Archive for Projections

Introduction

Well, we are down to the final week of fantasy baseball. After a short 60 game season in 2020, we are blessed to be approaching game 162 here in 2021!

We here at RotoGraphs, are hoping that you are right in the thick of the competition for your league’s fantasy championship title. For me – I am right in the middle of an intense battle with one of the legends of rotisserie baseball, Ron Shandler, as well as our own Jeff Zimmerman.

The league that I am referring to is the Mixed Auction LABR league. I was one this division of LABR’s inaugural members back in 2020.

Above is a photograph of some of the participants of the live 2020 auction draft from Tampa, Florida. Due to COVID, this year’s draft was held online. LABR is one of the longest running (if not THE longest currently running) expert leagues of rotisserie baseball. It is an honor simply to be invited to compete.

The Mixed auction LABR league is a very standard 12-team 5×5 rotisserie league. We use the standard scoring categories (R, RBI, HR, SB, BA, W, K, SV, ERA, WHIP), and standard rosters (14 B, 9 P). Scoring periods are weekly, trading is allowed, and the initial draft is of the auction variety. Last year, I went into great detail recapping my draft – a two-part article that can be found here and here.

As many of you might already know, as a risk management actuary – my day job consists of running simulation models to recommend purchasing decisions to the upper management of my company. I simulate possible fires, hurricanes, medical malpractice claims, and other liabilities that we may be on the hook for.

Borrowing several actuarial methods, I adapted some of these models in order to develop a proprietary in-season fantasy baseball tool. It is a probabilistic final standings simulator. Using the current league accumulated standings, a source of projected ROS statistics, a volatility and a correlation model – I run 4000 iterations of what might happen for the remainder of the season.

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The Final Week Decisions Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

League Updates

Strategy Section

• Final Week Strategies & Decisions
  • No fear of droping players
  • Categories categories categories
  • Players in a pennant race
  • Younger players
  • Hot hand
  • Projections vs. final month stats
  • Roster flexibility in the final week
  • Go with your gut
  • Rotation schedules revamped for playoff bound teams

Injry Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

Housekeeping

• Upcoming Episode Schedule
• Thank you for listening !!!

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
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Back in April, I conducted an analysis that looked at which category made the most sense to punt in roto-category scoring leagues. The results proved (somewhat) the offensive category most conducive to that strategy is stolen bases. That’s easy.

But you punted already. The punting is done. That ball ain’t coming back. Now you need to win, win, win! Therefore, you need home runs. When taking the last 15 games of the season from qualified hitters from 2015 to 2019, and limiting the dataset to just the three categories: home runs, runs, and RBI, I get the following correlations:

Homeruns, late in the season, have the highest sum of correlation. When batters hit home runs in small samples, they’re bringing runners in and scoring runs themselves. No duh. Here are three players that are projected (as of 9/20/21) to hit three more home runs according to our Depth Charts Rest of Season Projections. Now, I know you deep-league players are going to scoff and turn your nose up at these players who have not been available since your draft, but let’s give some love to the churn and burn, shallow leaguers, trying to squeeze out a few more category tens. 

C.J. Cron, Depth Charts ROS: 3 HR, 8 RBI, 6 R. ESPN Roster %: 70.9. 

Mike Podhorzer’s recent article encourages you to stack up on Rockies hitters for good reason. Pod did not include Cron because he assumed he would be gobbled up by your league mates already. But he recently went 0-for-11 before a two-hit night in Washington followed by another 0-for-3 night. There are surely managers out there that have dropped Cron and are unaware of the fact that he will be hitting in Colorado for nine games, as pointed out by Podhorzer. At home, Cron has batted .315 and on the road, has batted .226. While he is slumping as of late, his second-half .283 average is improved from his first-half .254 and his ROS projections could add a few more needed digits to your totals. 

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Miguel Sanó, Depth Charts ROS: 3 HR, 7 RBI, 6 R. ESPN Roster %: 50.2.

Sano is one of those players, like Cron, that you may just be able to pick up on the wire because other managers have lost faith. But, recently Sano has been on a tear going 6-for-21 with two home runs, four RBI, and five runs. What is there left to say about Sano? He ranks 11th in savant’s Brls/PA% and fourth in average exit velocity. He’s going to hit the ball hard and hopefully, he puts it over the fence three more times as projected. Luckily, you can grab him on a hot streak and, hopefully, won’t have to suffer through too many hitless games the rest of the way. 

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Tyler O’Neill, Depth Charts ROS: 3 HR, 7 RBI, 7 R. ESPN Roster %: 71.8.

