Archive for Mock Draft Analysis

NFBC Hitting Sleepers

We added the average draft positions for National Fantasy Baseball Championship leagues to our projections pages! Right now only Steamer is up and so you can click here and find the ADP in the last column on the right. Once I was told they were live I thought let’s take this info and use it with the Steamer 600 projection (their normal projection normalized to 600 PA for everyone) to find some potential gems. Essentially, it’s a playing time sleeper list. If these guys were to find 600 PA, Steamer is suggesting they’ve got the skills to shine. I’m looking at players currently being drafted outside the top 200 in NFBC leagues.

Here are 12 names that stood out to me:

Read the rest of this entry »


Jonathan Villar: A Tale of Two Seasons

Jonathan Villar burst onto the scene in 2016 with 19 HR and 62 steals. He was going 19th overall in 2017 NFBC drafts and was a huge disappointment when he hit posted a .293 OBP, 11 HR, and 23 SB. With 2018 drafts starting, I’ve seen his ADP (200) way below where he should go using his Steamer projection (~118). The disconnect is understandable but not to the current level. Opportunity exists for huge upside.

Just for reference, here are Villar’s basic stats from the past four seasons and his 2018 Steamer projection.

Villar Recent Stats
Season Team Age G PA HR SB AVG OBP SLG ISO
2013 Astros 22 58 241 1 18 .243 .321 .319 .076
2014 Astros 23 87 289 7 17 .209 .267 .354 .144
2015 Astros 24 53 128 2 7 .284 .339 .414 .129
2016 Brewers 25 156 679 19 62 .285 .369 .457 .171
2017 Brewers 26 122 436 11 23 .241 .293 .372 .132
2018 Steamer 27 130 563 15 34 .250 .324 .399 .149

Of all the values which changed his value from 2016 to 2017 was the 76-percentage point drop in OBP. Less times on base meant fewer steals and runs scored. An OBP under .300 is kill for any hitter.

Besides the scoreboard stats, here are his 2nd order stats over the same time frame.

More Villar Stats
Season GB% HR/FB Pull% BB% K% Swg% Contact% AVG EV Sprint Speed
2014 51.0% 13.5% 34.0% 6.6% 27.7% 46.0% 70.1%
2015 58.0% 10.0% 44.9% 7.8% 22.7% 46.2% 77.0% 89.5 27.3
2016 56.0% 19.6% 32.3% 11.6% 25.6% 42.8% 75.0% 87.7 27.7
2017 57.0% 19.0% 39.1% 6.9% 30.3% 47.5% 71.3% 86.7 27.6

His plate discipline is the biggest discrepancy over the past two season seasons with his K%-BB% jumping from 14% to 23%. Even though he maintained similar power and groundball rates, the overall decline in contact rate while swinging more did him in.
Read the rest of this entry »


A Potent Odor: Rougned’s Return

About a week ago, I compared rankings with some actual ADP. One player which stood out was Rougned Odor. He ranked 47th overall (AVG vs OBP league) and it’s tough to rank a person so high who hit only .204 last season. Steamer projections currently have him back up to a .255 AVG. Acceptable but not great.

Additionally, Odor comes to the plate hacking and rarely walks (4.2% for his career) so almost all of his value comes from his BABIP. If his batted balls don’t fall for hits, he’s not getting on base. Since his value is so BABIP driven, I decided to see what the BABIP bounce-back chances were for low-walk hitters.

Read the rest of this entry »


Value vs. ADP: Players 51 to 100

In my last article, I examined the potential value differences between the top-50 rank players and their average draft position (ADP). Today, I will examine the next 50. While the first list contained quite a few players moving up, today’s list is a little more balanced with over and undervalued players.

One of the biggest takeaways from the first article was the extra replacement value catchers receive in a 2-catcher format. To simply explain the idea, I will turn to Joe Bryant who goes through a fitting example but with football.

The league’s bottom catchers are so bad so any catcher who can hit has good value. Evan Gattis being ranked #17 got most of the scrutiny in the rankings. As was pointed out, the projection may be high on the plate appearances but the process was still sound. Here is how Gattis compares to the last catcher ranked (Yan Gomes) and Francisco Lindor compared with the last middle infielder (Kolten Wong).

Positional Scarcity Comparison
Name AVG HR R RBI SB
Evan Gattis 0.254 30 73 87 2
Yan Gomes 0.232 9 26 29 1
Difference 0.022 21 47 58 1
Francisco Lindor 0.292 26 96 90 14
Kolten Wong 0.268 12 58 56 9
Difference 0.024 14 38 34 5

Yan Gomes is such a sink, especially with a total of 55 Runs+RBIs. It’s imperative to understand and value catchers correctly for each league formats. It’s a potentially huge advantage for those owners who spend the time. Read the rest of this entry »


Top 50 Ranked Players: Value vs. ADP

“Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks,

… or fantasy baseball players

I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.” –Warren Buffett

Collecting as much value (talented players) from as little possible resources (draft picks or auction dollars) is the key to starting off a winning fantasy season. From now until each draft, owners should be trying to calculate player values and the possible range of outcomes. With these value ranges in mind, owners can use their draft resources to get the best deals. It’s time to start finding those deals.

To find the bargains, player values first need to be calculated. To create the values, I will use the average final standings from the 32 leagues in the 2017 NFBC Main Event (15 team, 5×5 roto with AVG).

