Archive for Meta Analysis

This week, we’ll be giving away one FG+ membership per day by playing the FG+ Over/Under Game. The wrinkle on this game is that it’s subjective: we’ll provide a player and a number, and you use the comments section to make your best argument for the over or the under. The RotoGraphs staff will pick a winner every day, and that person will get a free subscription to FG+, which includes 11 full-length fantasy strategy articles, 1100 player caps on the player pages, and ongoing access to the FG+ blog, which features the writing the FanGraphs team provides to ESPN Insider on a weekly basis all year.

For our fourth over/under game, let’s take a look at closers in general. Every year, a gaggle of new closers are minted.

The over/under for today’s game is nine. As in, will there be more or less than nine new closers next year? For our purposes, let’s define a new closer as one who will accrue over 20 saves more than he did in 2011.

If you had a subscription to FG+ right now, you could consult Jack Moore’s excellent piece that attempts to use shutdowns and meltdowns to predict closer changes. You would even see a little more about the following figure:

But since you don’t have any more background than a simple tally of the last three years — and yes, I’m suggesting that current FG + subscribers take a back seat and allow those without your knowledge to compete for this — you’ll have to do the best you can to predict the number of closer changes coming in 2012. Use any methods at your disposal.

Have at it!

After sites like Mock Draft Central launched and league hosts like Yahoo! and CBS have added the information, Average Draft Position data has become all the rage. I have read so many articles referencing ADP, and yet, the majority of the time I still have no idea exactly what the author means or how owners utilize it. I recently read a line from a column about mock draft strategy that called ADP’s employment being overrated. Huh? I don’t get it. And how many times have I read that drafter X “reached” on a player? I am confused exactly what is meant by a reach. So let’s try to get back on the same page, while also figuring out exactly how the heck ADP data is actually best used.

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One of the ways a closer can lose his job is to not get hitters out from both sides of the plate. If a right-handed closer is only able to get RHH out consistently, teams will begin to stack the line-up with as many LHH as possible. Here is an in depth look at closer handedness splits.

I got the list of current closers from MLB Depth Charts a couple of days ago. Currently, several teams have shaky situations at closer, so this list will likely change before the beginning of Spring Training. I will try to give an update on it with the changes later.

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Every week, every team gets a day off, usually on Monday or Thursday. On those days, it is nice for a fantasy owner to be able to put a player into a lineup that may add a few counting stats without hurting the team’s batting average. Zach Sanders coined these players: Plug-n-Play. These are players that have full-time jobs, but don’t have much power and don’t accumulate a ton of Runs and RBIs. Usually they hit lower in the lineup and their only fantasy attribute is batting average. I decided to look at some Plug-n-Play candidates for 2012.

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Fantasy owners usually feel good about their rosters after a draft or auction. They got most of the players they wanted and/or needed. All is good. A nice core lineup is set. A couple of players with several qualified positions are waiting on the bench to fill in for a starter’s off day. Rookies were selected that should be called up soon. A pitching staff that is second to none is ready. The first waiver period expires and the guy that auto-drafted then places a player on the waiver wire you desire. Now, a owner must figure out which player they should drop to pick up the desired player.

Once a fantasy manager has completed their draft or auction, a owner needs to immediately designate the first player to be dropped. Finding a player to drop for a better player should be easy, but many owners struggle with it. It should be known at all times which player is the first to go on the team if an opportunity arises. It gives an owner flexibility to make moves while others are holding onto their preciously drafted team.

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While projecting a player without any experience in the Major Leagues is difficult enough, we do have processes that help us come to a reasonable estimate of the player’s current talent level. Use some major-league equivalencies to equalize his Minor League numbers, weight the years, add a little boost, take a little off — whatever the details are, we’ve made progress in this arena. Not a ton of progress — a simple Marcel monkey of a projection is still just about as good as any other projection — but some progress.

What’s missing is a way to project playing time. Or at least, a commonly accepted and readily available process for projecting playing time. It’s difficult to do — there are so many moving parts. What will his manager think? How much will a small sample outburst in Spring Training (by the player or his competition for playing time) mean to his front office? Who will get injured? How much does his team value his arbitration years — will he come up with the team because they need his bat now, or will he go to the Minor Leagues to preserve years of control down the line?

All of these are factors in playing time. And, with a rough look at the schedule and at the team, we can actually try to put a number on these possibilities. Let’s try it out with Bryce Harper.

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I first want to thank everyone who read What is Position Scarcity, Really? and commented, as it led to an interesting discussion with lots of good points and observations. I quickly realized how in-depth this concept could go and that I may not have explained myself as well as I would have liked. It happens all too often, as I sometimes suck at clearly stating my argument and finding the words to use so that everyone understands what I am trying to convey. I have been emailing with a reader/listener of my radio show who read the aforementioned post and it was evident that I had not done a good enough job convincing him either. Luckily, as I was typing my response to him, it suddenly hit me, as I thought of something I should have included in my original article, but failed to.

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Last night on the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable radio show (live every Wed. night at 9 PM EST!), the question was posed as to whether position scarcity was greatest in the outfield this year. I was pretty shocked to hear such a suggestion as I figured it was pretty well known that every year catcher is the scarcest. It got me to thinking that this may be an issue of semantics and that many people still aren’t sure exactly what is meant by the phrase position scarcity. So here I am to explain.

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Welcome back to another edition of the Pod hitter projections. Today I’ll look at one of last season’s biggest surprises, Asdrubal Cabrera. The primary contributor to this breakout was his power surge, as his ISO jumped to .187 and HR/FB spiked to 13.3%, both career highs. He was just 25 last year, so based on age alone, one might believe this is sustainable. Let’s dive into my projection and the thought process behind it.

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The higher the position a player is in a lineup, the better their fantasy stats will be at the end of the year. The player will get more PAs and therefore more opportunities for counting stats. Also, the team’s best players are grouped together at the top of the lineup and will create more RBI and Run chances. The key 5 spots for hitter to see a jump in their Runs and/or RBIs are the 1 to 5 spots. Today, I will look at 2 such battles on decent run scoring teams, the Royals and Reds.

Royals #2 Spot

Last season, Melky Cabrera thrived batting second for the Royals. He scored 102 times and had 87 RBIs on the league’s 10th highest scoring offense. This off season he was traded to the Giants, so the position has reopened for the Royals to fill.

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