This week I continue my series on prospect scouting and stats. Today, let’s look at present hitter game power grades. While my High bucket encompassed present game power grades of at least 40, that was nearly a quarter of THE BOARD. So let’s only discuss the top of the top in the power department.
Yesterday, I introduced you to my newest series, Prospect Scouting & Stats, and began by sharing correlations between the various scouting power grades and average exit velocity with minor league HR/FB rate and ISO. I generally found better correlations with HR/FB rate, and average exit velocity (EV), which is completely objective, actually correlated best. During my analysis, I wondered aloud whether we might find better correlations if the scouting grades and EV all agreed. So, I dove back into the data to find out. I decided to only look at HR/FB rate this time since we care more about it as fantasy players and the metrics correlated better with it.
First of all, thanks to everyone who commented and suggested an idea or multiple ideas for myself and my fellow RotoGraphers to write about as we sit here impatiently hoping and waiting for baseball to begin. Unfortunately, the vast majority either required data that would be impossible for me to collect or would require the type of analysis that’s way above my abilities. However, I did come away with one idea that I’m going to run with at some point in the future. Before I do that, a comment actually led me to checking out our THE BOARD: Scouting + Stats!, which reminded me how freakin’ awesome it is.
Sadly, the NFBC team building fun comes to a close. To go along with my splendid $14 offense, I attempted to assemble a $246 pitching staff using NFBC average auction values from March 15 and on. Just as I failed to spend all my money when buying a dominant offense, I left a buck on the table here as well, only spending $245. Let’s see what such an insane staff looks like.
As we continue to maintain hope that there will be a baseball season this year, last week I decided to have a bit of fun and build a $9 pitching staff using NFBC average auction values calculated from March 15. While that was a joy, commenter runningfrog demanded that I share what a $251 offense would look like. If I were to save all those auction dollars by buying such cheap pitching, how incredible might my offense look?! I decided to find out.
Last week, I built a $14 offense using only $1 players from the NFBC average auction values starting March 15. The following day, I shared my $9 pitching staff. One commenter asked my thoughts on Taijuan Walker, who I realized wasn’t even rostered in any of the 8 leagues, even for a buck. So I completely forgot about him and hadn’t even considered those not purchased in any leagues. Commenter Johnnie T suggested I perform the same exercise, but this time only select from players not rostered in any of the auctions. Another fake draft?! Sure! There are now nine auctions run since March 15, so this 14-player offense will be solely composed of hitters who failed to be bought in any of them.
On Thursday, I had a bit of fun and shared my dominant, future category-leading $14 offense, assembled using NFBC auction values and selecting 14 $1 hitters. Today, I flip to the pitching side and share with you the pitching staff you fear will earn top points in each category.
Auction day is one of my favorite days of the year. Luckily, I get to enjoy three of those days annually. Unfortunately, COVID-19 and the delayed season has caused me to postpone the local league auction I commish, while a second AL-Only keeper league was postponed as well. So what to do when you love auctioning, but won’t have the chance to for a while? Fake buy players from auctions that did actually take place! For fun, I decided to check out the NFBC average auction values and build a standard 14-player offense for $14. That’s right, every player I selected had to be a buck. Imagine the pitching staff you could assemble with $246!
MLB announced the season would be delayed by at last two weeks on March 12. Since, it’s become pretty clear that the season will start much later than previously anticipated. The later start will have a dramatic effect on many players’ values. As I’ve discussed recently, there are a bunch of less obvious players who should see a boost in value, as well as a group of players who should suffer a decline in value. Are NFBC drafters correctly making those adjustments? Let’s compare March 1-11 ADP (pre-delay) to March 18-24 ADP (post-delay) to find out. I chose to start the post-delay period on March 18 somewhat arbitrarily, but wanted it to be more recent to account for the assumption that we won’t have baseball until sometime in May, at the earliest.
