Yesterday, the Justin Mason posted the ADP from four of the slowest drafts containing industry experts and myself. One thought I had after a handful of rounds was the lack pitching available and how the good were the available hitters. I decided to go back and examine draft results from last year and these draft to see if pitching was being taken early. While it wasn’t, some other information could be extracted.
This is the second installment of my Unlikely Pairs series. Last week I looked at Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman and their elite offensive production. This week we’ll be aiming a little lower in the draft, and maybe it will be more controversial.
These two players are on opposite ends of the career spectrum. Santana, 25 years old, just put up great numbers in his first full season in the majors. Domingo Santana is a bit of a late bloomer, having spent full seasons in both AA and AAA, both with the Astros, prior to advancing. His AA season was particularly mediocre, as he suffered deep drops in both walk rate and batting average. The following season, age 22 in AAA, his walk rate and batting average both bounced back, but he was only given a total of 18 major league plate appearances. In mid 2015, still in AAA, he was traded to the Brewers as part of the Carlos Gomez/Mike Fiers trade. In 2016, Santana injured his elbow and missed most of the season. So, 2017 was his first real chance in the majors, and he certainly ran with it, hitting 30 homers, stealing 15 bases, and achieving 126 wRC+.
Meanwhile, Shin Soo Choo, 35 years old, enjoyed a bounce back year after an injury plagued 2016 campaign. Choo established himself as a solid and reliable player in 2008, and put up consistent 20 HR, 80 R, 60 RBI seasons from 2008 through 2015 with two exceptions. Read the rest of this entry »
Justin Vibber has released his final 2017 dollar values by player. I’ve captured Ottoneu average player salaries as of the end of the season (prior to inflation and arbitration). Let’s combine the two to determine which hitters were the best bargains of 2017, and take a quick look at what might be in the crystal ball for 2018.
Well, this is the earliest I’ve ever done SP rankings so let’s see how this goes! With the regular season wrapped, I figured it was worth putting my initial list together if only to see how it changes over the fall and winter leading into next March’s draft season. Heck, I’ve already done a mock draft hosted by the InThisLeague guys, which you can check out here and I’ll be on the clock for my annual NFBC draft at the BaseballHQ First Pitch Forum in a few short weeks so having an idea of the pitching pool will be very useful.
As usual, I went with tiers, but since we’re not in-season I simply numbered them instead of naming them. I think it really gets tough to differentiate sharply on guys in the middle of the pitcher pool. Trevor Bauer finished 36th on the Player Rater this year while Dinelson Lamet was 83rd, but are they really that far apart in talent? Maybe the point to make is that once you get to about 40 in the rankings, the separation with each ranking is a lot smaller than if you were comparing say #5 to #55.
Anyway, let’s get to the list. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Was there anyone not in the top 111 that you really think has to be in there?
Recently I reviewed the results of the first few rounds of a new dynasty league prospect draft. The review continues today with a quick look at some key selections in rounds 7 – 9.
Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 1 – 3
Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 4 – 6
This draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward. If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.
Before I review my own thoughts on the draft, you should know this Ottoneu league uses the “FanGraphs Points” scoring system based on linear weights, so offense is heavily slanted towards wOBA skills (and speed is almost a non-factor). We also somewhat arbitrarily removed the Top 12 overall offensive prospects to save them for the standard 40-man auction next spring. Otherwise, any minor league player without one (1) MLB PA or IP is eligible to be drafted. You can read more about the custom rules of this dynasty league here, and follow along with the draft here.
Many of the prospects below are also featured on the 2018 Top 100 Fantasy Prospects list.
Earlier this year I developed two closely related stats which I called OUTs and bbFIP. I’m reasonably proud of these two stats, as I feel they do a pretty good job capturing the skill of each player. They account for the numbers of weakly and strongly hit balls, balls that have high home run rates, strikeouts and walks.
