When tonight’s NL Rookie of the Year award is announced, Harrison Bader’s name will be mentioned in passing, if at all. The finalists are Ronald Acuña Jr., Juan Soto, and Walker Buehler so guys like Bader, Brian Anderson, and Jack Flaherty will likely only get a hat tip for their seasons before the winner is crowned.

In late-August, Jeff Sullivan did a great job highlighting Bader’s case for ROY based primarily on his excellent defense. That piece is definitely worth a look as Bader finished with 3.5 WAR, just behind the 3.7 that both Acuña and Soto logged, but I’ll be looking at his season from the fantasy angle and looking ahead to 2019.

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I think there are not one, but many, questions because there are not one, but many, ways Adalberto Mondesi and Byron Buxton are similar.

Here’s one answer to one possible question:

who has the best fantasy season in 2019?

— Alex "Oxlade" Chamberlain (@DolphHauldhagen) August 29, 2018

I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m kind of surprised. I asked this question very deliberately, its design not remotely accidental, the response options dripping with subtext. Mondesi, with his elite speed, decent power for a speedster, and very questionable contact skills, in 2018 is almost a dead ringer for Buxton in 2017. Mondesi doesn’t quite have Buxton’s baggage — he doesn’t carry the weight of expectations of a No. 1 prospect — but he has his own, continuing a familial legacy. But they do have a lot in common, as aforementioned, which can be summarily boiled down to this great quip from our Eric Longenhagen: “wholly untamed physical abilities.”

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The All-Star game has come and gone, but the festivities are ongoing here at RotoGraphs. It’s time to rank the first half’s “All-Sell-High Team.” These are players who had big first halves, but who aren’t necessarily the best bets to repeat that performance in the second half. Without further ado, let’s get right to the list: Read the rest of this entry »

Well, maybe not you, specifically. The royal you. The editorial.

Kyle Schwarber has had himself a pretty dang good season so far. It’s exactly what I needed. Having just inherited my first ottoneu team — a relatively downtrodden 9th-place team (of 12) — and hardly knowing the rules, I took a gamble and traded a $12 Jon Gray for a $6 Patrick Corbin, a $7 Willie Calhoun, a $3 Jake Junis, and a $20 Schwarber. I liked every piece of the trade (although I, now regretfully, cut Junis during spring training, not really understanding the dynamics of the draft, my finances, or of ottoneu generally). But acquiring Schwarber at his relatively exorbitant price given his 2017 season was a risky proposition, especially after a summer of these headlines:

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As a Royals fan, I try my hardest to not roster any to make sure I limit my hometown bias. Two bats, Alex Gordon and Jorge Soler, are heating up to the point they are being rostered in 15-team leagues and even some shallower ones with Soler. It’s time to perform an unbiased examination of the pair.

Alex Gordon

All I’ve been able to hear when Alex Gordon’s name is brought up is:

“F’ it, I guess I’ll take Alex Gordon.”

One of my league mates blurted this statement after struggling to locate an available outfielder in my home AL-only league auction.

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It’s always interesting to look back at lopsided trades like the one that sent Teoscar Hernandez to Toronto, especially because the team that gave him up was the Houston Astros, a franchise that the vast majority of knowledgeable fans would agree tends to make many more smart decisions than dumb ones. With that in mind, I think what was amazing about the Teoscar deal is just how down the Astros were on the talented young outfielder.

On July 31, 2017, the Astros traded Teoscar and Nori Aoki to the Blue Jays. The return? Francisco Liriano, who brought with him a truly shameful 5.88 ERA, which was largely fueled by his 4.68 BB/9. Even at the time, it seemed pretty clear that the Astros knew Liriano was washed up, as the club converted him to a glorified LOOGY. Liriano pitched a grand total of 16.2 IP with the Astros — 14.1 IP in the regular season, 2.1 IP in the playoffs — over the course of 25 appearances.

Of course, this post is not about Liriano, but it’s important to contextualize how little the Astros valued Teoscar that they were willing to part with him (and Aoki) for 16.2 IP of replacement-level relief pitching. With George Springer, Josh Reddick, Marwin Gonzalez, Derek Fisher, and Jake Marisnick hanging around the major-league club — and stud prospect Kyle Tucker climbing through the minors — it’s certainly true that the Astros were dealing from depth. Still, the Jays did one hell of a job landing Teoscar in exchange for a 34-year-old pitcher fighting to keep his ERA under 6.00.

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Last week I wrote about a few lesser known opportunities within Ottoneu to maximize salary cap space, which is important to understand before your fantasy season begins.  However, by the time you read this post the fantasy season will have already begun, so I want to focus your attention today on strategies that will help you in-season as you attempt to squeeze every bit of value out of your team during what is sure to be a long but very fun Ottoneu season.

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Our staff composite rankings continue on! Today we doubled up with third base earlier and now the outfield.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Justin Mason

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

Key:

• AVG– just the average of the seven ranking sets
• Adj. AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings
• SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

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On Monday, CBS Sports’ Chris Towers took to Twitter to put a bit of a scare into Aaron Judge’s hype-men and -women, posting the following set of images:

*whispers* less than most people are pretending pic.twitter.com/fUsNuMfRTn

— ADP Boy (@CTowersCBS) March 12, 2018

Frankly, I loved it. This word is overused, but, alas: it certainly “triggered” some of his followers. Folks were quick to defend Judge, shielding him from the likenesses he shares with Chris Davis that might, in some version of the near future, manifest in a similar player trajectory. Granted, much of praise for Judge was warranted; an additional 8 percentage points of walks elevates his floor a bit higher than Davis’. Fact of the matter, though, is Judge’s power has few modern comps — namely, Davis, Giancarlo Stanton, Ryan Howard. And I’ve compared Stanton to Howard more than once, so the four of them share the same curiously constructed boat.

What caught my attention, though, aside from the similarities between Judge and Davis that are far more striking than most are willing to admit, is, perhaps surprisingly, the doubles column. In Davis’ monster 2014 campaign, he hit 17 more extra-base hits than Judge did in 2017. Seventeen! That’s no small number. And it got me thinking: a ratio of 52 home runs to 24 doubles is actually kind of alarming. They (whoever “they” are) say a season with lots of doubles but fewer home runs than expected portends more power in the following season. Testing that wisdom, conventional or not, is outside the scope of this post. What I’d rather test is the inverse: does a season with lots of home runs but few doubles (or, generally, other extra-base hits) portend less power?

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I recently had a trade discussion in an ottoneu league (this isn’t an ottoneu specific article, bear with me). Anyway, I was trying to sell a veteran outfielder and a top pitching prospect for Cody Bellinger. Their salaries were about equal. My sales pitch: the veteran projects for a comparable FGpts total to Bellinger. The prospect pays for the nine year age gap. The offer was firmly declined. My sales pitch was roundly poo-pooed.

Let’s see what you think.

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