Our astute reader Jonathan noted the following about our recent mock draft at Rotographs:

Zim bought in quite a bit on down seasons 2-5

Yes, Jonathan, you are right. After gladly grabbing Cano with the 7th over all pick, I took the following down picks:

2nd Round: Hanley Ramirez
3rd Round: Justin Upton
4th Round: Adrian Gonzalez
5th Round: Jacoby Ellsbury

I decided to party like it was 2012 all over again by trying to balance down side with the hopes of huge gains.

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After weeks of reviewing hitters, position by position by position, it is time for me to offer up my response to Zach Sanders’s rankings of starting pitchers.

As with Zach’s rankings, we are limiting ourselves to pitchers with more than 140 IP this year, giving us a list of 101 starting pitchers, including a few whose values varied greatly between 5×5 and linear weights points leagues. One slight change from hitters to pitchers – because an IP is so valuable in linear weights (almost every team should be using up all 1500 IP over the season in an ottoneu league), we are going to rank pitchers based on Points/IP, not based on total points.

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The 2012 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. This week focuses on starting pitchers.

The players were ranked based on their 2012 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. To keep things manageable and avoid skewing the numbers, players were only considered if they amassed 140 innings pitched over the course of the year. The replacement level was also adjusted to account for players eligible at multiple positions. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and traditional 5×5 roto fantasy leagues.

These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. So, a player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve already seen the new Bill James projections for 2013 used to rank hitters for 5×5 and linear weights, and to rank pitchers for 5×5 – time to look at how ottoneu players should be thinking about pitchers for 2013.

As with hitters, we are going to look at three sets of data, but unlike hitters, I am going to add a bonus set at the end (isn’t that nice of me).

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Last week, we received our first set of 2013 projections, and Jeff Zimmerman presented 5×5 rankings based on three cuts of that data.

By now, many of you have probably noticed a pattern forming this off-season – 5×5 rankings come out, and Chad follows with the ottoneu edition. Sure enough, here three cuts of linear weights points rankings of the top 20 hitters for 2013, based on the Bill James Handbook Projections.

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If there was a roller coaster ride named after a baseball hitter, its name would be Alex Rios. The White Sox outfielder has given fantasy owners and projection makers fits trying to make sense of his ups and downs. But there he was, sitting happily at the fifth slot among outfielders, having earned $22 for the 2012 season. Is this just 2010 all over again that will be followed with another 2011, or are we witnessing a new Alex Rios?

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As I sit here 30 pounds heavier and still feeling the effects of slipping into a pumpkin pie-induced coma, I am reminded by Zach Sanders’ End of Season Outfielder Rankings that we’re still doing our player evaluations from 2012 and it’s now time to get back to baseball. Obviously, there are plenty of interesting players in the outfield to sift through and discuss, but as I scrolled through, something that caught my eye and had me pleasantly surprised, was that Michael Bourn was sitting at number 16. While most head to head leagues and most of the ottoneu universe dismiss the importance of a burner like Bourn, roto league owners should be looking to grab him in 2013 and gain that much-needed edge in the stolen base and runs scored categories. Read the rest of this entry »

After a brief Holiday respite, Zach Sanders continued his end-of-season positional rankings by posting his OF rankings on Monday. With far more players than at any other position (103 players qualified for the OF rankings) the differences between where a player falls in 5×5 vs. linear weights can be more drastic.

In fact, instead of talking a few spots here or there, there were six players who “fell” at least 20 spots when we shifted to linear weights, and six who “rose” at least 20. We’ll see a couple old friends on this list and once again OBP and SB go a long way towards explaining the differences.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to our positional review of the 2012 season. Hope you enjoyed your turkey, but now it’s back to business. This morning, Zach Sanders published the final season values for outfielders. Sitting at number 53 and earning $6 is perennial breakout candidate Dexter Fowler. But while the absolute ranking and dollar value don’t suggest he outperformed projections, he actually did. And now the question of course is whether these new skills are repeatable.

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The 2012 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. This week focuses on outfielders.

The players were ranked based on their 2012 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. To keep things manageable and avoid skewing the numbers, players were only considered if they amassed 350 plate appearances over the course of the year. The replacement level was also adjusted to account for players eligible at multiple positions. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and traditional 5×5 roto fantasy leagues.

One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth.

These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. So, a player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »