I’m like everyone else out there, grinding away from every little nugget to gain an edge. The following players I’ve heard something intriguing about during various podcasts or discussion. While I should trust the analysts, I don’t. I prefer to verify what they said and see if I’ll need to adjust my projections.

The Rockies Garrett Hampson reworked his swing in the second half of last season.

Hampson was a late-round darling in the previous draft season for those hoping to get some late steals. He did nothing until September when he went off with a .903 OPS and nine steals. Several people mentioned a swing change and a quick search later, I found out about the toe tap.

“I was thinking of way too much mechanically in the box this year,” Hampson said. “What (the toe tap) has allowed me to do is just be way more in rhythm with the pitcher and (get) started, and my hands and everything else are natural from there. I don’t think about what my hands are doing. There’s a lot of things that weren’t synching up with my leg kick, and now they seem to synch up more naturally.”
…
Beginning with that Aug. 25 game, Hampson has hit .344 (21-for-61) with a .397 on-base percentage and a .905 OPS in 22 games (16 starts). His 19 percent strikeout rate during this span is a marked improvement from earlier. And Hampson has two homers, six RBI, 10 runs scored – he scored 23 runs in his previous 74 games – and six stolen bases without being caught during this stretch. Indeed, with 11 stolen bases in 14 attempts, Hampson is the sixth Rockies rookie with at least 10 steals in a single season and the first since Eric Young Jr., in 2010.

So what did the top tap change in his profile Here is his season divided up into three sections with his demotion on May 12th is the first division and the August 25th game mentioned in the article being the second. Try to find a smoking gun.

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During the offseason, I caught up on the news every couple of weeks. The news is picking up so I’m going to have to now go weekly. This article is too long but I didn’t want to cut anything useful. Sorry for the length and I try to keep them shorter.

• Teoscar Hernández will start the season with full-time at-bats.

Even though he’s managed to improve there in each of his three seasons with the Jays, it seems likely Hernández’s ceiling as an outfielder will never be higher than below average. Still, his big second half of 2019 (142 wRC+), and the fact that his platoon splits were even over that span (144 wRC+ against left-handed pitching, 141 against right-handers), means that he should be playing every day — at least until he proves that was a mirage. In a perfect world, he’d do so at DH, but that would force one of Alford or Shaw to the bench against right-handers, which isn’t ideal.

• Mitch Haniger will be out six to eight weeks because of hernia surgery.

“He’s gone through his surgery and we think it was successful,” Dipoto said. “We’re just fingers crossed. We have no expectation on his timeline until we actually see him live [at Spring Training]. We’re not going to push him. Mitch will return at his own pace. Whether that is some time around Opening Day or sometime around the middle of the season, I have no idea. We’re going to see where it takes us.”

Haniger was expected to miss at least 6-8 weeks after feeling an issue in his core muscles while ramping up his hitting program two weeks ago in Menlo Park, Calif.

Dipoto indicated at that time that Haniger almost certainly would still be sidelined at the start of the regular season in late March, but he was less specific on Tuesday as the team edges closer to the start of Spring Training.

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Using a format similar to the one Justin Mason recently posted for 2020 Roto player rankings, below is the 2020 ranking of the Top 100 Starting Pitchers for Ottoneu fantasy baseball.  Ottoneu leagues are auction style, but with no salaries listed (league dependent), think of these lists as simplified “snake draft” rankings (“which player would I take before the next”), or a value ranking of players above replacement level for 2020. Players with multi-position eligibility may receive a slight bump in value (2020 positions listed).  You can reference average Ottoneu player salaries here, but keep in mind these salaries fluctuate throughout the winter as rosters shape up towards today’s keeper deadline for all leagues.

Previous 2020 Ottoneu rankings:

First Base

Third Base

Middle Infielders

Shortstop

Second Base

Outfield

Since a majority of Ottoneu leagues are points leagues (pitching based on linear weights), WHIP and Wins are less of a factor here than in traditional rotisserie rankings.  Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, this list might be a good proxy for sabermetric leagues, so keep that context in mind as you review. “P/IP” represents the projected points per innings pitched from Steamer projections and their estimated innings total.

If I’ve missed an important player, or you believe I’ve wildly over or under-valued someone, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure to update.

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Since I’m starting drafts, I decided I needed projections for seven of the players signing from Asia, either new to the MLB or returning. I could just pull a ranking out of my ass, but I figured I should at least start with a projection before inserting my own biases. For the following projections, I averaged the ZiPS and Clay Davenport projections and then add my own playing time adjustment.

