I’m not above “borrowing” a good idea from a colleague. Yesterday, Paul Sporer wrote about five players he’d give a second chance in 2019. These were names with a little helium attached who failed to deliver value for various reasons. I especially agree with Jorge Polanco who improved throughout his PED-shortened season.

Shall we get to it? To quote Paul, “the hype is gone, their price has tanked, and now is the time to buy!”

Five More Buyback Candidates

Bradley Zimmer | Cleveland Indians | ADP 512

By ADP, Zimmer has fallen straight off the face of the earth. After a mixed debut in 2017 which included decent power, surprising speed, and not nearly enough contact, a shoulder injury limited Zimmer to just 114 plate appearances in 2018. When he did play, he performed poorly. Even with only a 63 wRC+, he was on pace for a 1.5 WAR season. He’s a quality defender which will help ensure he plays.

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We’ve made it to the New Year! It is the dead of winter, but at least with fantasy football being done, we’re flipping the fantasy calendar back toward baseball. Those who really dive into both sports will now begin their baseball deep dive and that’ll move the ADP markets for sure, so keep that in mind when I reference these draft spots. Today I want to look at five players I’m buying back after disappointing 2018 seasons. The hype is gone, their price has tanked, and now is the time to buy!

Ian Happ | Chicago Cubs | 261 ADP

Happ and teammate Javier Baez were going in the same ADP range last year just around the Top 100 and I chose Happ… whoops. Although, Ozzie Albies was going around them, too, and I favored him over the two Cubs so I didn’t get too crushed by my awful Happ over Baez decision. Not that Albies over Baez was some great win. When Happ hit a home run on the first pitch of the season, my confirmation bias went into overdrive. I’m not proud of it, but I definitely got way too hyped over that whopping ONE PITCH SAMPLE! He went 0-for-4 with 3 Ks the rest of that game and wound up with a .233/.353/.408 line, 15 HR, and 8 SB in 462 PA.

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The current fantasy focus is evaluating the top-100 or so players, especially the first couple rounds. I’m going to deep dive and investigate some later round values.  I will group 10 players together and pick which one I would take earlier than the others.

201: Arodys Vizcaino
202: Jonathan Schoop
203: Kevin Gausman
204: Luke Voit
205: Chris Taylor
206: Jake Arrieta
207: Forrest Whitley
208: Ross Stripling
209: Odubel Herrera
210: Yusei Kikuchi

There are several players I really like in this group like Taylor, Stripling, and Herrera but easily the best bargain is Kikuchi.

Kikuchi isn’t on par with Asian imports Ohtani or Darvish but he’s still extremely talented. He’s considered to be a better talent than Miles Mikolas and Mikolas is going 86th overall. I believe once Kikuchi signs and everyone gets to know him, his ADP will be cut in half and around a top-100 pick, if not double digits.
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I try not to miss examining players who had great, short seasons. An injury or time in the minors kept them off the end-of-season rankings. They flew under the radar but given a full season of playing time they stick out and could provide hidden value. Today, I’m going to start by examing the top prorated hitters.

I needed a way to value the hitters and decided to create an overall Standing Gain Points (SGP) formula from The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational leagues. The 13 15-team leagues were set up with  14 hitters (1 C, 2 Util), 9 pitchers, and used AVG. Tanner Bell and I will be providing this formula, along with several others, in our new book, The Process, available within weeks (shameless plug).

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Note: If there ever was an article in flux it’ll be this one. Even though I’m the official author, Paul Sporer will be adding to it. At the time of publishing, the Rockies and Dodgers lineups were not available. Also, I’m off to read as much as I can until the game starts. Check back for updates or re-ranks.

Many fantasy owners expected the 2018 season to be over yesterday but it’s not. Two games are being played to decide the NL West & Central. Non AL-only owners need to quickly decide if today’s games count in their standings, can they change their lineups, and add players.

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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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In my chat last night, I felt I was not informed enough on a few players and I am going to examine a couple today, Luke Voit and Billy McKinney. Both are producing and playing regularly with their new teams. They could be a couple nice sleepers in deeper leagues over the season’s last month.

Luke Voit

I laughed when Yankees picked up Voit from the Cardinals at the trade deadline. I figured they’d make an impactful move, which wasn’t Voit. I’ve been wrong so far.

In his first 20 games with the Yankees, the 27-year-old first baseman started just four of them. In the last four, he’s started three going seven for 11 with three homers. On the season, he’s hitting .325/.400/.625 supported by a .444 BABIP.

Before getting too far along finding a value for Voit, a quick Greg Bird detour needs to be made. Simply, he has been horrible hitting just .199/.288/.390 on the season. The playoff-bound Yankees can’t expect to make it far in the playoff with a first baseman hitting like a catcher. I additionally checked to see if Bird was nursing an injury and nothing. It seems like Voit may have won the first base job. At least until reality sets in. While Gary Sanchez may return and play some first base, I will just assume Voit will have the full-time role until he doesn’t.

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With the non-waiver trade deadline over, it’s time to focus on mixed-league actionable moves. With most of the trades, a player’s value didn’t change enough to make a roster transaction. For example, Chris Archer was owned in all leagues before the trade from the Rays to Pirates and will be owned in all leagues after the trade. Many of the biggest trades are just mixed-league irrelevant. I ranked the players who should be moving on and off rosters in the next few days as the dust settles.

Note: I’m 100% sure I missed something obvious. There was just a ton of moves. I will update this article as I find more players or my obvious errors are pointed out.

Top Gainers (Waiver Wire Targets)

• Jose Leclerc (Rangers): After the trade of Keone Kela to the Pirates and Jake Diekman to the Diamondbacks, the Rangers have a new closer. The 24-year-old righty has been a dominant setup man this year with a 12.7 K/9 and 2.27 ERA and should be a fine closer. There is a chance Alex Claudio gets this role.

• Kirby Yates (Padres): If owners were reluctant to roster own him with the chance he’d also get traded, they can pick him up now.

• Mychal Givens (Orioles): With Brad Brach, Darren O’Day, and Zach Britton traded away, Givens is in line for a handful of Saves.

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The phrase “Buying Low” gets thrown around in the baseball community. I’m not sure if owners can actually buy low on many of these frustrating but talented players. Owners need to be willing to sell. I going to try to redefine the concept of buying low concentrating on drop rates and go over a few potential targets.

When I hear or read about buying low on a player, the touts are focusing on buying a good player during a cold streak. Paul Goldschmidt fits this label with his .208/.324/.380 slash line. Owners paid first round prices for replacement level production. But are Goldschmidt’s owners selling low? Probably not.

Going over some recent trades at the Yahoo trade tracker, Goldschmidt is being traded straight up for players such as Clayton Kershaw, Joey Votto, Patrick Corbin, and Shohei Ohtani.

His value is down some (and should be with the K% spike) but not horribly. He’s still owned in 99%+ of leagues at ESPN, Yahoo, Fantrax, and CBS. Even the most frustrated owners in shallow leagues aren’t moving on. So why should owners focus their time and energy on players who even the most frustrated owners aren’t moving on with?

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Masahiro Tanaka decided to create more questions than answers in my life. I just released my first 2018 pERA run and Tanaka’s pitches and control point to a 2.88 ERA but he’s posting one nearly two points higher at 4.95. I dove into his stats hoping to find a simple answer, instead, I found someone struggling out of the stretch while throwing harder. While it explains his struggles, I am not sure any of it matters. At least not yet.

The first item I checked for with ERA and estimators diverge is a high BABIP which was only at .243, about 30 points lower than his career average (.276). Nope, not BABIP.

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