Recently I reviewed the results of the first few rounds of a new dynasty league prospect draft.  The review continues today with a quick look at some key selections in rounds 7 – 9.

Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 1 – 3

Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 4 – 6

This draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward.  If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.

Before I review my own thoughts on the draft, you should know this Ottoneu league uses the “FanGraphs Points” scoring system based on linear weights, so offense is heavily slanted towards wOBA skills (and speed is almost a non-factor).  We also somewhat arbitrarily removed the Top 12 overall offensive prospects to save them for the standard 40-man auction next spring.  Otherwise, any minor league player without one (1) MLB PA or IP is eligible to be drafted.  You can read more about the custom rules of this dynasty league here, and follow along with the draft here.

Many of the prospects below are also featured on the 2018 Top 100 Fantasy Prospects list.

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On Wednesday I reviewed the results of the first three rounds of a new dynasty league prospect draft.  I’ll continue that review today with rounds 4 – 6, where some deeper, more interesting prospects appear.

Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 1 – 3

This draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward.  If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.

Before I review my own thoughts on the draft, you should know this Ottoneu league uses the “FanGraphs Points” scoring system based on linear weights, so offense is heavily slanted towards wOBA skills (and speed is almost a non-factor).  We also somewhat arbitrarily removed the Top 12 overall offensive prospects to save them for the standard 40-man auction next spring.  Otherwise, any minor league player without one (1) MLB PA or IP is eligible to be drafted.  You can read more about the custom rules of this dynasty league here, and follow along with the draft here.

Many of the prospects below are also featured on the 2018 Top 100 Fantasy Prospects list.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I created a new dynasty baseball league customized around the basic game of Ottoneu.  The more you play Ottoneu the more you come to appreciate how deep the player pool really is, and the longer I play fantasy baseball the more interested I become in the minor league development process.  While there is still plenty of luck involved, the satisfaction of “discovering” the next Rhys Hoskins before everyone else is a feeling that keeps me coming back to the game over and over.

In addition to the standard economics of Ottoneu where each league consists of twelve owners and 480 rostered players (minors and majors), our league will roster an additional 180 minor leaguers (15 extra per team) in an attempt to “develop” successful franchises for years to come.  Since the regular MLB season is wrapping up soon and many fantasy owners are starting to look towards 2018, I thought it might be helpful to review our prospect draft over the next several posts to give you some insight into the valuation of these minor league lottery tickets.  If nothing else, this draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward.  If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.  

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Fatigue units attempt to physiologically represent the workloads pitchers face. This includes velocity, days of rest, pitches per inning, and even the pace they pitch. Pitchers with extreme workloads were 2.7x more likely to have Tommy John surgery when compared to pitchers with moderate workloads. Who has worked the hardest in 2017?

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8/22/17

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER18!

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• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette

Leading Off: New Addition!

• Nick Pollack of PitcherList.com joins the RG team!

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About two months ago, I was asked by a member of the local league I commish to replace an inactive owner in the league he commishes. I replied that I don’t have the time to monitor another team, but if all I’m asked to do is respond to trade offers and ensure I maintain a healthy active lineup (I totally failed at that task), then sure, I’ll take over the team. This is a keeper league in its inaugural year that I was actually asked to join before the season began, but declined for several irrelevant reasons. The league rules are relatively standard, with mixed rosters, 14 teams, and a limit of three keepers. An auction was conducted to roster players and keepers could only be selected from players acquired via the auction, with a salary $5 above their auction price.

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8/10/17

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER18!

Special thanks to Chris Welsh from InThisLeague.com for editing the episode!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette

Leading Off: Question of the Day

• What’s your favorite nickname for Player’s Weekend?

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It’s been a big year for hitting without a doubt, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t seen some great pitchers emerge. Guys like James Paxton, Alex Wood, and Luis Severino are winning leagues for people, but there are also plenty of intriguing arms who aren’t necessarily toting gaudy bottom line results. However, their skills and stuff set them up to be next year’s version of those guys and they are the ones you can buy now for a big 2018 payoff. We’ll span league depth with a couple deep league considerations, too.

Danny Salazar | Indians

Danny Salazar has been peak Salazar since his return from the DL and I’m pretty excited about his prospects down the stretch and beyond. He’s allowed just three runs in 20 innings since returning, with 28 strikeouts, five walks, and eight hits! We talked about him on the podcast right around his return, I wrote up his first and second starts in the Roto Riteup, and then Eno wrote up his new approach. We saw what he can do in 2015 with a 3.45 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and 195 strikeouts in 185 innings. Since then, his walk rate has spiked to 11% and he’s been DL’d with both elbow and shoulder injuries, but he’s still just 27 with top-flight skills.

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Last year around this time I took a look at the Steamer600 Update projections to try to identify potential keepers that were currently undervalued or overlooked. As a refresher, the Steamer600 Update projections represent the current Steamer rest of season projections, but scaled to 600 PA/200 IP (SP)/ 65 IP (RP) for all players. I like to look at these projections periodically to get a sense of how Steamer is estimating true talent level regardless of playing time (due to injury, a bench role, or being in the minor leagues). I have taken those Steamer600 Update projections and applied ottoneu FGPTs scoring to find some interesting potential keepers.

Before I go any further, I thought it would make sense to highlight a few of the names I mentioned in last year’s article(these are the hits, there were many misses as well):

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A few weeks ago, I stole RotoGraphs contributor Joe Douglas’ idea (with his permission) as I pointed out that the “generic” Tommy Pham had provided surprisingly similar offensive production in his career to the “brand name” Michael Conforto. It was a fun exercise, and one that we’re going to do again today.

To set the stage, we’re going to talk about two rookies with outfield eligibility. One receives plenty of attention and hype; the other, not so much. Mr. Generic debuted in 2016 but is still considered a rookie this season, while Mr. Brand Name debuted in 2017. Here’s how they’ve fared so far this year:

The first thing that jumps out is the nearly 100-point difference in BABIP, and the fact that Mr. Generic’s BABIP is perhaps unsustainably high. More about that in a minute.

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