We all have our Brokeback Mountain players. Not that you have a physical desire for them — more that you “just can’t quit” them. Yes, Brett Lawrie has an eighteen pack and is more yoked than 95% of the players I’ve seen in a clubhouse, but the reasons I couldn’t quit him were more statistical in nature: he was young when he debuted, he had above-average results in terms of contact, power, patience, and speed early on. He had pedigree! And he was yoked.

By now, of course, I’ve managed to ween myself of Mr. FortyHands. Finally. He just got worse as time went on and never lived up to that pedigree. I’m hoping that the script for me and Carlos Correa goes differently.

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Eduardo Nunez: 2017 Projection

The 29-year-old Nunez went from being a Twins bench player to a top-40 fantasy player. Looking over his year-to-year profile he was basically the same player he’s been for his career, but he was given a full season of plate appearances for the first time in 2016. For example, his 2016 triple slash line (.288/.325/.432) is almost identical to his 2015 line (.282/.327/.431).

Two small differences, besides the playing time which was a huge difference, were important with his 2016 season. The first was an improving power profile.

I am a little worried the home runs may not be as high playing in San Francisco, but they should be in the double digits.

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Corey Seager recorded just 113 MLB plate appearances in 2015, but he made a big splash with his performance and the lack of a track record didn’t stop the RotoGraphs ranking crew from placing him fifth among shortstop in the preseason. I was even more bullish, as my projections valued him as the second best shortstop! Seager ultimately finished fourth according to our end of season dollar values (fifth if including Jean Segura), but that probably undersells him, as he was just as good as hoped for.

Let’s recap my 2016 Pod Projection and see how my forecasts compared to his actual results.

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Positional Scarcity and Shortstops

Today at RotoGraphs, we start examining shortstops. At First Pitch Arizona, experts were stating that position scarcity is not an issue in 2017 except with catcher. Owners might think they don’t need to pay extra for filling their shortstop position and they can just get the best hitting talents. This statement is true for some leagues and for others, it is completely false. Scarcity depends entirely on each league’s individual settings. The two main factors which can make a league play differently are the required roster positions and the stats counted.

As for a position comparison, our own Ottoneu requires three middle infield spots and only two corner spots. Corner infielders are in less demand than in these leagues with three corner spots. Additionally, owners are usually complaining about the catcher options, but in my 20-team industry and local AL-only leagues, they require only one catcher. Some catcher options exist on the waiver wire. If the required number was two, catcher values would skyrocket.

The other difference is the stats counted. In normal roto leagues, stolen bases are a category and they give shortstops a huge value boost. In a linear weights league, the value of stolen bases becomes non-existent and then positional scarcity exists for shortstops.

If you want to read some detailed look at calculating position scarcity value, read the links at the beginning of this article by our own Mike Podhozer.

Trevor Story: 2017 Projection Read the rest of this entry »

It’s shortstop week, so let’s get the ball rolling on a player I was notoriously bearish on heading into the season. I wasn’t technically pessimistic about Xander Bogaerts, I just felt that he was being massively overvalued by fantasy owners. Oops, I was wrong. Though I did get some things right. He was a particularly difficult player to project as his batted ball profile completely changed from 2014 to 2015. So much so that he appeared to be a totally different player. Which version of Bogaerts would show up in 2016? It was anyone’s guess.

Let’s see how my 2016 Pod Projection compared to his actual results.

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One item is always hanging over my head once the season ends, is the final clean disabled list report in which I have published every year since 2010. This morning, I completed finalizing the list and it is now time to run some queries. Most of the general information will be available in my annual article at The Hardball Times later this month or early next month.

For today’s MASH Report, I am going to publish my yearly starting pitcher disabled list chances. For this report, I have always incorporate the following factors.

• Age: The older the pitcher, the more the injury risk (+1% point increase each year older)
• Injury history: Nothing predicts future injuries like past injuries (+10% points for each season of the past three on the DL).
• Games Started: A pitcher needs to show they can throw for an entire season without breaking down (-3% points for each full season up to three).

Every year the average disabled list chance hovers around 40% which works out to two out of every five starters in a rotation will miss some time. Some teams will get hit with more injuries while others less.

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Before the season, I shared some of my 2016 Pod Projections and the process I followed. My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

Since it’s third base week on RotoGraphs, let’s review my 2016 projection for Kris Bryant and how he ultimately performed.

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Dan Straily: 2017 Projection

Dan Straily was an interesting pitcher in 2016 as seen by the number of FanGraphs articles written about a journeyman 5th starter. Mark Sheldon at MLB.com summed up his entire season with data from a bunch of sabermetric websites.

What helped Straily perform well enough to earn one of those coveted spots? First, it was his effort over the previous offseason. He spent time in Washington working out at Driveline Baseball, a facility that emphasizes pitching data in training programs and uses — among other things — throwing with weighted baseballs to build shoulder strength.

“I literally can say after 31 starts that I never came in one day and was sore,” Straily said. “That’s not supposed to be that way. You’d have the little lingering stuff, but there was never a day where I didn’t want to pick up a baseball. I felt good the entire season.”

……
According to Statcast™, Straily had a very low spin rate on his changeup — the average of 1,444 RPMs ranked 80th out of 90 pitchers who threw at least 250 changeups in 2016. Changeups and fastballs with less spin generally have more downward movement. According to the heatmap, Straily was good at locating his changeup down and away to lefty hitters.

The heatmap on Straily’s slider demonstrated he could consistently locate it down and away to righty hitters. According to Fangraphs, the right-hander’s slider was worth 11.3 runs above average, making it his most valuable pitch.

I dove a bit into Straily’s yearlong results and came up with a different pitcher than the one who started the season. The big change happened after his May 25th start when he basically shelved his two-seam fastball (sinker) for the season.

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Heading into the 2016 season, two of the biggest questions we asked related to expectations for the newest arrivals from the KBO League of South Korea — Byung-ho Park and Hyun Soo Kim. Though obtaining historical statistics was easy, translating them from KBO to MLB is a challenge. At the beginning of February, I laid out my process in creating a projection for each, by first obtaining their career statistics, turning them into ratios, and then translating them as best I could into a 2016 MLB projection. Since this is first base week here at RotoGraphs, this article will focus on Park, with Kim’s review coming when we move on to outfielders. So let’s review Park’s performance and how that compared to my forecast.

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2017 Projection: Anthony Rizzo

Rizzo has been an extremely consistent the past three season almost to the point of being eery.

This type of consistency makes creating his projections easy. Except his 2016 projection didn’t seem easy with Rizzo swiping 17 bags out of know where. In his four previous seasons, he only stole a combined 16 bases. Does he keep the numbers going forward or will he go back to his old ways. The key when seeing an unexpected stolen base jump it to basically ignore it.

Here are some the numbers behind such jumps. In all, 16 under 30-years-old players have had a season with double-digit stolen bases which were higher than the three previous seasons combined. They would see an average drop in stolen bases by seven or to about 60% of the previous level in the following season.

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