Pitchers

Pierce Johnson
From the NRB
Signed with the Padres

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The first cut of the 2020 ATC Projections have arrived! Fantasy baseball draft prep season is now officially ready to be thrusted into high gear!

There are three ways to view and utilize the ATC projections on this site.

• Full Projections
• Individual Player Pages
• Auction Calculator

Full Projections

The full ATC projections can be found by heading to the “Projections” drop-down tab on the menu bar by clicking on “ATC.”

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Sprint Speed values have been publicly available for a few seasons. While I see it mentioned for this or that, I don’t know how predictive it is or if should I care about it at all. After analyzing the data, Sprint Speed might need to be ignored in favor of Time-to-First. The stopwatch still rules.

The key, in my opinion, is if the ability to run fast can be predictive in any way. No one that I know of is playing in a Sprint Score league, so the speed with have a secondary effect. If a player is running slower, do their stolen bases drop? How about how many infield hits they can leg out? Generally, how will the players change in speed affect their stolen bases and batting average.

One factor to keep in mind is that the aging curve for stolen bases is just a drop with all humans reaching their peak sprinting speed in their early 20’s.  There are going to be a lot of negative speed values coming up but that’s just aging pulling players down.

A second factor to remember is that teams are not allowing hitters to run as much. In 2015, there were over 2500 stolen bases league-wide. Last season, the value was under 2300 for a 9% decline. Again, more negative numbers.

Sprint Speed was first introduced in 2015 at Baseball Savant (links to Time-to-First values) and it is widely cited. Sprint Speed is not the only measured speed metric available. For one fewer season, Baseball Savant has each hitter’s run times to first base which have been the traditional measure of a player’s speed and it’s still used in scouting players. With the two metrics, it’s table time to what conclusions can be drawn.

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In my last two columns, I uncovered potential undervalued speedsters and power bats by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. The exercise now continues this week for batting average.

In 2019, there were 55 qualified players with least a .280 batting average. There were 36 players above the .290 mark, and 19 above .300. Tim Anderson led all of baseball with a .335 BA, followed by National Leaguers Christian Yelich and Ketel Marte who each hit .329.

Though 2019 had almost two dozen players who hit at least .300, you won’t find a projection set that will have that many BA studs. Projections are typically more conservative. Steamer only projects 17 regular players to bat over .290 in 2020, and only 5 players to eclipse the .300 mark.

For this year’s potential batting average bargains, we will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of a .278 BA or more. This will give us a number of players who can greatly help your fantasy team’s batting average in in 2020.

For these draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from December 4, 2019 to present).

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How to correctly value catchers has always been up for debate. As a position, they are by far the worst hitters in the league. Last season, catchers posted a .713 OPS while second basemen were next with a .745 OPS. Most player calculations give catchers a valuation boost to attempt to even them out with the other hitters. This theoretical boost always exceeds the actual cost paid by draft picks or auction dollars. I assumed some experts knew more than me (safe bet) and the catcher projections have a wider range of outcomes. Owners don’t want to pay for these gambles. By examining historical values, I found the complete opposite. Catcher projections are the least volatile.

I’m not going to rehash why catchers need a positional adjustment. I’ve written a whole section on it in The Process. For anyone new to the subject or just wants a refresher, Ariel Cohen wrote an in-depth article on the subject.
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I was wrong. About seven years ago, I wrote on how hitters may overperform their projections since they played through an injury. The injury hampered their production in the season in question, lowered the future projection, and created a buying opportunity. For years, I believed this steadily until last season when I re-ran the numbers and found “jack squat”.

Earlier this week, I examined some of this past season’s hitters who fought through the pain and felt a deeper analysis was needed. I dove in and the results were backwards. I found no bounceback should be expected from hitters who played through injuries, but there is more. For those hitters who play through the discomfort, their future production will take a major hit.

The key to uncovering the following results was getting a usable dataset which is easier said than done. Many of the injuries I’m using for the analysis aren’t well documented, if at all. Real men play baseball and they play hurt because that is what real men do and most importantly, they don’t complain about. Besides the machismo, a player has every right to keep his medical data to himself so vagueness thrives. Simply, there is no good available data. Even with the hurdles, I dug into each of the hitters who were reported to have played through an injury the past three seasons (2017, 2018, 2019).

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In last week’s edition of this series, we uncovered several undervalued speedsters for 2020 drafts. We did so by comparing the Steamer projections to current NFBC Average Draft Position reports. Today, we will go through a similar exercise for potential power bargains.

For this article’s draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from November 27, 2019 to present).

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