Let’s continue rolling on with the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT X against Steamer in the various fantasy categories and discussing the players each system is more bullish on. Today, we shift over to runs batted in (RBI) and follow the same 650 plate appearance pace calculation I did when reviewing stolen base forecasts. RBI are driven by a couple of factors — the batter’s own offense, particularly his power/extra-base hit ability, his spot in the lineup (middle of the order, spots 3-5, are best), and the performance of the hitters ahead of him in the lineup (ideally, they are high OBP, but lower in power so they drive in other runners or themselves via the home run less frequently and leave more for the batter in question). Since one of those factors is power, driven significantly by home runs, there will be some similar names here to what made THE BAT X home run favorites list. That makes sense! So let’s get to it.

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Let’s continue the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT X against Steamer in the various fantasy categories. Today, I’ll shift over to batting average, and identify and discuss the hitters that THE BAT X is more bullish on than Steamer. Unlike the counting stat showdowns, there’s no need to perform extra calculations to account for different PA forecasts, making it a whole lot easier! Batting average differences are primarily driven by disagreements over projected BABIP and/or strikeout rate, so let’s find out what’s fueling THE BAT X’s optimism.

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The Outfield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Sara Sanchez

Strategy Section

• Blind spots of projections
  • When can the human eye do better than projections?
• Masataka Yoshida
• Outfiled Player Pool
  • General layout
  • Platoon players strategy
• Juan Soto vs. Freddie Freeman

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Players

• Outfielders
  • Nick Castellanos
  • Taylor Ward
  • Jake McCarthy
  • Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
  • Alex Verdugo
  • Mitch Haniger
  • Randal Grichuk
  • Austin Hays
  • Manuel Margot
  • TJ Friedl
  • Tyrone Taylor
  • Garrett Mitchell
  • Ian Happ

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It’s time for another examination of projection accuracies while I finish up hitters. I will focus on rate stats along with a different look at the RBI and Runs totals. The results are just slightly different than last year and now the aggregators take the top

From last season, here was my conclusion on the rate stats.

Hitter Rate/Counting Stats

For the stand-alone projections, THE BAT’s stand out (I’d use THE BAT X). Just below THE BAT are all four aggregators.

As for the background on how I’m comparing the projections, it can be found in this article. Additionally, I examined the counting stat accuracy in another article. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I pivoted the 2023 projection showdown pitting THE BAT X against Steamer to stolen bases. These were the hitters THE BAT X was more bullish on for steals than Steamer. Now let’s find out who Steamer is more bullish on than THE BAT X for stolen bases, given a constant 650 plate appearances.

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2023’s PitcherList PitchCon was a great time. If you are unfamiliar with the event I highly recommend going back and watching any of the videos from any one of the four day’s recordings. FanGraphs’ own Ariel Cohen presented a few aspects of his ATC projections that I had never been aware of and think could be very useful in draft preparation. I encourage you to go back and watch Cohen’s talk on The Value of ATC Volatility Charts. In this post, I’ll take a look ATC’s InterSD, InterSK, and IntraSD metrics. Join me by opening a new tab, clicking on over to the ATC projections page, shuffling to the “Fantasy” tab and noticing three columns all the way to the right of the spreadsheet.

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Let’s continue the 2023 projection showdown, pitting THE BAT X against Steamer in the various fantasy categories. Today, I’ll shift over to stolen bases, and identify and discuss the hitters that THE BAT X is more bullish on than Steamer. Like I did for home runs, I converted the projected stolen base total into a ratio first and then calculated the season pace. For steals, I used plate appearances as the denominator, instead of at-bats, and then 650 PAs for the season pace. Let’s find out who THE BAT X likes to steal more bases than Steamer.

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It’s time to continue examining projection accuracy. Today, it’s a quick run through the hitter counting stats. From last year’s results, I came to the following conclusion.

Hitter Rate/Counting Stats

For the stand-alone projections, THE BATs stands out (I’d use THE BAT X). Just below THE BAT are all four aggregators.

This year’s results didn’t disappoint.

I’m not reposting all the background information that no one reads anyway. It can all be found in the previous playing time article. I’ll just post the results and then draw my conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that you’ve gone through the keep or cut process, are you ready to draft? Do you have a big board on your wall with your targets? Do you know how much you’ll pay and how much you won’t? The FanGraphs auction calculator will tell you what a player is worth based on your league and whichever projection system you prefer, but which players do you need to get to fill out your roster? In this post I’ll detail my process for targeting players in an Ottoneu FanGraphs points league re-draft auction.
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The most interesting player projections are those that vary wildly from system to system. I love when the forecasting systems disagree about a certain player as it really spotlights the different methodologies of the underlying projection processes driving the calculations. Sometimes it’s obvious what’s driving the gap, as one system might regress more heavily toward the league average, while another might weight the individual’s performance more heavily. So let’s begin a new projection showdown series, pitting THE BAT/THE BAT X against Steamer in the various fantasy categories. I’m curious which system likes which players better in the various categories and it will help to try to understand why the systems are more bullish or bearish.

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