms and the batter may be keying off the release point.

Also, if a pitcher is struggling, it might be worth looking over at his release point charts (example with Jon Gray). Make sure all the pitches are clustered together and haven’t been recent moving around.
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Yesterday, I examined hitters who owners missed on preseason and what could be done to prevent such mistakes in the future. Today, the underachievers go under the microscope. In my previous article, I used Paul Sporer’s “All First Half” articles for reference. With no underachieving articles out yet, I will look for players with differences in ADP and current rank using our auction calculator.

Extended Injury Stays

Daniel Murphy

I lamented last offseason about missing out on J.D. Martinez’s great 2017 season. I didn’t want to miss out again and was willing to take a chance on Daniel Murphy’s discount.

When I created his projection, I account for six weeks off but it was on the short side. Additionally, once he returned, he wasn’t productive for a few weeks but has a .859 OPS in July.

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We are all learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. -Charlie Munger

It’s time to see if I need to adjust my fantasy baseball beliefs by analyzing the first half busts and breakout lists. While it’s great to acknowledge these players, owners need to sit down and figure out why everyone missed on them. By hitting on one or two of these breakouts, a team could be competing for the top spot. Here are the groups and how to identify the breakout next preseason.

For the player situations I analyzed, I’m used Paul Sporer’s First Half All Value Stars and Fantasy Team for inspiration. I looked for actionable traits or tells which can be used next season.

Unknown Playing Time

Jesus Aguilar

Everyone understood coming into this season that the Brewers playing time situation was going to be a mess, so not owning Aguilar is understandable. He was to be in a platoon with Domingo Santana with middling projections. The deal with Aguilar, he really didn’t have a horrible platton split. It was .372 wOBA vs .338 wOBA in 2017. It’s .444 vs .405 this season.

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Fastball velocity changes may be getting beat to death but they are one of the few stats in which stabilize early in the offseason. I’ve created a couple tools which I use during the season to help find which pitchers to evaluate further using velocity. I have one which grades fastballs and a new pitcher injury finder.

Fastball Grades

This tool simply gives an ERA and 20-80 grade to a fastball based on its projected results from its velocity and spin. The velocity component is simple to understand. It’s hard to hit fast flying small objects. It’s even harder to hit faster flying small objects. Understanding the spin component is a little tougher.

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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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