Chasing Saves frustrates many owners as injuries and poor performance piles up. Trying to accumulate Saves can be a tiring game with roster spots and FAAB wasted on arms who only keep their job for a week or two while piling up a 5.00 ERA and 1.50 WHIP. Last pre-season, I went through and examined reliever talent and how likely they were they were to keep their job. It’s time to give the 2018 bullpen arms their chances to make it a full season.
The LABR only league auctions are a fantastic way to start off the fantasy season (AL and NL results). I’m co-captaining one of the AL-only teams with Eno Sarris who is making one last attempt for a championship. Here are some takeaways from the weekend.
For a quick rundown of the rules.
In a few days, the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational will begin drafting. The invitational is the combination of 13 different 15-team leagues full of the industry’s best and brightest (and Howard Bender). We’ve been given our draft positions and I got the third pick. After Arizona installed the humidor and dinged Goldschmidt’s value, the pick has no easy options. Instead of focusing on the first-round pick, I’m going to dive into my second and third round options to hopefully make a better choice with the first one.
With any draft or auction in which my draft pick is known, I plan my first two to three picks. Beyond that point, the variables increase, plan is out the window, and owners need to target values and needs.
The 2018 Pod Projections are now available! For the first time, the package includes NFBC ADP, along with all historical Pod-developed xMetrics. My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve (thanks Statcast!).
2018 Pod Projections Index:
Shohei Ohtani
I’ve been prepping for two AL-only leagues, so the today’s thoughts only involve mainly AL hitters but can be extended to either league. While working on my evaluations here are some observations.
Create a plan for the injured X-factors
The two hitters who could carry a fantasy team, if healthy, are Michael Brantley and Miguel Cabrera. If (BIG IF) they get a full season of healthy plate appearances, I’d not be surprised if they were top-20 hitters. Owners aren’t showing a ton of faith since Cabrera’s ADP is at 95 and Brantley’s at 245.
No one knows for sure how they’ll perform so owners need to know before the draft where they feel they can gamble on rostering them. Owners need to make this decision ahead of time, not on the fly in a draft or auction. Come up with a plan you can live with and stick to it. Their evaluations can be adjusted as detailed reports become available from spring training on their health.
In the latest episode of the Launch Angle Podcast, Rob Silver asked me how many Wins did I expect Chris Archer to accumulate this season. Basically, I came back with my normal response, I don’t chase Wins and don’t care. He pushed a little harder and wondered the actual difference. I just stammered out a horrible response because I didn’t know. I’m not one to not know so found out with the answer being a win or two.
For years, I’ve used the potential for more Wins as a tie breaker between pitchers with similar baseline stats (strikeouts, walks, and groundball rate). I focused on talent first. Usually, I found pitchers on projected better teams being drafted way ahead of those with similar skills on worse teams. I just assumed the better skills will lead the pitcher to as many Wins as the worse pitcher on a better team. There is no need for me to make that assumption anymore.
In redraft and shallow keeper formats, I tend to avoid most prospects. The bust rate is brutal. However, deeper dynasty leagues force everybody to play in the prospect pool. After five years of ottoneu and other deep formats, I’ve started to notice some things.
When a person does something long enough, they start to see patterns. Sometimes these trends contain meaningful information. In other cases, they’re merely confusing or outright misleading. A lot of the things we think we know about fantasy baseball are tied to these false flag patterns.
Major league talent drop is not linear and it shouldn’t be treated as so in fantasy baseball but it does for many owners because we love our simple ordinal rankings. The talent drop from the best shortstop to the 10th is more than the drop from the 10th to the 20th. As soon as an owner moves away from using just rankings and goes to an overall production value they will gain a leg up on the competition. The whole idea can be explained by the talent distribution curve.
The talent distribution curve can be created with auction dollars. Other values can be used such as raw Standings Gain Points. But setting our auction calculator to the standard 12-team roto settings. Here is the talent distribution curve:
Note: While only 276 players are needed for this example, I extended the data out for deeper leagues. For those in 12-team -Only leagues, they will be picking at the 552 mark where the talent really begins to drop.
I’m not even sure if it has a shape. Maybe a sideways ‘S’. There is an extreme drop for about 100 picks and then starts to level off. Owners want to acquire as many players in this first group. In this part of the draft, talent needs to be prioritized over a position since talent differences exist more at this level.
It’s tough to get excited about this year’s batch of rookie pitchers. One reason is that most of the top arms (Reyes, Gohara, Buehler, Flaherty) have already debuted in the majors. Many of the other top-ranked arms have not pitched in double-A yet.
With this year’s class looking down, there always seems to be a few pitchers who come out of nowhere like Luis Castillo did last season. He wasn’t picked among the top 600 players in NFBC and now he near a top-100 pick. Jake Faria and Dinelson Lamet were a couple other arms who were off owner’s radars. It just takes a pitcher gaining a couple ticks on his fastball or developing a new pitch to shoot up in talent.
I found it best to be aggressive on this these mid-season call-ups. They may be getting promoted because they are ready. Investigate any recent scouting reports and don’t be afraid to roster them if they’re talented.
Eric and Kiley have graciously taken the time to give us some of the best prospect content on the net, but today as prospect week continues I’ll provide a quick fantasy spin for each of the 2018 Top 100 prospects. The goal here is simply to each prospect’s grades and scouting reports and then translate those skills into “what could be” for fantasy context (for example where “upside” might represent an 80%+ outcome on a prospect’s potential).
