Our undervalued player series continues now with the final offensive scoring category for 2020 – Runs Scored.

For those of you that are new to this series – in each article, we uncover potential undervalued players by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. So far I have gone through undervalued speedsters, power bats, outstanding batting average players as well as possible RBI Bargains.

In 2019, there were 60 players who scored at least 85 runs. There were 41 players who exceeded the 95 runs threshold, and 20 hitters scored at least 105. Four players managed to eclipse the lofty 120 runs plateau. Leading the majors were a pair of Red Sox – Mookie Betts (135) and Rafael Devers (129). Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Braves followed them with 127 runs.

Once again, just as in runs batted in, prospective projections are far more conservative than the final season long distribution. Steamer only projects one player – Mike Trout – to score more than 120 runs. Only four additional players are projected to score over 110 runs (Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts, Christian Yelich and George Springer).

Teams that win fantasy leagues are often highly correlated with the runs scored category. Finding a few undervalued players that can help pad your fantasy team’s run totals is a worthwhile exercise. For this year’s analysis, I will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of at least 85 runs. This should give us several helpful players.

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It is time for an update to my starting pitcher ranks for 2020. I will be discussing some of these with Paul Sporer and Nick Pollack on tomorrow’s Sleeper and the Bust Podcast, so definitely listen to that.

All ranks are based on 15-team standard leagues. ADP is from ADP and reflects Online Championship’s data since 1/1/2020. For more ranks of mine for 2020, you can click the links below: Read the rest of this entry »

Note: As noted in the comments, I missed Sean Murphy in the initial evaluation. He has now been added and hopefully, all the counts have been updated.

Every year around this time, I go through the catcher pool to see who I can tolerate. Either I’m getting soft in my advanced age or the catcher pool has improved since last season. I didn’t get nauseous during the process. I’ll myself through the ownable options for different league types.

When targetting catchers, I’d like them to do one of two things.

• Provide 15 to 20 home runs power.
• Not tank my batting average.

The first criteria is easier to find with 11 catchers projected for 15 or more homers. Seventeen catchers are projected between 10 and 14. On average in NFBC Main Event leagues last season, owners needed 363 homers to finish third or 30 HR per the 12 non-catchers. If an owner can get 36 homers from his catchers, the amount needed by the other hitters drops to 27.
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A new Ottoneu league has recently formed with a twist – despite the deep, dynasty-like structure of the platform, our league has decided on a single rule change this year: players without MLB experience (“rookies”) are ineligible for the annual spring player auction.  Instead, rookies may only be added to rosters through an in-season free agent player auction once they have accumulated their first MLB PA or IP.  Yes, this means Luis Robert cannot be owned (48 hour auction waiting period) until he completes his first PA, most likely to come on Opening Day (3/26) against the Royals.

This one simple rule change impacts a tremendous amount of Ottoneu strategy, a discussion for which I’ll reserve a future post.  For now, the purpose of this article is to list the rookies that have at least some opportunity to debut in 2020, and estimate which of these prospects might actually have some relevant fantasy impact this season.

The table below lists 130+ prospects that could potentially make their initial MLB rookie debut in 2020.  All players with existing MLB experience (Gavin Lux, Jesus Luzardo, Dustin May) have been removed.  The three columns to the far right should be the most useful:

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I’ve got the draft and auction for two 12-team leagues coming. The Beat Jeff Zimmerman league is this Sunday night at 8 EST and also the mixed LABR auction in Florida. I’ve been grinding down the top-360 players (12 teams x 30 players per team). In these shallower formats, playing time is key for any mid to late-round targets. The following four teams are giving me pause when considering rostering some of their players.

Reds

The Reds have two or three too many players and several players will end up in the 450 to 550 PA range. When healthy, I believe Joey Votto, Mike Moustakas, Nicholas Castellanos, and Eugenio Suarez are safe. Freddy Galvis should be but his bat is so bad, he could lose playing time to possibly Nick Senzel.