In other words, it accounts for every aspect of bat generated offense, ignoring base running ability. However running speed is used to judge whether batted balls are weakly or strongly hit for each individual batter. For example, a batted balls by Billy Hamilton may be near automatic singles, whereas they would be almost guaranteed outs if hit by Albert Pujols.
The formula is constructed as follows:
Where W = weak contact (xOBA ≤ .245), S = strong contact (xOBA ≥ .634), and sHR = strong home runs (xHR% ≥ .55).
You can convert this OUTs score to an ERA scalar by multiplying by -11 and adding a constant (~5.4). This will give you what I call bbFIP, a version of FIP that is superior to standard FIP both in season and between seasons. You can also find an offense’s average OUTs score by weighting each batter by their number of plate appearances, and then translate that number to the ERA scalar to figure out how many runs you might expect them to score through the course of a season.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
As the 2017 regular season is coming to a close and we begin to gear up towards the 2018 season, I have a few preliminary OUTs and xOBA projections. These projections haven’t yet baked in the aging curve, so maybe ‘projection’ is the wrong word to use here. Either way, I have selected what I refer to as the ‘significantly above average’ projections in terms of OUTs. In other words, anyone who has a score less than 0. I’ve also supplied Z-Scores, xOBA, and xOBA Z-Scores. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday I reviewed the results of the first three rounds of a new dynasty league prospect draft. I’ll continue that review today with rounds 4 – 6, where some deeper, more interesting prospects appear.
Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 1 – 3
This draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward. If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.
Before I review my own thoughts on the draft, you should know this Ottoneu league uses the “FanGraphs Points” scoring system based on linear weights, so offense is heavily slanted towards wOBA skills (and speed is almost a non-factor). We also somewhat arbitrarily removed the Top 12 overall offensive prospects to save them for the standard 40-man auction next spring. Otherwise, any minor league player without one (1) MLB PA or IP is eligible to be drafted. You can read more about the custom rules of this dynasty league here, and follow along with the draft here.
Many of the prospects below are also featured on the 2018 Top 100 Fantasy Prospects list.
On Friday, with the Royals leading by one over the Indians, Ryan Buchter pitched a scoreless sixth (with one strikeout), Trevor Cahill pitched a scoreless seventh and eighth (walking three), and it was Mike Minor who pitched a scoreless ninth with three strikeouts to earn his first save of the season.
The first two batters due up in the ninth for the Indians were right handed, and the next two were switch hitters, so the lefty Minor’s appearance in the ninth didn’t appear to be a matchup-based save opportunity. With Kelvin Herrera‘s struggles and Brandon Maurer’s difficulties with runners on base, there’s opportunity for fresh blood in the ninth, and it could very well be Minor who gets the most save chances down the stretch. He’s probably worth an add for those desperate for last-minute relief help. Read the rest of this entry »
Here is my latest starting pitcher rankings update! Keep in mind that this is a narrower focus and that’s why I did monthly updates during the season. I always stressed the narrow focus over “rest of season”, but obviously we’re at a point where those are essentially one in the same. I’m not sure if I’ll do another full update in September or not, but I will be writing about pitching all month including pieces of most favorable schedules and September call-ups as well as the continued Pros & Cons and Pitcher Spotlight (from Nick & myself) pieces.
Please leave your questions and comments below!
Edit: updated Dallas Keuchel since he’s not hurt anymore!
Previous Updates:
Just like last Sunday, another meltdown for the Angels ‘pen was the highlight of the day. With a four-run lead and two outs in the eighth, Blake Parker allowed a single to Jed Lowrie, a home run to Khris Davis, and a double to Ryon Healy. With the lead down to two, he was pulled in favor of Bud Norris, who surrendered a run-scoring single to Chad Pinder (the run was charged to Parker), a double to Matt Chapman that put the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second, and finally he allowed a two-run single to Bruce Maxwell that gave Oakland an 11-10 lead. Read the rest of this entry »