Cody Bellinger has been superb in his call up with the Dodgers, hitting 6 home runs in 65 plate appearances. With Andrew Toles out for the season with a torn ACL, the likelihood of Bellinger staying in the big leagues has improved. However, what should reasonably be expected for the Dodgers phenom for the rest of 2017? It doesn’t take an advanced statistician to understand that the .446 wOBA he has posted thus far will regress, but the question is how far? Does Bellinger’s performance line up with what was expected? The first place I want to start is with Bellinger’s scouting report courtesy of our own Eric Longenhagen. (Trimmed it down a bit)

…That power comes from the monster hacks that Bellinger takes in all counts. He doesn’t protect or shorten up with two strikes and instead he’s constantly threatening low-flying aircraft with his incredible torque, hand speed and uppercut swing. This results in lots of airborne contact (majestic blasts as well as weak pop ups) and plenty of strikeouts… Bellinger has shown the ability to stay back on breaking balls, as well the ability to turn on plus velocity in on the hands and, while he does try to pull everything, he has solid plate coverage…

He’s also seen time in the outfield, including center, and there are scouts who think he could play all three outfield spots in a pinch…

There’s some risk here because of the swing and miss, and I expect major-league pitchers will feed Bellinger a steady diet of offspeed pitches, especially back-foot sliders, once they see the swings he takes…

Jeff Zimmerman has already dived into Bellinger’s defense in the OF, which may be better than expected. While defense isn’t really pertinent to our discussions for ottoneu/fantasy, (Bellinger has already secured OF eligibility for 2018), Jeff does good work. If you’re not reading it, you’re missing out. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, we took a look at starters who have improved their projections the most in 2017. In examining this group, we wanted to look at how their plate discipline stats measured up to what they had already done. Was a starter who had increased his projection showing underlying improvements in his skills? For example, was he inducing less contact in the zone, while throwing in the zone more? These are the types of questions I like to look into. While no method is fool proof, it is useful to see where underlying improvements may or may not occur, even when you see the general movements projections are taking.

Today, I am going to go through a similar exercise with hitters.

In examining this group, I have included all hitters who have improved their Ottoneu FGPts Points per Game projection by .05 or more. Within this group, I have shown the contact rate, swinging strike rate, and (from baseball savant) xwOBA. For each of these statistics, the corresponding changes from the prior year are also included (see delta columns).  Here’s the full list: Read the rest of this entry »

One month through the season and those playing ottoneu are likely getting a clearer idea of if they are buying or selling. It’s a tricky pendulum, as no playoff structure exists. In determining to sell, owners are likely targeting players who have performed much better than expected over the first month. While there are several ways to determine who these players are, one of the most common ways is to examine projections to see which players have actually improved. Today, I want to look at a couple of pitchers who have improved their projections the most, while examining a couple underlying skill changes that may or may not exist in each of these. The degree of these changes represents my willingness or unwillingness to buy.

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If playing ottoneu for the first time, or even if you have played for a while, one of the areas that typically requires adaptation is that of in season auctions. While typical leagues use a FAAB, ottoneu does not, requiring you to budget $400 for all roster spots. So how do you want to spend the money you have left over after the annual auction? Do you want to be aggressive and go after players performing well through the season’s first month? What about players who have under-performed on their expectations and have been cut? Are there any injured players who have been cut in an effort to reclaim cap space?

Many in season auctions will fall into one of these three categories. A look at the current auctions in one of my leagues shows a wide range of possible motivations in nominating a player.

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It’s a well-established fact that AT&T Park is one of the worst ballparks in the major leagues for offense. That’s why, despite putting up a 132 wRC+ over his last 1,500 or so plate appearances, Brandon Belt is not a very valuable fantasy first baseman. It’s also why Buster Posey, a catcher with a career 136 wRC+, has never really been worthy of a top-10 pick on fantasy draft day.

In recent years, however, a new and troubling trend has emerged for the Giants offense. While the league has been on an historic home run tear the last year and a half or so, the Giants have not kept up. In fact, they’ve done the opposite: they’re hitting more ground balls (and fewer fly balls) than just about any other team in baseball.