The congestion starts in the outfield. Senzel is going to try to play center with Shogo Akiyama, Phillip Ervin, and Travis Jankowski as backup options. That leaves Akiyama along with Aristedes Aquino and Jesse Winker fighting it out for the right-field job.
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Over this off-season, I have uncovered potential undervalued players by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. So far I have gone through undervalued speedsters, power bats and outstanding batting average players. The exercise now continues for runs batted in.

In 2019, there were 57 players with least 85 RBI. There were 28 players who exceeded the 95 RBI mark, and 17 with at least 105. Anthony Rendon of the Nationals led all of baseball with 126 runs batted in. Jose Abreu led the American league with 123. Following them were NL East first basemen Freddie Freeman (121) and Rookie of the Year Pete Alonso (120).

As we have seen in batting average, prospective projections are more conservative. Steamer projects J.D. Martinez to lead baseball in the RBI category with only 119. Only six players are projected to knock in more than 110 runs.

For this year’s analysis, I will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of at least 85 RBI. This should give us a group of players who can greatly help your team’s RBI totals in the upcoming fantasy season.

For today’s draft value comparisons, I look at:

• The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings).
• The current NFBC ADP (of all non-auction leagues from January 27, 2020 to present). 48 leagues in total were observed.

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It’s not a secret – I hate rankings. I’ve been writing this post once a winter since 2014. I’m pleased to finally see a few others in the industry publicly eschewing the rankings-based mentality. My quest against rankings is finally gaining some momentum. So, contrarian that I am, let’s work on making rankings actually, uh, work.

There are many reasons why traditional attempts at rankings are broken. The biggest is simply this – they’re one size fits all. Running a team is about managing categories. Rankings aggregate all that information ordinally in perhaps the least useful way conceivable. Attempts to use tiers scarcely help matters, especially since the location of those tiers often has more to do with name recognition than expected output.

A projection-based rankings system isn’t sufficiently novel, but it does at least take us a step in the right direction. And it’s what we’ll use for today’s thought experiment as we try to take a second step along the path towards relevance.

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Depending on league type and tendencies, there is a group of five pitchers who I have a problem differentiating their value. They are Chris Sale, Mike Clevinger, Jack Flaherty, Stephen Strasburg, and Shane Bieber. While the ideal spot would be to take the last of this group, not every owner will have that option. There will be instances where if an owner passes on one of this group, none will make it back to their next pick. I needed to dig in a bit to differentiate them.

The first elephants in the room to deal with are Walker Buehler and Blake Snell. I went through the following analysis and Beuhler came out a bit ahead of the ground and Snell a bit behind. I completely understand if someone wants to include them. All these pitchers are close but currently, they are easier for me to rank. I’m sure someone can’t wait to write a small essay in the comments on why I’m wrong. I can’t wait to ignore it.
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Using a format similar to the one Justin Mason recently posted for 2020 Roto player rankings, below is the 2020 ranking of the Top 100 Starting Pitchers for Ottoneu fantasy baseball.  Ottoneu leagues are auction style, but with no salaries listed (league dependent), think of these lists as simplified “snake draft” rankings (“which player would I take before the next”), or a value ranking of players above replacement level for 2020. Players with multi-position eligibility may receive a slight bump in value (2020 positions listed).  You can reference average Ottoneu player salaries here, but keep in mind these salaries fluctuate throughout the winter as rosters shape up towards today’s keeper deadline for all leagues.

Previous 2020 Ottoneu rankings:

First Base

Third Base

Middle Infielders

Shortstop

Second Base

Outfield

Since a majority of Ottoneu leagues are points leagues (pitching based on linear weights), WHIP and Wins are less of a factor here than in traditional rotisserie rankings.  Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, this list might be a good proxy for sabermetric leagues, so keep that context in mind as you review. “P/IP” represents the projected points per innings pitched from Steamer projections and their estimated innings total.

If I’ve missed an important player, or you believe I’ve wildly over or under-valued someone, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure to update.

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