With most teams planning to limit the innings their starters throw, there are going to be a few middle relievers who bridge the gap to the seventh to ninth-inning guys. Because most starters will not go five innings, these bridge relievers will have the chance to accumulate a few Wins while hopefully providing decent ratios. Here are some targets.

Every season, some middle relievers go off accumulating half dozen Wins and Saves, great ratios, and over 100 strikeouts. They are more valuable than most starters and closers. The deal is that no one has a clue which middle reliever it will be, but whoever rosters them will be loving it. I decided to query a target list.
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With baseball officially inching closer to an actual season, it is time to update draft ranks for those of you that are like me and still have leagues that still need to draft. I will likely be updating each set of ranks I release once or twice before opening day as news of the schedule, players opting out of the season, and other information could shake things up tremendously. However, here are my current third base ranks as of now. (Beginning of tiers are highlighted in blue). Read the rest of this entry »

With baseball officially inching closer to an actual season, it is time to update draft ranks for those of you that are like me and still have leagues that still need to draft. I will likely be updating each set of ranks I release once or twice before opening day as news of the schedule, players opting out of the season, and other information could shake things up tremendously. However, here are my current first base ranks as of now. (Beginning of tiers are highlighted in blue)

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We’re just going to freeform this and make it essentially a notes column. I’ll start by saying that not every move is influenced by the 60-game season. In fact, few are. A lot of them are influenced by a change in health or just more studying that led me to make a move.

RISERS

Biggest moves up the rankings since my February 28th list.

Rich Hill +65 to 64 – He was slated to be out until June with an elbow injury so now his full IL stint happened in quarantine and he’ll now be ready from the jump. He’s been great on a per inning basis the last four seasons, but will he stay upright throughout this mini-season?

Michael Kopech +30 to 82 – Returning from TJ, Kopech was expected to miss some time at the outset of the season with a late-May/early-June target. Like Hill, that time has passed and now he’s made the 60-man roster, though his role is unknown. For fantasy purposes, it’d be perfect if Kopech was paired with an opener so if he’s limited to 3-4 innings, it comes in the middle innings and puts him in line for wins.

James Paxton +27 to 21 – 100% injury-related.

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With baseball officially inching closer to an actual season, it is time to update draft ranks for those of you that are like me and still have leagues that still need to draft. I will likely be updating each set of ranks I release once or twice before opening day as news of the schedule, players opting out of the season, and other information could shake things up tremendously. However, here are my current starting pitcher ranks as of now. (Beginning of tiers are highlighted in blue)

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Here they are!

I’ll have a whole column of notes on different guys on Monday. I just wanted to get the ranks out and we can start discussing them in the comments. This 60-game season is going to be so wild!

Previous list for comparison, though comparing a full season list to a 60-game one is tough.

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Previously, I analyzed the first eight rounds and did an overall comparison at the various ADP’s. Today, the draft continues with various ADPs disagreeing even more.

As a reminder, the draft contains 14 teams with each website’s ADP collected by FantasyPros. No effort is made to balance each team in any way. Just the top player is picked but I had to ignore some picks. To get going, here are the results.
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The following is the second part of my 2020 LABR Mixed Auction recap. You can read Part I of my recap here. This was the inaugural season of the new LABR Mixed Auction league, and my very first expert auction league.

In my Tout Wars recap series, I talked about how to adjust projections for a particular league format, the proper hitter/pitcher splits to use, and how to create a market pricing curve. I also discussed at length about how to scout your opponents, and to use it to your advantage.

In Part I of my LABR recap, I talked about how to create an initial plan, and how to set an auction budget.

Today’s article will focus on a topic that is barely discussed in the fantasy community. However, I believe it to be a large key in managing your auctions, and crucial in the quest to accumulate the most fantasy value at the draft table. I am referring to player nominations.

“Tactics is to know what to do when there is something to do and strategy is to know what to do when there is nothing to do”. – Gary Kasparov

If fantasy baseball drafts are akin to a game of checkers, auctions are in many ways a multi-player game of chess.

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After working my way through the first eight rounds of the website ADP draft,  some sites leaned heavy pitcher while others were drafting just hitters. Before continuing the draft, I wanted to determine the split difference for each website. The difference wasn’t as big as I thought considering the results seen to this point in the draft.

Just for reference, I used the ADP data collected at FantasyPros from ESPN, Yahoo, NFBC, CBS, FanTrax, and Real Time Sports (RTS). Next, I assumed people were drafting a 12-team league with 23 players (14 hitters, 9 pitchers) which works out to 276 players. Then, I gave each player an auction dollar amount based on their ADP. Finally, I divided them into two groups and added up their auction dollars. Here are the results
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