Ground balls are almost always worse than fly balls, even for a team that plays in a cavernous ballpark like the Giants. Since 2014, Giants hitters have a .245 AVG, .263 SLG, .223 wOBA, and 45 wRC+ on ground balls at home. On their fly balls at home, however, they have a .226 AVG, .598 SLG, .332 wOBA, and 119 wRC+ since 2014.

While the team batting average is actually higher on ground balls, the slugging percentage, wOBA, and wRC+ are so, so much worse. This is strong evidence to the effect that even a team that plays in an extreme pitcher’s park is not better off hitting ground balls — flies seem to be indisputably better no matter what. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever played Ottoneu, you likely realized that it’s a different fantasy format. The 40-man rosters are deep, and the player universe is much larger than the standard fantasy offering. There are auctions for nearly all acquisitions, and during the season there is no FAAB (just the money you decide to budget for free agents.) However, perhaps the biggest difference between Ottoneu and other formats is the playoff structure. Ottoneu doesn’t have one.

Ottoneu is a season long race, starting the first day of the regular season and ending with the season’s final game. The objective is pretty simple. Score more points over your allotted game and innings caps than your opponents. If you aren’t playing in a money league, or your league has not designed some added incentives of their own, then there likely aren’t incentives to finish in second place relative to twelfth. Read the rest of this entry »

At the time of this writing, there are 37 major league hitters with a wRC+ of 150 or higher. There are the usual suspects: Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, and Nolan Arenado are on the leaderboard to no one’s surprise. There are exciting young prospects, including Mitch Haniger, Aaron Judge, and Joey Gallo. Then there are unexpected names like Eric Thames, Cesar Hernandez, and Robbie Grossman.

Lengthy articles could be, and have been, written about any of the players above. One player who hasn’t received much publicity despite some relatively prolonged success is Grossman.

He checks in with a 158 wRC+ in 67 plate appearances so far this year. Steamer projects a .322 wOBA and 99 wRC+ for the rest of the season (ROS), and that projection puts him just a few ticks behind his highly-touted teammate Max Kepler. Although Kepler is three years younger and may have a higher ceiling, the point is that name recognition can play a pretty big role in how we analyze players.

Also, Grossman used to be bad. From 2013 to 2015, he had just a .281 wOBA and 77 wRC+ in 202 plate appearances against left-handed pitching, despite being a switch hitter. Since 2016, however, Grossman has a .417 wOBA and 166 wRC+ in 170 plate appearances against lefties. Even with his early-career struggles against lefties, Grossman now has a lifetime .344 wOBA and 118 wRC+ against them. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year around this time I posted an article taking a look at the hitters whose rest of season Depth Charts projections had changed the most, and even after just two plus weeks some players saw significant increases and decreases. I’m following up with the same analysis for this very young 2017 season, so let’s take a look at the players whose projections have moved the most in the early going (based on projected FanGraphs points per game):

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Like many ottoneu owners (and baseball fans in general), I’m a bit of a prospect hound, always looking for the next Mike Trout or even the next Kole Calhoun. Unlike many of our writers, I have absolutely no scouting chops, so I prefer to take a more analytic approach to prospect evaluation. That includes looking at prospect reports from John Sickels and our own Eric Longenhagen, as well as reviewing projections from Steamer/ZiPS and KATOH. That’s only part of the story though, and with minor league games well under way we have some actual performances to add to our evaluations. Using the fantastic website MLBfarm.com, I put together a list of the top ten hitting performances in the minor leagues so far (using ottoneu FanGraphs points scoring, and filtering on prospects in the organizational Top 10s).

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I’ve been a baseball fan as far back as I can remember, and for me that fandom didn’t end when the season did. I was always a numbers guy, so in middle school I made up the rules to my own baseball (and football) games using dice to simulate results, and latched onto fantasy baseball shortly after. When the baseball season ended and I still needed my fix, I turned to Strat-O-Matic, the much more advanced version of my simple dice game. As I entered college I discovered baseball sim games on the computer, starting with Baseball Mogul and ending with Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP). I’ve been playing OOTP to get me through the long baseball offseason for at least ten years, and every new iteration becomes more and more immersive. The newest version (OOTP 18) is out, so I decided to project the results for one of my ottoneu leagues (League #530) with an OOTP simulation of 2017 (hat tip to league-mate Brent Daily for the idea!).

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