With drafts beginning to ramp up, it is important to monitor where players are being draft on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day.
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With drafts beginning to ramp up, it is important to monitor where players are being draft on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some previous research, including my own, has pointed to changes in Sprint Speed being a sign a player’s talent has changed. I decided to investigate changes from 2019 to 2020 to find who could be struggling and why. Many hitters are experiencing a drop and just a few are up.

In some way, the following information should be picked apart for a longer research article with some miraculous/groundbreaking/made-up claim that batters came to this season out of shape and that is why offensive production is down. I don’t care. All I want to know is who are the hitters who could be breaking out or down. Figuring out why is for the offseason. It’s now time to wins leagues.
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Note: If you read this on Saturday evening, I’m likely to add a few names as I do some more research and more news rolls in.

Projecting this season’s FAAB is going to be a nightmare. In past seasons, the process seemed fruitless at times but it’s going to be even more of a mess this season. Most leagues are giving teams the same amount of FAAB to cover a third of the season that will lead to some high dollar desperate bidding. Additionally, when a league was drafted matters. For instance, I have two leagues running FAAB tomorrow. The one from early March I need to clean up (e.g. one had Trey Mancini) and the other I drafted last so I may gamble on some different bullpen arms.

In this article, I’m going to at least cover the players in demand using CBS’s (40% or less ownership) and Yahoo’s ADD/DROP rates. Both hosting sites have the option for daily and weekly waiver wire adds. CBS used a weekly change while Yahoo looks at the last 24 hours. Yahoo is a great snapshot of right now while CBS ensures hot targets from early in the week aren’t missed.

Additionally, I’m going to add anyone else I fill is appropriate.

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Fiddle Farts. I’ve been diving deep into my to-do list hoping for a study to verify nothing. This study was not a quick-and-easy one. I’m surprised how much can be gleaned from a small drop in a hitter’s intentional base-on-balls (IBB).

When examining intentional walks, it’s not like canoeing across a calm flat lake with no dangers. Instead, it’s more of a white water rafting with no rest or the end in sight.

Two types of hitters normally see a drop in intentional walks, great hitters on the decline and the eighth hitter in National League parks. Of the 776 intentional walks last season, 410 came from the third (104), fourth (123), and eighth (183) spots in the lineup. It’s a player pool of just the once best and now worst hitters in the league.
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Adam Eaton: Fool’s Gold

In every actual or mock draft I’ve done so far this offseason, Eaton jumps to the top of my to draft list but I just can’t pull the trigger on him. First, Eaton’s projection is not sexy with 15 homers, 12 steals, and a .282 AVG (Depth Charts). It’s acceptable but not league winning.

Part of his low cost may be that he’s a 31-year-old, who after two near 700 plate appearance seasons, struggled to stay healthy in 2017 and 2018. Both injuries were to start the season, a knee injury in 2017 and an ankle injury in 2018. Besides missing a couple of days to a knee injury in early September, he was completely healthy last season. BaseballHQ still gives him a health grade of “F” which never helps. My own inputs point to his value going in different directions. I have him rebounding from the injury because his spring speed jumped from 27.5 ft/s to 28.3. But I project his plate appearances to be 492 bases off his age, hitting ability, and past playing time.
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• Here is a loaded Tweet:

Dave Martinez revealed Friday the clearest picture yet of the Nats’ plans this year. They’re betting on Carter Kieboom at 3B and…
• Starlin Castro everyday 2B
• He thinks Zim reunion will happen
• Lineup shuffling could include Trea Turner hitting 3rdhttps://t.co/ziJg1M5s6d

— Sam Fortier (@Sam4TR) January 17, 2020

Starting with Turner, I think this gives him a bump in value. His Run-RBI mix will be closer to 1:1. Additionally, I compared all hitters projected for 30+ steals and how often they attempted steals from the first and third lineup spots in the same season. The drop was between one and two stolen bases. It’s a change but nothing to get too worked up about. The like 50 extra RBIs is a much bigger deal.

Also, with Starlin Castro at second and Carter Kieboom at third, Asdrúbal Cabrera’s fantasy value tanks.
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Over the years, I’ve been working on how to fine-tune my player evaluation process. The following are six datasets that I’ve found useful I’ll not go into detail on any of them since I provide a link to the original article. The following is basically a referenceable data dump.

Note: I know there is a lot of content and when questions arise, make sure the area in question is obvious in the comment. Also, I’ll only answer questions here and not in the original articles.

Voit/Muncy All-Stars (link)

These are older AAA hitters who have shown signs of a breakout.

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Enough news has trickled out to put together a few noteworthy news nuggets.

• In my opinion, Chris Sale is not worth his current price right now (NFBC ADP of 44). I can’t have my likely ace and third-round pick with so many questions surrounding … especially not being ready to start the season healthy.

Red Sox ace Chris Sale has been cleared to begin throwing again after a visit with Dr. James Andrews, according to Rob Bradford of WEEI Radio. The goal is for Sale to be a full go for Spring Training in a few short months. Sale’s latest visit to the physician comes as a follow-up to an August appointment in which Sale received a platelet-rich plasma injection.
…
He didn’t suffer any ligament damage, and today’s update should inspire some optimism that Sale will once again be a stalwart in the Boston rotation and return to the Cy Young form that he maintained for the better part of a decade.

Better but not great.
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Every week for Sportsline, I write an article on available starting pitching and I lucked into a nice find. Using the criteria of owned in 60% or fewer leagues, increasing ownership, and they’ve never been profiled, Joe Ross met the criteria. I noticed Joe Ross reinvented himself as noted here by MLBDream.

Joe Ross throwing a curveball [h/t @jeffwzimmerman] and upping his sinker usage

👀 @JSpauny 👀 pic.twitter.com/LtkrEQc1CI

— MLBdream (@MLBdream) August 14, 2019

Today, I going to go through some lowly owned starters (in the majors and not on the IL) and see if any have made any positive or negative changes to their repertoire to utilize for the final quarter or the season. I’m going to look at pitchers owned in 16% to 30% of Fantrax leagues (Joe Ross was at 31% ownership).

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