Yesterday, I examined hitters who owners missed on preseason and what could be done to prevent such mistakes in the future. Today, the underachievers go under the microscope. In my previous article, I used Paul Sporer’s “All First Half” articles for reference. With no underachieving articles out yet, I will look for players with differences in ADP and current rank using our auction calculator.

Extended Injury Stays

Daniel Murphy

I lamented last offseason about missing out on J.D. Martinez’s great 2017 season. I didn’t want to miss out again and was willing to take a chance on Daniel Murphy’s discount.

When I created his projection, I account for six weeks off but it was on the short side. Additionally, once he returned, he wasn’t productive for a few weeks but has a .859 OPS in July.

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We are all learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. -Charlie Munger

It’s time to see if I need to adjust my fantasy baseball beliefs by analyzing the first half busts and breakout lists. While it’s great to acknowledge these players, owners need to sit down and figure out why everyone missed on them. By hitting on one or two of these breakouts, a team could be competing for the top spot. Here are the groups and how to identify the breakout next preseason.

For the player situations I analyzed, I’m used Paul Sporer’s First Half All Value Stars and Fantasy Team for inspiration. I looked for actionable traits or tells which can be used next season.

Unknown Playing Time

Jesus Aguilar

Everyone understood coming into this season that the Brewers playing time situation was going to be a mess, so not owning Aguilar is understandable. He was to be in a platoon with Domingo Santana with middling projections. The deal with Aguilar, he really didn’t have a horrible platton split. It was .372 wOBA vs .338 wOBA in 2017. It’s .444 vs .405 this season.

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In my chat last night, I got several questions on Joey Votto and his power loss. I decided I investigate the drop along with several other regulars who currently have an isolated power (ISO) less than their projected Steam projections.

To get a list of hitters, I took the hitter with a least 150 PA this season and compared their projected and actual ISO’s. Here the top 20.

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The MLB Draft is unique in that it happens during the season. For the football and basketball drafts, they happen well before the season starts because the players can contribute for the upcoming season. With baseball, the odds are against one single player getting the call this season. That doesn’t mean fantasy owners, especially those in keeper and dynasty formats, shouldn’t possibly be making some moves depending on their needs.

The biggest key for anyone considering rostering a just drafted player, know your league rules. First, some leagues may not allow the drafted players to be rostered until the next offseason draft. Other leagues don’t allow owning a player until they’ve at least played a minor or major league game. In some other leagues, the players are rosterable this next FAAB period. Each one is unique. Let me start the discussion with the last league type.

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Masahiro Tanaka decided to create more questions than answers in my life. I just released my first 2018 pERA run and Tanaka’s pitches and control point to a 2.88 ERA but he’s posting one nearly two points higher at 4.95. I dove into his stats hoping to find a simple answer, instead, I found someone struggling out of the stretch while throwing harder. While it explains his struggles, I am not sure any of it matters. At least not yet.

The first item I checked for with ERA and estimators diverge is a high BABIP which was only at .243, about 30 points lower than his career average (.276). Nope, not BABIP.

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A week ago, I examined how prospect rankings could add more context to hitter projections. It’s time to take the research a step further by dividing up the prospect list to see if projections can be refined. And they can be.

Initially, I shied away from dividing up the prospect lists because the sample size quickly gets into single digits. I started dissecting the data hoping to keep reasonable sample sizes. I sort of achieved my goal.

I used the same parameters in the last article. I compared a hitter’s Steamer projected OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) from 2010 to 2017 to the actual results in their debut season. To designate prospects, I used Baseball America’s top-100 which has been compiled since 1990. I collected the average and median change in OPS. The median value helps to smooth out any major outliers.

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Rarely is OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) a fantasy stat. It’s off many people’s radar but it’s widely available and closely mimics a position player’s overall hitting talent. While other stats (e.g. wOBA and wRC+) also give a hitter an overall value, these stats aren’t available at every website. Most sites have their own unique blend but OPS is commonly available. Because of this availability, I’ve been using it as a baseline in recent articles on adjusting projections based on prospect pedigree and when hitters get platooned ($$). Now, it’s time to use OPS to help predict the individual categories.

The process I used for this study was to simply see how much various stats changed when OPS changed a certain amount. For rate stats (e.g. batting average) the conversion is straightforward. For counting categories, I put the stats on a per 600 plate appearance scale. Additionally, I only compared data from 2015 to 2017 during the current “juiced” ball era. I know the process is not close to being 100% precise and that is fine. I’m just trying to create general adjustments and can look to hone the process later. I’m putting in 20% effort to get 80% of the answer.

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My current aim in fantasy baseball is to find instances where player evaluations can be improved. With several prospects recently getting called up, I am trying to answer the simple question: is there any projection information to be gained from being a highly touted prospect. The short answer is yes, but it took me a while to get good results.

I wanted to keep the analysis simple so I used all available Steamer projections which to back to 2010. Additionally, I used Baseball America’s top 100 ranked prospects for that time frame. From these two data sets, I compared the hitter’s projected results to the actual results for their first few seasons.

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I’m of the belief that there is a group of similarly talented players who owners should keep churning to find the latest true breakout. Lewis Brinson (64% FanTrax ownership) and Jacoby Jones (24% owned) are two such players. While Brinson was part of the draft endgame with a 275 NFBC ADP, Jones was waiver wire fodder in almost every league with an ADP of 660. If given the option, I’d gladly own Jones right now.

What’s wrong with Lewis Brinson?

Brinson has been a highly touted prospect for several seasons with Baseball Prospectus having him on their Top-101 back in the 2013 but he jumped onto all major lists starting in 2016.

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On Friday, I examined hitters with new plate approaches focusing on launch angle and plate discipline. I notice Brad Miller, Javier Baez, and Leonys Martin had each dropped their groundball rate but I didn’t have an idea of what is the ideal value. After spending way too much going down way too many paths this past weekend, the simple answer is average 20 degrees (32% GB%) with weak and/or fast hitters needing to push the value down to 15 degrees (42% GB%).

There is no need for readers to hang around any longer if they have more pressing matters like setting their daily or weekly lineups. For those looking for a little more explanation, thanks for staying around. I went through several methods I’m not going to discuss. I like simple useable answers and that’s what I’ll provide today.

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