We always hear our not-so-favorite broadcasters mentioning a player’s stats against a certain pitcher. Well, I think we are all hopefully smart enough to not take the results of 15 meetings between a pitcher and hitter seriously. Instead, we split samples into larger groups like right-handed hitter vs. left-handed pitcher. I have decided to cut the difference and create a spreadsheet which takes a middle ground. I grouped pitchers by handedness, velocity and groundball tendencies and found how hitters performed against the different pitcher groups.

First off, I wanted to have this Excel-only spreadsheet available online before the season started. Well, I got it done and working in time. Since Visual Basic macros were used in the final view, it doesn’t have a online option which I wanted. So today, I am going to make it publicly available, but at some point I hope to have it working in all spreadsheet formats and/or online at a place like Google.docs.

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On Tuesday, I wrote about wrinkles that I tried to add to the so-called Dewan Rule, hoping to leverage spring training statistics to help predict breakouts. It didn’t work, as was somewhat expected. In fact, Dewan himself admitted on Wednesday that the rule no longer seems to work.

However, a suggestion in the comments section led me to study the same data from a different angle, and it now seems a bit more promising.
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So, you may have heard that ZiPS projections are now available for 2014. You may also be wondering if said projections reveal information pertinent to your fantasy drafts. Well, let me tell you.

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Bender wrote about three players he would not draft yesterday, and I thought I’d pitch in with three of my own. These kinds of posts convey a lot of information about where the writer thinks the marketplace really diverges from reality, so they can be among the most useful when preparing for a draft. I’m not saying that you should take what we say as gospel, but if your own expectations are substantially different than ours, it might be worth taking a second look.

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I am going to finish my fantasy ranking series today (Part 1 and Part 2). Today, I am going to look at how I set up my draft ranking.  It is a little unique, but indispensable for finding draft day values, but I first need to clear up one issue from yesterday.

I am going to go over one problem people are noticing which is how high catchers are in my rankings and the lack of Robinson Cano. Well here are my projections for each. If you disagree, that is a different discussion, I am just looking at the difference in replacement level values:

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In my last article, I went over the initial work for valuing players in a basic fantasy league (12 5×5 teams with 23 roster positions).  Each league has its own unique rules so the procedure may need to be adjusted accordingly. Today, I am going to finish the positional rankings and begin to come up with an overall ranking.

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When drafting hitters for a traditional five category league, my standard strategy is to target players who contribute in many categories – preferably all five. Today, in deference to my jet lag, we’re mostly going to dispense with analysis and break out some lists of players who fall into different buckets of production. All of the values below come from Steamer’s 2014 projections. Steamer and projection systems in general aren’t the best at predicting runs and RBI, so keep that in mind.

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Today I will check back on my 2013 Starting Pitcher DL Projections. Additionally I have injury updates on several players.

• Before last season, I projected the chances a starting pitcher would go on the DL given a formula I created a few season. I took into consideration age, previous MLB experience and past injuries. It is time to see how it did.

First, I removed pitchers who were not on a team in 2013 like Kevin Millwood and Randy Wolf. Next, I added the DL percentage chances for the remaining pitchers. The formula predicted 44.8 pitchers were DL bound. In reality, 44 went on the DL. I will take it. Additionally, I looked at the 20 most and least likely players to go on the DL. Of the twenty least likely, I predicted 6.2 to go on the DL and the actual number was five. Looking at the most likely candidates, I predicted 9.9 to go on the DL and nine actually went. Overall, the results were outstandinga and I will put out the 2014 prediction at a later date.

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The Reds are a playoff team with a pretty good outfield, but one man is lurking in the background, preparing to steal all your bags, and possibly your heart. The Reds have some decisions to make this offseason, and one question facing them is “what the heck do we do with Billy Hamilton?” In celebration of Hamilton’s spectacular and otherworldly speed, the present offer sought to present some possible outcomes to the most handsome reader.

What you will find below is a possible fantasy line for Hamilton, listed in the following format: AB/HR/R/RBI/SB/AVG. After each line is presented for your viewing pleasure, two numbers follow. The first is the value of that fantasy line in standard mixed leagues, and the second is the value of such a line in NL-only leagues, both of which are calculated by the intrepid author’s own special spreadsheet derived from 2013 Steamer player environment. While fantasy drafts deal in whole dollars, cents are presented to show the differences before rounding.

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We can now say, with confidence and the backing of legal proceedings and pronouncements, that Ryan Braun did steroids. Those in yearly leagues have all said their curses dropped him — a good percentage of them won’t dip back into that well again, choosing to hold a grudge, or to just avoid the insecurity. But in keeper and dynasty leagues, the opportunity for arbitrage is here. Ryan Braun is available, and in a particularly desperate way in some of those leagues. But what will he look like without the juice?

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