Read the rest of this entry »


My NFBC Team from AFL

If you have read my work or listened to the podcast, you know I’m obsessed with my Arizona Fall League trip every year. It’s just the best. One of my favorite things about that trip is the NFBC Draft & Hold league we start there. We do the first 23 rounds live and then the other 27 online starting in January. It’s a little bit of a reach-fest. I think part of it is the draft and hold aspect, part of it is recency bias of the season just ending, and part of it is just getting the oohs & ahhs (or playful curse outs) from another participant.

I’ve been doing this draft since 2012 and I think I’ve had an early pick just one. I regularly draft from one of the last three spots in the 15-team league and this year was no different as I nabbed spot 15. For those unaware, it’s a Kentucky Derby Style draft slotting process where they draw the names out of the hat and then you can pick your spot among those available. I can’t recall exactly when my name was pulled, but 15 was available and that was exactly what I wanted. I had done a mock in mid-October and was struck by how deep the first round was so I felt more than comfortable getting the wheel.

Another reason I love pick 15 is because I get the first pick in the January restart. After a few months of Hot Stove activity, there are usually a handful of players who have improved their status beyond a round 24 pick, making them great values at this slot. Of course, this year they cancelled the Hot Stove so there might not be any of those gem picks available to me.

Let’s take a look at my first 23.

Read the rest of this entry »


Another Draft, Another Review: NFBC Draft-and-Hold

I had participated in a too-early industry mock draft that ended a couple of weeks ago. Then I attended First Pitch Arizona (FPAZ), which I reviewed and at which I participated in another arguably too-early draft. This post is about that latter draft. Sorry for all the reviews lately.

The draft, which took place live at FPAZ, is hosted by the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC). It’s a 15-team league, but instead of being a standard 30-round draft (seven bench players) with in-season transactions, it’s a 50-round draft-and-hold with no transactions (don’t worry, this only covers the first 23 rounds). I won’t say it completely changes the dynamic, but it does, or at least should, dramatically alter the plans of owners who take a lot of risks and plan to hedge them using their free agent acquisition budgets (FAABs).

What’s worse is I had, and still have, done virtually zero planning for the 2018 season. Accordingly, I relied on a strategy I outlined in the previously hyperlinked too-early mock draft review. I’m a risk-averse guy, so I typically draft player who are boring — boring because they’re old and/or you know what you’re getting. Low variance, things of that nature. This strategy inadvertently exacerbated this tendency of mine in these drafts, and the draft-and-hold nature of this league further compounded it. Without looking, the average age of my team must be, like, 33 years old.

But I like it. It’s so unsexy, so unapologetically (actually, very apologetically) boring that it’s almost not worth review. Except when I talk about boring, unsexy teams, I hear from guys like Jeff Zimmerman, Mike Gianella and so on — guys in the industry expert leagues such as Tout Wars and LABR — who say this is their jam, and that’s reassuring.

Read the rest of this entry »


Auction Calculator Results: Starting Pitcher Tiers

The Auction Calculator is now loaded with the 2017 end-of-season data along with some 2018 projections. I’m sure the preceding comment will be sufficient to keep many readers busy for a while. I’m glad some came back. While its output can lead down several different discussion paths, I’m going to analyze what I consider to be the third starting pitcher tier. I feel many 2018 leagues will be won or lost by navigating this minefield.

So far this offseason, fantasy owners have placed four starters (Kluber, Kershaw, Sale, and Scherzer) in the top tier, After those four, I believe there are a dozen or so pitchers who would make acceptable aces, especially if they can be doubled up with another pitcher from this tier.

Read the rest of this entry »


Too-Early Mock Draft On-Time Review

Fantasy owners participate in mock drafts to practice for their actual league drafts. Without the internet, neither mock drafts nor average draft position (ADP) data would be possible or available to us. The union of the two allow owners to understand approximately when they can expect players they plan to target and devise an appropriate plan of action.

What ensues when you draft for the next baseball season before the current season has ended and without ADP data and having not refined/run your 2018 projections yet? Chaos, namely. For the second year, the Honourable Justin Mason organized the Too-Early (#2early) mock drafts for me and a few dozen other analysts, the final ADP “data” (in air quotes, because a sample size of four drafts is not particularly strong data, and, as aforementioned, it is way too early to be mock-drafting) for which can be found here.

I drafted out of the 11th spot (of 15) in draft #4. I made a concerted effort to draft a good team, but I also deliberately avoided certain players just to see where other owners would draft them. (Had I drafted these players for my team, I would have a weaker understanding of how other owners valued them.) The lack of ADP data made it incredibly difficult to implement this plan. In a nutshell, my plan consisted of drafting the best player with a track record still available on the draft board (mind-blowing, I know), with a strong preference for hitting. There’s an objective basis to this that, rather than trying to explain, I’ll let reveal and define itself as I go. This plan served me admirably in all rounds of the draft.

Here’s my team, by round. “Rk” indicates a player’s draft rank within his assigned position. Columns labeled “All” and “Pos” depict players’ end-of-season values overall and by position, respectively, each of the last four years. These ranks come courtesy of Rudy Gamble, who concocts them for Razzball. If you’re concerned that these might somehow be inferior to ESPN’s Player Rater, know that Rudy won this year’s Tout Wars Mixed by a landslide, so I thoroughly trust his process.

Read the rest of this entry »


Early Mock Thoughts: Starting Pitcher ADP

Yesterday, the Justin Mason posted the ADP from four of the slowest drafts containing industry experts and myself. One thought I had after a handful of rounds was the lack pitching available and how the good were the available hitters. I decided to go back and examine draft results from last year and these draft to see if pitching was being taken early. While it wasn’t, some other information could be extracted.

Read the rest of this entry »