The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

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Last year for my FG+ article I created a methodology to find unheralded prospects similar to Ben Zobrist and Matt Carpenter by looking at recent minor league walk, strikeout and extra base hit numbers. I named my metric ZOBRIST and it performed better than I expected. I identified 10 players to watch for during the 2014 season and few had good MLB seasons like Kole Calhoun, Marcus Semien and Scott Van Slyke. I have decided to look again for similar players in 2015 with a few changes to the evaluations.

One issue I noticed when I went back and looked at the data was how one of the three traits (power, walks and strikeouts) could hurt the hitters chances for success. A hitter could have no strikeouts, a ton of walks and zero power so they could rate high with my metric. The problem is that the complete lack of power would get exposed in the majors. I needed to set a minimum level for each of the three stats. I use Chris St. John’s minor league walk and strikeout values and a replace level power numbers to set a minimum baseline each hitter must reach.

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The keeper deadline for ottoneu leagues is upon us (midnight on the night of 1/31 – tonight!), and that means it is time to start auction prep in earnest. As I have the past two years, I am going to help out with my auction values for all four ottoneu formats.

Also as per usual, I made a couple tweaks to the approach this year.
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Earlier in the week, I went over how I set up a for a draft (Part 1 and Part 2). Last night I participated in the draft set up by Howard Bender and his Mock Draft Army.  The pre-draft work I normally go through may seem a little tedious, but after the dust settled, I look to start the season in good shape.

The draft was fairly standard 5×5 league with 23 rounds and 15 teams. The draft participants consisted of nine industry experts and six non-experts. I will give some thoughts on my draft results (full results), my final roster and the projected finish.

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Well, it is finally time to move on and show how I finish setting up for a draft (Part 1). I was hoping the following article was going to be in two parts and have a little more detail and polish. Instead I am have been dealing with a fan error on my computer and a pile of oil under my car. Neither is really resolved. So with a borrowed computer, I will step through the rest of my procedure. Let me know if you have any questions.

Note: For reference, here is my spreadsheet I used to get the initial SGP values and has the rest of the sheets referenced in this article.

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Over the last couple of weeks a few of my fellow writers here are FanGraphs have been going over some draft strategies. This week, I am going to step through my exact process for a draft. On Thursday night, I will be joining a few fantasy writers for a 15 team mock draft. Over the next few days, I will go through the exact process I normally use to set up for a draft. If one of the other drafters steals borrows my info, fine. This is actually more a way to show you my process for drafts.

First off, I will be following the procedure I set out last season in this three part series. There is quite a few good links in those articles for the procedures I use.

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If you’ve been wishing current Steamer projections were turned into fantasy values, wish no more, as I have done the work for you.

Below you’ll find the top 100 players for next year based on current Steamer projections, calculated using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and standard 5×5 roto fantasy leagues, where only one catcher is started. Players are listed at their primary positions from 2014. The “obp$$” column in what the players are worth in an OBP format, in case you’re more interested in that sort of thing.

If you would like to view the rankings for all 7334 players projected by Steamer, please peruse this spreadsheet, for it is far too large to be posted on these hallowed pages.

Both the top 100 and the spreadsheet were updated at 10:55a ET to reflect a previous error.

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This past season, I introduced a xBABIP equation which uses Inside Edge’s hard hit rate and player speed. Well, I have been a little slow on any updates. I have finally gotten around to getting all the 2014 values in one place.

When creating the xBABIP values, I found it correlated more to the next season’s BABIP then any other easily created formulas. Here are the 2014 values with some thoughts on some individual players.

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Jose Fernandez was having a dominating 2014 season until he needed Tommy John surgery last May. The 22-year-old righty could be one of the more dominant arms in the game when he returns. Fantasy owners would love to have him available mid-season as a boost their team.  While he is on the disabled list (DL), some other pitcher must be filling in for him. Fernandez’s projection should include this replacement pitcher’s production. Here is a break down of how I put on value on players who will miss significant time.

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Well, I will take one for the Rotographs team and publish our first rankings to get torn part. I am going with the simplest of all pitcher rankings …. strikeouts minus walks. Basically, how much easily measurable talent does a pitcher have. Can the pitcher strikeout hitters? Does he not walk many? Can he keep pitching for an entire season? Just by running this simple formula and creating a graph of the rankings, some initial thoughts can be formulated for the 2015 draft/auction season.

For the rankings, I used our Steamer projections. These numbers can be re-run at a later date with other projections for more clarity. The entire list is available here. In addition to the list, I have the top 100 pitchers ranked. What I look for now is tiers are any pitchers group together. I like to get one of these pitchers before the talent level drops off.
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