It’s a tale as old as fantasy sports: pay attention to nine of the ten categories on draft day and you can dominate those categories and win. There are some accepted tenets to this strategy, called ‘punting,’ but as it is with all these things we hold for granted, it’s useful to look at what the numbers think of our Conventional Wisdom.
For one, which stats to punt?
This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.
The world champs might be without their longtime hot-cornerman, but they have enough impact players to keep them competitive in real life and relevant so far as fantasy owners are concerned. Up the middle the team flashes the game’s best catcher and an emerging double-play duo, while first base belongs to a solid sleeper candidate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I posted the first comparison in this new series discussing discrepancies between the Steamer and Pod Projections. I began by looking at Corey Dickerson and A.J. Pollock, two players I was far more optimistic about this season than Steamer is. Today, I’ll look into a pair of sluggers who Steamer likes better than I.
Steamer doesn’t like many hitters better than I do. Of the 328 hitters we both project, Steamer projected at least .001 wOBA points higher than I did for just 83 of them (25.3%). On the other hand, I am more bullish on 232 hitters (70.7%), while we project identical wOBA marks for 13 hitters (4.0%).
• Chris Sale will miss at a minimum of three weeks with a fractured foot. Then he will need to get up to speed before being able to start.
Chris Sale sustained an avulsion fracture on the lateral side of his right foot as the result of an accident at his Arizona home Friday. The left-hander is expected to be sidelined three weeks before resuming baseball activities.
Looking back at previous pitchers with foot injuries, they saw a 0.4 BB/9 and 0.25 ERA bump. Some loss of production, but not too much. The White Sox won’t need another starter until mid-April, so they may be able to go with four starters until then.
Episode 200
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette discuss Chris Sale, Alex Guerrero, Addison Reed, Garrett Richards, Wil Myers, Dayan Viciedo, Michael Saunders and finish up by previewing the Pirates & Cardinals.
As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed. Please rate & review the show in iTunes letting us know what you think!
Thanks to Ian Miller, aka Teen Archer, for the intro music. Approximately 47 minutes of joyous analysis.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X, and the process continues to evolve and improve.
If there was just one thing to be thankful for last year in baseball, it was Carlos Carrasco. I had written a lot about him heading into the season and his performance upon returning to the rotation prompted more articles salivating over the quality of his stuff. So he was a rather obvious candidate to earn the honor of my first starting pitcher receiving the Pod Projection treatment.
For those who forget (how dare you!), Carrasco posted the following line over his final 10 starts of the season:
| IP | ERA | WHIP | K% | BB% | GB% | xFIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 69.0 | 1.30 | 0.81 | 29.8% | 4.2% | 49.1% | 2.16 |
Despite those sizzling results coming over a relatively small sample size, fantasy owners are going gaga over Carrasco. He is currently the 115th player off the board in the NFBC and is the 28th starter selected, ahead of more established veterans like Gio Gonzalez and Hyun-Jin Ryu. And no, I haven’t stuffed the ballots by joining every single NFBC league and drafting Carrasco.
Episode 199
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris discuss Adam Wainwright, Michael Saunders, and Homer Bailey injuries, the Johan Santana signing, Jonathan Papelbon’s desire to go to Toronto, and Chris Davis playing some OF this spring. Then they discuss the strategy behind trading including some real life examples that Eno is currently mulling over, and finish up by previewing the Milwaukee Brewers.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Last Sunday, the FanGraphs Ottoneu League #2 did our auction. Chad Young, Brad Johnson and Scott Spratt have each given their thoughts on it. It was a unique auction (most are in some way) and by making a few early adjustments I was able to come away from it better than I expected.
To begin with, I hate to start any fantasy season in complete rebuild mode. I want to have a chance to win if everything goes right. Before last season was half way over I had about zero chance of winning so then I started a rebuild. I had the most free agent dollars, I picked up some $1 players (Harrison, Petit, Boxburger, House) and waited for a team to drop a high dollar player to free up some cash. The plan worked great by getting Joey Votto and Brian McCann. Also, I like prospects, even if they have limited upside, near the majors and picked up players like Matt Wisler, Carlos Rodon and Ty Kelly.
• OK, MASH will be twice a week for the seven or so months with all the baseball news coming in. There is just a ton of Fluff right now and useful new information is a little tough to find.
• Michael Saunders will be out until around the All-Star game with a torn meniscus in his knee. This is a mess for the Blue Jays. Right now they look to replace him with internal options.
… Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos said he expects to fill Saunders’ vacancy in left field with internal options. Kevin Pillar, Ezequiel Carrera and Andy Dirks are the early favourites to win the job out of Spring Training.
Here is the projected wRC+ for the trio.
Name: wRC+
Pillar: 92
Carrera: 83
Dirks: 99
Dirks looks to have the inside track statically, but he is current still dealing with a back injury which cost him his 2014 season. If the 28-year-old Carrera gets the job, he could be a sneaky SB play with 50 SB in 2014 between the majors and minors.
I have never thought much about, or given much attention to, FanGraphs’ fan projections. It’s primarily a matter of stubbornness: I run my own projections, and I develop my own strategy, so why should I listen to you? At least there’s a trace of rationale behind it: I know how I created my projections (whether or not they’re any good is a topic for another day), but I have no idea how you created yours. Thus, I am more likely to blindly trust a computer-generated projection system such as Steamer instead of random fan projections.
Still, there is a sort of bizarre, secondhand wisdom to fan projections. For every person who is high on a particular player, there could be another person who is equally-and-oppositely down on him. Solicit and aggregate enough fan projections and you could produce a very reasonable prediction of a player’s performance by sheer chance.
Which is why fan projections intrigue me. If, for example, Steamer predicts the most likely outcome from a wide range of possible outcomes for a player, then the fans convey the anticipated outcome for a player. The difference between them, you could say, is what amounts to a market inefficiency (aka a price distortion). The larger the difference, the greater the inefficiency. We see these inefficiencies arise every year — 2014’s most prevalent example is probably Corey Kluber — and they typically manifest because of a lack of information about certain players.
