Archive for Prospects

Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Joe Biagini (RHP): A Rule 5 draft pick from the Giants last winter, Biagini narrowly snuck onto the team at the end of spring training. Within a couple of months, though, he began pitching in more and more meaningful games — becoming one of Manager John Gibbons’ most trusted relievers by the end of the season. The organization feels that Biagini’s stuff would play well in the starting rotation and has considered sending him back to the minors to work him out as a starter in 2017 but reliever values are at an all-time high this winter so the Jays may be hard pressed to find enough depth that make that move a reality.

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Heath Hembree (RHP): The Red Sox leaned heavily on a veteran roster in 2016. Freshman Andrew Benintendi didn’t play enough to graduate from his rookie status so that leaves us with Hembree. The right-handed reliever didn’t pitch a lot of important innings but he gained some valuable experience, produced respectable numbers and soaked up innings — 51 in 38 games — despite being more of a one-inning guy in the minors. Hembree, 27, can hit 94-95 mph with his heater and the slider showed potential so his role could continue to expand in ’17. For that to happen, though, the fastball command will need to improve and he’ll also be at the mercy of future offseason moves as the club looks to improve its bullpen.

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Gary Sanchez (C): The 23-year-old Sanchez needed just 53 games to convince the Yankees to go all in and send veteran catcher Brian McCann packing. The ball absolutely screams off the rookie’ bat and he slugged 20 home runs in his debut — en route to a 1.032 OPS. He struck out a lot (25%) and saw his numbers dip noticeably during his second month of his debut leading to some questions: Was the league beginning to adjust to him, or was he just tiring after never playing into September in the past? Still, he projects as an above-average hitter and has improved his defence significantly — making him a must-have in keeper leagues (and all other leagues, for the matter). Sanchez should open 2017 with some pretty hefty expectations and it will be interesting to see if he can live up to them.

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Blake Snell (LHP): Control has been Snell’s nemesis throughout his career — save for 2015 — and it came back to haunt him during his MLB debut in 2016. His 3.54 ERA was impressive — and speaks to his raw potential — when you consider his walk rate of more than five batters per nine innings. He’ll also need to better leverage his 6-4 frame to generate more ground balls after being an extreme-fly-ball pitcher in the AL East. Still, Snell succeeds by missing a lot of bats and his struck out almost 10 batters per nine innings in his freshman season. With improved command of his low-to-mis-90s fastball and slider, the young hurler could eventually develop four average or better offerings (He also has a curveball and changeup).

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For those following along, Ottoneu is at it’s busiest during these winter months leading up to the start of the next baseball season.  It’s designed that way, and the year-round activity of Ottoneu is one of the features that help set it apart from other fantasy platforms.  As Joe mentioned recently, there are plenty of reasons why you should give Ottoneu a chance this year, but today I want to assume you’ve already seen the light and are ready to sign up.  So, what’s next? Here are a few practical ways to get started once you plug into this great game.

Select Your Game Type

First things first: you’ll need to decide which scoring format suits your interest. Ottoneu offers a nice range of scoring options that include:

Classic: This is rotisserie-style 5 x 5 built into the basic foundation of Ottoneu, which (like all formats) includes 40 man rosters, $400 salary caps, daily lineups, off-season arbitration, and auction-style economics.  If you’ve been playing traditional Roto for years and have interest in Ottoneu, this is a great place to start.

Old School: This is considered the original Ottoneu  (4 x 4) format, and was designed with a sabermetric bent and geared toward power hitters and power pitchers (OBP, SLG, HR, R and ERA, WHIP, HR/9, K).  You can find an example of 4 x 4 standings here.

SABR & FanGraphs Points: Based on linear weights scoring, these two sabermetrically-inclined options are very popular, and it isn’t uncommon to see owners playing in multiple points leagues. Tons of resources and tools are available if you decide to try your hand in one of these advanced scoring leagues.  Standings for a points league look like this.

New: Head to Head is coming to Ottoneu in 2018!

ICYMI, head-to-head will be an option in @ottoneuBaseball in 2018. https://t.co/UsTO21a9kE

— Ottoneu Fantasy Sports (@Ottoneu) December 18, 2017

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Dylan Bundy (RHP): It felt like it would never come but Bundy finally enjoyed his big league rookie season in 2016. The former 2011 first-rounder suffered through a succession of bad luck and injuries that saw him virtually fall into a black hole from 2013-15. The Orioles then eased him into his big league duties in ’16 with a stint in the bullpen before loosening the reigns late in the year as a starter. He appears to still have mid-rotation potential and could be one of the Orioles more reliable arms in 2017 if he can continue to avoid the trainer’s table.

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The growing game of Ottoneu has a ton of great features that set the fantasy platform apart from the masses, but few are more unique than the annual arbitration process.  Now concluded across all leagues, arbitration (a 30 day process) unofficially launches what is a very busy off-season for Ottoneu owners.

As a quick reminder, Ottoneu arbitration enables each league owner to “correct” the market value of players whose salaries appear too low.  It’s an economic counter-balance to traditional dynasty rules that often let owners dominate a league for years if they amass the right players at the right prices.  Here is the actual arbitration rule:

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Trea Turner (SS): It took a little time for the Nationals’ veteran-loving manager to agree to give Turner a shot but once the freshman received the opportunity he never looked back (although it wasn’t even at his natural position of shortstop). The 13th overall selection in the 2014 draft was a real spark plug for the playoff contender by producing a .342 average with 33 steals in just 73 games. He also showed unexpected pop by hitting 13 homers in the Majors and six in the minors (after never hitting more than five in a season). Turner should be a top-of-the-order threat and mainstay in center field for the foreseeable future in Washington.

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A couple of weeks ago I made an initial stab at projecting a pitching prospect’s MLB value knowing their prospect grades. I failed miserably, but got some ideas in which to move forward on. Today, I will test some of those theories and see if I can tease out any information.

From the previous study, I found the following on pitcher grades.

1. Pitchers who are a few years from the majors are likely to change quite a bit before for they reach the majors. They could have arm surgery, find command, or add a pitch. Early grades have too much noise to be used for future results.

2. Fastballs are almost exclusively graded only on velocity. For a soft-tossing prospect to get a major call up, their fastball is likely better than just the velocity shows. They likely have plus movement and/or command of the pitch.

3. Almost all pitching prospects will get stuck with a future 50 control grade because getting graded less than 50 is a death sentence for their progress. Not all major league pitchers have average control. Exactly half don’t, so the control grade needs to be adjusted.

4. From some discussions with people in the game, I found that having one or two plus breaking balls can help carry a pitcher with an average fastball.

With these limitations, I decided to relook at pitchers by implementing the following guidelines for this study.

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Dansby Swanson (SS): OK, so I’m going to cheat a bit. Swanson didn’t technically graduate because he was stopped at 129 at-bats (and the official amount to graduate as a rookie is 130 ABs) but I needed something positive to write about after the Braves’ rookie hurlers struggled mightily. The first overall pick of the 2015 draft didn’t need much minor league seasoning and he blew through A-ball and double-A in 2016 on his way to his big league promotion. Despite the quick ascension, Swanson performed well on both sides of the ball and should be a star in this league (or at least an above-average regular if the pop doesn’t come around).

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