Archive for Meta Analysis

The Reds picked up a top tier closer on a short deal, and there are plenty of reasons to love this in real life and in fantasy. In fact, the real life reasons inform the fantasy reasons. It’s all one big package, and Ryan “Mad Dog” Madson is the bow.

Why love it in real life? The Reds aren’t on the hook after 2012, and that probably suits them fine. Relievers are volatile from year to year, even one as nice as the Mad Dog. And the Reds are an exercise in learning from their own mistakes.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, I posted an introduction to my forecasting method for hitters that I developed to help me in my fantasy leagues. I do not actually project any statistics besides the five fantasy categories and those that lead to the calculation of them. As a result, no walks and on base percentage, doubles and slugging percentage or wOBA from me. So just a heads up if anyone wanted to hear what OPS I am projecting, sorry, but I have no projection!

Since I am going in alphabetical order in my projections and haven’t gotten very far, I have decided to start with Dustin Ackley. He is quite the interesting player to project as Jeff Zimmerman is not a fan and Chad Young suggested fantasy owners pass on him and wait for Jason Kipnis later. Early mock drafters aren’t overly optimistic, as his ADP sits at 133, which is the beginning of the 12th round 11th among second basemen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every fantasy owner looks for an edge over the competition. Using a hitter’s platoon splits versus right- and left-handed pitchers is one such method. When looking at these platoon splits, however, a fantasy owner needs to look a little further than just the basic splits to see if the difference is seen is with all pitchers or just relievers.

Historically, left-handed batters hit right-handed pitchers better and right-handed batters hit left-handed pitchers better (called the platoon advantage). With some players, the extent of the difference can be more or less than the league average. For hitters with extreme splits, it may be best to sit them and play someone else if they are up against a certain handed starting pitcher.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the past 10 years or so, I have generated my own projections to use for my fantasy baseball drafts. As you can imagine, the spreadsheet has become more complex every year as I have incorporated more and more formulas in an attempt to increase the precision. Unlike the projection sets you are familiar with, such as ZiPS, CAIRO, Bill James, etc, I don’t actually have a system. It would be fantastic to have the programming and mathematical chops to be able to develop a full-fledged system that takes previous year’s stats and a host of other factors into account and instantly spit out a projection. Unfortunately, my method is very time consuming as I literally project every player by hand, poring over countless metrics on FanGraphs, ESPN Home Run Tracker, StatCorner, and Rotoworld, and in Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, let’s make some useful data available for reference on a couple of a subjects — park factors and pitcher batted ball data.

Extreme Park Factors

With Carlos Quentin getting traded to the Padres and the resulting discussion on how his power translates to San Diego, I decided to make available the most extreme park factors in the league. I used the handedness data available at Statcorner.com. I only looked at values that are 10% higher or lower than the league average. Also, I made available the factors that are the most relevant to fantasy baseball, Line Drives (major component of BABIP and AVG) and Home Runs. The park factors are for hitters with a value over 100 helping a hitter and a value below 100 hurting a hitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the 2011 triple slash lines for 4 outfielders and the career split for another player:

0.262/0.309/0.423
0.264/0.323/0.393
0.262/0.336/0.429
0.271/0.327/0.438
0.263/0.312/0.509

All the players are similar. The first player went 14th over all in a recent Fangraphs Dynasty league draft and the others were taken at the following picks: 112th, 234th, 163rd, 62nd.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is hard to believe, but mock draft season is already in full force. According to Mock Draft Central’s latest ADP report, there have already been 109 qualifying drafts, as well as 3 expert drafts. What’s cool about their ADP reports is that they publish the expert league ADPs separately so you can compare what the industry is thinking about a player with how the general public feels. I thought it would be interesting to see which players had the large differences between their regular ADP and expert league ADP. Below are the 10 players with the biggest differences, with the one caveat being that at least one of the ADP values had to represent a pick in the top 10 rounds. So any player with both ADP values above 120 were eliminated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Parmelee

Chris Parmelee started 20 of the last 21 at 1B for the 2011 Twins by filling in for the injured Justin Morneau (55 games at 1B) and Joe Mauer (16 games at 1B). Both Morneau and Mauer are huge injury risks for the 2012 season and have a good chance to end up on the DL at some point during the season. Chris Parmelee looks like, for now, he will be the backup 1B going into the season with Michael Cuddyer still a free agent.

Read the rest of this entry »

We got the RotoGraphs team together for a mock dynasty draft, the results of which I believe you can see here. (Just remember that Brandon Wood is a placeholder for Nolan Arenado, Anthony Vasquez = Danny Hultzen, Hector Gomez = Jurickson Profar, and Anthony Slama = Trevor Bauer.)

My team seems strong and young, at least to me. My core infield is Dustin Pedroia, Mike Morse, Brett Lawrie and Elvis Andrus, and I love starting the draft with the infield at the premium positions. Got some love in the outfield for my Jay Bruce pick earlier today, and even though I waited longer than anyone not named Podhorzer for starting pitchers, I ended up with Michael Pineda, Dan Hudson and Ricky Romero. Maybe I’ll write about all this in the future.

But maybe the most interesting thing, at least today, is that I took Ryan Braun with my second-round pick in this dynasty league mock.

Read the rest of this entry »

We FanGraphers decided we couldn’t wait any longer. Why wait until March when you could draft NOW?! Not only did we mock it up last night, but we assumed a keeper league. WOAH. We gathered 12 of our most intelligent, hilarious and handsome writers, used standard roster sizes minus one catcher and drafted five reserves. I know you are dying to find out how the action unfolded, but before I begin the process of unveiling the winning team (mine, obviously), I will share my keeper league philosophy/strategy for the draft.

Read the rest of this entry »