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.

For Pod Projectionee numero tres, I decided to take commenter Cason Jolette’s (Jason Colette’s mysterious brother?) suggestion to discuss former uber prospect, Astros sophomore outfielder George Springer. His coming out party was cut short by a quad injury, which ended his season two months prematurely. But he was quite impressive at the plate, posting a .352 wOBA, while displaying excellent patience and elite power. But coming off a minor league performance a year prior that included 45 stolen bases, he disappointed with his speed in Houston, as he swiped just five bags in seven tries. Let’s figure out what’s in store for Springer in 2015.

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Truthfully, I have had it. Here at RotoGraphs we are almost too good at identifying emerging pitchers. We can decently find up-and-coming pitchers with Arsenal Score being the last great accomplishment. Additionally, I am also to blame by looking at how pitchers change and determining if they may be injury prone (example with Scott Kazmir). Most of the advancements in examining pitchers is because of the addition of Pitchf/x data. We know immediately if a pitcher is throwing slower or if he has a new pitch. I feel hitters have taken a back seat for a few years and I would like to try to increase our knowledge of them. I plan on expanding into new areas for batters. Also, I am completely open to new ideas from our readers.

One of the biggest issues with hitters is it tough to know if/when they have changed. The difference may involve power, foot speed, swing adjustments or how pitchers are adjusting to the hitter. I want to take hitter analysis to the next level. I will attempt to live on the “tip of the spear”. The problem with living on the tip is I will probably get cut a few times. I am going to look at some never published data and see if it is useful/predictive. I could see several of my ideas not working out.

Finally before I get into some of my ideas, I will gladly welcome any of your ideas. It can be tweak to something I bring up or a completely new idea. I am ready to give hitters their fair shake.

Idea 1 – Use Pitchf/x Data To See How Pitchers Are Attacking Hitters Read the rest of this entry »

The baseball community — owners, scouts, fantasy analysts et al. — is slowly learning how Cuban hitters plucked from the Cuban National Series (CNS) perform in Major League Baseball. Unfortunately, the sample size is not increasing very quickly. The common fantasy owner is helplessly resigned to rely on a) scouting reports, and/or b) his or her own eyes, probably via a batting practice video uploaded online. Ideally, a Cuban hitter’s salary would serve as a proxy for what one could expect offensively and defensively from his imported bat and glove, but the market, and the information that defines it, is far from perfect.

The market for Cuban hitters is a pendulum, but rather than coming to rest, it is in full swing: hitters such as Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu, who are all but locks to fulfill the value of their modest contracts and then some, have plumped up the market for international signees. The Diamondbacks’ Yasmany Tomas, therefore, should not be compared to Abreu simply because the average annual values (AAV) of their contracts are almost identical. The dynamics of this particular market are nebulous, changing with every transaction.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t compare Tomas and Abreu statistically. Comparing the CNS and MLB performances of hitters more recently signed out of Cuba can still give us at least a faint idea of how we can expect Tomas to perform. This is my hope, at least. I’ll be the first to admit the analysis that follows is not as rigorous as I wish it could be, as the sample of contemporary, fantasy-relevant Cuban hitters who recently played in the CNS simply lacks breadth.

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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.

Today’s Pod Projectionee is Cuban rookie Yasmany Tomas, who I drafted in last week’s LABR mixed league. It’s hard enough projecting Major League veterans and even more difficult forecasting rookies with only minor league data to rely on. But trying to predict exactly what a player with no professional experience in a stateside league might do is a true shot in the dark. So this was a challenge and one I would like to share with you.

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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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