Yesterday, I opened 2015 Pod’s Picks season with my infield bullish and bearish selections. Today I’ll finish my look at hitters by moving into the outfield. The bullish group will only include those I ranked within my top 60 and the bearish only players the consensus ranked within their top 60.
Episode 211
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette have news about Billy Butler, Brandon Morrow, and Clay Buchholz before finishing off the Outfielder Preview.
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I participated in two drafts this past weekend. Both were 10-team auctions, one a season-long rotisserie keeper league (“LOWV,” henceforth), the other a head-to-head points redraft league (“Sandlot”). They are just home leagues, not renowned leagues such as Tout Wars or LABR or anything like that, but hey! Breaking down any draft can make for good insight, and if it helps just one person clarify his or her strategy, perhaps it did some good.
“So, Alex, how did you in your drafts?” Great, thanks for asking! I love both my teams. Love them. Except I made the same mistake in each draft: I left some money on the table. Like, $20 in one instance. It became a running gag: “Don’t question Alex — it’s all part of his master plan!” But here’s the catch: I arguably have the best team, per the projections, even after managing my budget so poorly.
So where did my strategy go wrong? Honestly, I’m not sure it did. (Or maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better.)
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“Baseball is a game of fives.” So said my best childhood coach. And while the statement doesn’t make much sense in retrospect (it had something to do with there being no five-run home runs), it did come to mind while pondering the present work. It would seem that fantasy baseball writing is also a game of fives – five hitters I avoid, five actual sleepers, and five actual young sleepers.
Due to the busy preseason schedule of posts I had to publish, the 2015 version of Pod’s Picks is being unveiled later than ever before. But I refuse to skip a year because it’s always fun comparing my rankings to the rest of the rankers and discovering who was closer at season’s end. Rather than drag things out by posting just one position a day like I have in the past, I’m grouping them into infield, outfield and starting pitchers to bring us into the start of the season (finally!).
I calculated the average rank of the three rankers in the Rotographs Rankings Update and then compared to my ranking within each position. As usual, I will limit my Bullish picks to those I have ranked as startable players in a standard 12-team league and Bearish picks to those the consensus has ranked as startable.
Episode 210
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris have news about Anthony Rendon, Ryan Rua, Justin Verlander, Wil Myers, Carlos Rodon, and Domonic Brown before kicking off the Outfielder Preview.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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We have been touring the diamond here at Rotographs with our first round of positional tiers. Here are the ones that have been posted so far:
Some guys took some creative license with the naming of their tiers (specifically David w/the AL OFs and Mike w/the AL SPs) and I’ll do the same naming my 10 tiers after 10 characters from my favorite movie ever: Rounders, the 1998 Matt Damon and Ed Norton vehicle centered on poker just before the poker craze hit.
Since certain commenters got all grumbly about yesterday’s boring veteran sleepers, we’ll discuss a handful of young players today. I’m using the same threshold to establish eligibility – anyone taken after pick 288 per NFBC ADP. For 12-team mixed leagues, that leaves everybody after the 24th round. The last cut is Carlos Martinez who otherwise would have made this list.
It’s my favorite time of the year here at RotoGraphs, the season of bold predictions. (My least favorite time, naturally, is late September, when I have to atone for these forecasts.) As usual, the trick here is to balance imagination against reality, the impossible versus the attainable, the speculative against the demonstrable. It’s a tough task that, for me, often results in happy predictions, but then again, it’s March — ’tis the season to indulge in some fantasy baseball fantasies, right?
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• With everyone focusing on the increase in Tommy John operations, it is nice to see Rob Arthur look at how shoulder surgeries are on the decline (great graph).
• Well, a couple of players we expect to get hurt sometime during the season couldn’t even make it to Opening Day healthy. Carlos Gonzalez’s surgically repaired knee was feeling pain. He is supposed to be back today, but who knows how often his bum knee will keep flaring up.
• Jaime Garcia is another player which can be counted on for a DL stint or four. Right now his arm is feeling sore and fatigued. He is out of the Cardinals rotation until he starts to feel better.