This season I have fallen in love with xwOBA and its in-season predictive power. Tyler O’Neill ranks 16th in xwOBA among minimum balls in play qualified hitters. His teammate Paul Goldschmidt is just above him at 15th and since August 15th the Cardinals rank 9th in wOBA. With an offense clicking, a man that looks like he could hit a ball to Greenland, and projections to further the narrative, O’Neill should be rostered on your team the rest of the way.

The Mid-September Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Last 2 weeks of the season
  • No more fear of droping players
  • Specific team schedules in the penultimate week, and lineup decisions
  • Contending teams and playing time

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

Live show announcement!

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)

The Early September Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

League Updates

Strategy Section

• Frequency of success vs. Magnitude of success
• Avoid same team stacking in fantasy baseball?

9/11

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
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The Closer Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

Closers

• How to form a closer hierarchy
  • Pre-season
  • Mid-season
  • Closer by committee
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• What is the optimal closer strategy for drafts?
  • Bank an elite closer?
  • Is drafting two top closers a viable strategy?
• Using FAAB resources on closers
  • How much is too much?
• Non-elite closers that may experience a saves surge in September
• What to observe in September to assist us in prep for the 2022 season
• Kenley Jansen
• Organizational & manegerial philosophy

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The September Prospects Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: James Anderson

Strategy Section

Prospects

• Guaging which teams will showcase prospects
• Positions and service time manipulation
• The affect of COVID in 2020 on prospects in 2021
• Will there be another Randy Arozarena in 2021?
• Impact prospects for 2022

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Prospect Discussion

• Bobby Witt Jr.
  • How will the KC Royals allign their defense in future years?
• Julio Rodriguez
• Jarred Kelenic
• Adley Rutschman
  • Catchers – High prospect failure rates
• Keibert Ruiz
• Jo Adell
• Jarren Duran
• Alex Kirilloff
• Max Meyer
• Nolan Gorman

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This season I’ve been checking to make sure all my counting stats are on pace using my league’s historical first-place totals. This is just a shallow ESPN league, but we’ve been at it for a few years now. So, I can get a good idea of what totals I’ll need to accumulate to come out on top. Using historical data in combination with Steamer rest of season projections, I can get a good sense of where I’ll be at the season’s end. Here’s a nice, simple graph that you can easily replicate using Excel:

I won’t show my ratios, you don’t want to see them. My WHIP and ERA are practically gone and never coming back. But, that allows me to go all-in on strikeouts and as you can see, I’ll need a big boost if I want to finish with first-place totals. Here are three pitchers who are likely available on waiver wires and have high rest of season strikeout totals. 

Patrick Corbin, 43.9% rostered ESPN, ROS SO: 44

Corbin has hurt a lot of fantasy managers this season and his 5.82 ERA is the evidence. But, an extra 44 strikeouts would certainly be welcome. With the Nationals projected to win another 16 games, you may just get one or two more wins. His ROS ERA is 4.02, but this is really a move for strikeouts and not ratios. If you’re holding onto a small number there, don’t claim Corbin. 

Josiah Gray, 33.9% rostered ESPN, ROS SO: 41

In Gray’s second start for the Nationals he recorded 10 strikeouts and in his two most recent starts he’s gone six innings. His ROS K/9 is a healthy 9.48 and it really seems like the Nationals are trying to see what their new rotation piece has to offer. 

JT Brubaker, 12.4% rostered ESPN, ROS SO: 36

I know, I know. He’s on the IL, he’s had a rough go in his last few starts and his ROS ERA is a 4.18. But, his injury is supposedly only going to keep him on for the minimum stay, two of his last three starts resulted in an xFIP that was at least 4 points lower than his FIP and he only gave up four hits, and no runs in his most recent start.

The big disclaimer here is that you need to be willing to ditch WHIP and ERA. These three pitchers are not projected to keep the numbers off the scoreboard, but they could be cheap and easy ways of accumulating more strikeouts. As long as you have the starts remaining to spare, these three pitchers’ rest of season projections could get you what you need.

Sometimes conclusions to tough questions just don’t sit right, especially when the answer is “We don’t really know.”. How pitchers control batted balls has never had a simple definitive answer. I’m going to give it another shot.

I have some ideas of what might be a cause, but I want to start with a blank slate. What’s got me diving back in is the following table from a recent article of mine.

While a few percentage points of difference may not seem like much, I expected a lot more regression to the mean with my limited sample size. With just the above information, I felt I needed to re-investigate the subject. I know that some of the regression amounts have previously existed, but I wanted to dive in with some fresh eyes and new batted ball data. Read the rest of this entry »

The Late August Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update – Reuven gives us the injury updates.

Follow us on Twitter

• Ariel Cohen (@ATCNY)
• Reuven Guy (@mlbinjuryguru)
• Beat the Shift Podcast (@Beat_Shift_Pod)