Winning Fantasy Baseball is All. About. Value.

Introduction:

Several years back, a friend of mine was preparing for his fantasy baseball auction. He asked me a simple question –

“How much is Lorenzo Cain worth according to your projections?”

That was a straightforward question for me to answer. I ran the ATC Projections through my valuation model. I set the league parameters to match his specific league settings, and I generated a value for Cain of $18.

A few days later, my friend came back to me and said,

“Ariel, I bought Lorenzo Cain at my auction for $18! Isn’t that awesome?!?!”

I responded “No, that’s awful. If Lorenzo Cain is worth $18, you need to only pay $14 or $15 or $16.”

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Let’s review the first Pod Projection I posted for the 2019 season, Yusei Kikuchi, who was to make his MLB debut from Japan. It’s difficult enough to project players with no Major League experience, such as rookies coming up from the minor leagues. It’s even more challenging to try the forecast game when that player with no MLB experience is actually coming from a foreign league. Translating their foreign league performance is more art than science. Luckily, the DELTA website helped by supplying some of the season metrics, which I did my best to translate to a Major League equivalent to use as a guide. Let’s see how he performed versus my projections and the rest of the systems.

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… but not by much for teams I just owned …

My 2019 fantasy season did not live up to my standards with most of the struggles being self-inflicted. Here are some overarching themes I spotted with each league plus some additional points at the end.

Horrible FAAB management

I ran out of money in almost every league and spent too much FAAB on worthless assets. Looking back over the leagues, the root cause was chasing week-only plays. From my work writing “The Process”, I found out how valuable it is to grind out each week. Additionally, I ran the weekly FAAB projections here so I knew around what it would take to get each. Initially, I got the players and but dropped them a week or two later for better options with little to show for the FAAB spent

I need to set a FAAB limit for chasing week-only plays and just accept it’s fine to miss out on a few players. A week’s advantage is worth the same in week 1 or the final week. The rest of my FAAB can be used for chasing long term improvements. Some players may straddle the long-term and weekly play so the FAAB may come from both the weekly and long term pools. I need to have a plan and stick to it.
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The 2019 MLB regular season has concluded. Two Astros may very well finish 1-2 in the AL Cy Young award. The Brewers went on an unbelievable Yelich-less run to make the playoffs – only to be eliminated in the wildcard game with their best pitcher on the mound. A new record was set for rookie homeruns in a single season. The Yankees hit 306 HRs as a team, and yet that did not set a record; the Twins hit 307! Baseball set a new collective HR record. It was the year of the longball, or as Jeff Zimmerman calls it, “Happy Fun Ball.”

It is now time to check back on how we fared this year in fantasy. Let’s start with a review of this season’s bold predictions.

As I often remind my readers – we will never succeed in getting the entirety of our bold predictions correct, or even realize a majority of them. If I wanted to achieve a high success rate, I could simply have filled up my list of predictions with easy ones such as “Justin Verlander will win 10+ games this season.” That class of prediction would have been too easy.

Rather, the point of the exercise is to highlight certain undervalued (or overvalued) players by choosing a few unlikely, yet achievable outcomes. The idea is to target somewhere between the 70^th and 90^th percentiles of possible outcomes – predictions which are 10-30% likely to occur.

I often use the ATC Projections as a guide for these bold predictions. I look at where the ATC projections generate an outcome which varies significantly from what the general public perceives will happen. Some other times – I just go with my gut and with my own intuition.

Let’s recap!

#1: Matt Barnes will finish as a top 5 saves leader in 2019

There are two elements that need to occur for a relief pitcher to accumulate saves. The pitcher needs to:

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It’s time to go over a few more games from this past weekend and today.  All the background information is available in this introductory article and I’m just going to continue grinding through games trying to find discrepancies and any useful fantasy information like the following.

Notes from the lines:

• Vegas is in love with John Means even though he’s struggled in the second half.
• The FanGraphs projection for pitchers coming off Tommy John surgery (e.g. Garrett Richards and Johnny Cueto) seem too optimistic.
• Marlins Pablo López and Elieser Hernandez have struggled in the second half.
• Zac Gallen’s projections seem off and he could be a sneaky upside option going into 2020.

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Compared to last week when nothing happened, a few interesting names popped up this week for those still with FAAB left to spend.

The projection guidelines:

• The ownership rates are from CBS since they have some quickdraw waiver wire leagues where players can be picked up at any time.
• The FAAB estimates are based on the 2018 15-team mixed NFBC leagues which used a $1000 FAAB budget. Owners are going to need to convert these values to their own league.
• The ownership values were taken from Saturday and lots can happen in between when they publish and FAAB bids run.
• Only players owned in 50% or fewer of CBS leagues are examined.

• Kyle Lewis: For any owner needing outfield help, he’s a must-add. The highly-touted prospect is hitting .400/.375/1.067 with three homers in his first four games. If anyone has money left, it’s going towards Lewis.
• Nico Hoerner and Mauricio Dubon: Both are regulars with Hoerner starting five straight and Dubon nine straight. They both are the same skill-set of a great eye for contact with some speed and power.
• Nick Solak: A 26% ownership rate is criminally low for someone hitting .342/.453/.570. He’s started 10 straight games while batting cleanup in all but one of those games.
• Adam Frazier, Tommy Edman, Starlin Castro, and Robinson Cano: While not the sexy options like Hoerner and Dubon, they’re comparable hitters.
• Wil Myers: A huge jump in ownership, but he should have been owned in deeper leagues since the Franmil Reyes was traded to the Indians.
• Sean Murphy: Since being called up, Muphy is hitting .409/.458/1.091 in eight games with four homers.

• Johnny Cueto: He’s back and threw five shutout innings. His fastball sat at 91.3 mph which is at his preinjury level. I am a little worried he posted just a 6% SwStr% on the game.
• Alex Young: Young finally pushed his ownership over the 50% mark. He’s been one of the few decent starting options on the waiver wire.
• Michael Wacha: I noticed while going over the Vegas lines, Michael Wacha had stepped up his game in the second half with a 3.86 ERA and a 4.14 xFIP.
• Nathan Eovaldi: Why? Let me look. A two-step against the Giants and at the Rays. It’s tough to trust a 5.00 to 5.50 ERA talent pitcher.

Closer Rankings (Saves focused)

1. Seth Lugo
2. Nick Wittgren
3. James Karinchak
4. Trevor May
5. Will Harris
6. Chad Green
7. Jairo Díaz
8. Seung-Hwan Oh
9. Yusmeiro Petit
10. Arodys Vizcaíno

Gambling and baseball go way back. Everyone, casinos and betters, look to gain an edge with the hope of free money. Today, I’m starting a series diving into the lines with the hope of finding which information, fantasy or otherwise, can be extracted from the sharks and books using the FanGraphs win rate as a baseline.

To start the study, I used the game projections available here at FanGraphs and the historic Vegas line. While the FanGraphs projections were right more times than wrong, there was a systematic error I quickly found. The home-field advantage was set to 8%. The home field teams were expected to win 54% of the time and lose 46% (math!) for the 8% spread. I looked back at the league-wide home-field advantage over the past dozen season and found a smaller margin.
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Today, I am going through some fantasy-relevant information which could change several player projections.

• Dan Hayes of The Athletic ($$) stated the following on Martín Pérez.

The Twins believe the keys to Pérez’s great early performance this season were working with increased velocity and filling up the strike zone. For the past few weeks, Twins pitching coaches have encouraged Pérez not to worry about conserving energy in order to pitch deep into games.

Air it out. Let them worry about the late innings. And on the days when the velo isn’t there, locate and attack.

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Introduction

On the latest episode of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational Podcast, I posed the following question:

In 2020 fantasy baseball drafts for roto leagues, which will you do early on?

A) Draft Speed Early
B) Pound the Power

Simultaneously, I posed the identical question on Twitter, yielding the following results:

The Twitter responses, as well as the members of the TGFBI Beat the Shift Podcast panel were pretty evenly split on what was more important to focus on. Obviously, fantasy owners need to focus on both; players who can amass a broad base of stats are ideal. But the question is still a valid one – in a vacuum, all things being equal, which player type should you favor in a draft?

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Previously, I looked at the hitter and pitcher auction bargains of 2019 at mid-season. These were the players that have earned the most rotisserie value, net of their cost to roster.

Now let’s turn our attention to the players who have lost the most profit in the first half of 2019, who I will refer to as the value drainers. These are the largest under-performers (to date), relative to their pre-season auction values.

To remind everyone:

• $Value refers to the accumulated 5×5 rotisserie value of each player, scaled to a full-season.
• $AAV refers to the average auction cost to purchase the player pre-season.
• $Bargain is the difference between the $Value and the $AAV.

For this exercise – In order to calculate $Value, I use NFBC roster settings and scoring parameters. Actual $AAV data is used to determine the opportunity cost. For the full methodology of how these player bargains are calculated, please refer to my introductory post. Read the rest of this entry »