Archive for Roto

We first had to suffer our yearly winter of the damned, with little news and less ball, waiting for the K(umite)FL to finally release the national consciousness, retreating to lick their wounds and find new bodies. And while we did get a small respite from the WBC coming around to whet the appetite early, we still had to suffer six more weeks of no MLB baseball after Rob Manfred again emerged on Valentine’s Day to see only a shadow of his baseball heart. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a list of relief pitchers, provided by Roster Resource, who could potentially earn saves and fill the closer role for the White Sox in 2023:

Reynaldo López
Kendall Graveman
Aaron Bummer
Joe Kelly
Jake Diekman

Which did you take for your fantasy team? López and Graveman are the relievers on this list who currently have the black border around their names that signifies shared closer duties on the Bullpen Report (now streaming). Those who chose Reynaldo López were victory-dancing all around the living room on opening day as the 29-year-old Southside reliever recorded his first career save. It wasn’t a dominant performance by any stretch as the big righty gave up a monster home run, but to be fair, it was a Yordan Alvarez home run:

At the end of last season, I wrote about López’s incredibly low FIP and argued that it was unsustainably low due to an unrealistic HR/FB rate. His 2022 HR/9 in 63.1 innings of relief was 0.1, he only gave up one homerun all season. In his first appearance as a reliever in 2023, López made me seem like a smart guy. So that’s it, right? López is the same reliever he was last year, except now he’ll be eaten up by the regression monster. Not so fast. Check out his increased velocity so far in 2023:

That much of a velocity increase really stands out and it comes on top of the increased velocity he displayed last year as he transitioned more into a full-time reliever. López has always been a hard thrower relying on his fastball and while he throws a curveball and a changeup, it’s the changeup that has been his best secondary offering. He has never really leaned on the pitch too heavily, throwing it 3.7% of the time in 2022, but the pitch earned a 15.2% swinging-strike rate (PitcherList) last season. That’s better than the league average swinging-strike rate on changeups among relievers, 13.9%. Even it has seen increased velocity so far in 2023:

The last time I wrote about López I noted the increased velocity on each of these pitches and how that led to increased whiff rates. Now, López has added even more velocity and a big question is, can he continue to add velocity without sacrificing control? His strikeout rates have been on the rise and so has his command (K/BB), but how will the added velo and increased appearances in high-leverage situations affect his ability to command the strike zone?

He was put to an early test on Sunday (4/2) afternoon when he entered the bottom of the ninth with a five-run lead and things got shaky. After walking the lead-off man, César Salazar, López threw a wild one that let him take second:

After another walk to Jeremy Peña, López got Alex Bregman swinging on a 100 mph fastball:

Even though López got out number two on a Kyle Tucker fly ball, he gave up two rbi singles thereafter, balked a runner over to the third base, and made his manager bite his nails. Things finally came to a close with another fly ball, this time without leaving the infield. So, while increased velocity is great, López’s command doesn’t look locked in just yet and he has a history of high walk rates. In 2020, his BB% crept up to 12.4% in his 26.1 innings as a starter. The 2022 league average BB% among starters was 7.5%. That seems to always be the “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” for López; good, hard stuff, but touchy control. But, Reynaldo López is no longer a starter. Now, he has the freedom to focus his efforts on short, high-leverage stints, letting his velocity and stuff challenge hitters. For those of you who have fully converted to the ways of Stuff+, here are López’s early 2023 numbers:

stf+ FA – 148
stf+ SL – 133
stf+ CH – 108

While I don’t really know what those numbers mean after two full innings, they are all pretty high. I assume that’s good. As with all things, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m rooting for López and if he’s available in any of my leagues, I’m adding him. White Sox manager Pedro Grifol has been impressed with Reynaldo López calling him a “special talent”, but he hasn’t named any reliever as the team’s closer in Liam Hendrik’s absence and that will likely be the case all season. Reynaldo López’s potential has always been there and if fantasy managers have the roster spot available and can keep close tabs on him, I believe he has a lot of strikeout and save/hold/win upside for 2023.

Well, hello there, puddin’ pops. I’m not Justin Mason (or Burt Reynolds) – but that’s the easy answer.

The real question is whether I’m a permanent fill-in or just a one-day sub because Cedric Mullins and his 2 HR/3 SB start have made Mason’s pants just way too tight to show himself in public. Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Judge only has one home run as of this writing in the 2023 MLB season. What the heck!? Shouldn’t fantasy managers rostering Judge have at least three or four home runs by now?! Wait…wait…relax. Ok? It’s been a long offseason, but we made it. We’re here. Now you get to wake up and read real stats! If the anticipation of opening day has clouded your judgment, I’m here to provide some insight into how your category totals should line up throughout the first few months of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week on League Losers we covered the hitters who might be destined to ruin your teams, as well as covering why they don’t actually exist. At least, as singularities. Collect a whole set, however, and your roster will eventually collapse under the gravity of defeat.

Pitchers are a different bird, though, when it comes to ruination potential. You can, after all, just stop starting them when things go really wrong. But all sorts of variables will be pushing on when you’ll finally pull the pine trigger on someone you thought you could trust. And often by the time you do, the damage will have already been done.

Now then, we simply have no more time for preamble. In just a few hours I’ll be going under for foot surgery – and about 12 hours after that is something far more important: Read the rest of this entry »

Bad news, everyone – I come bearing ill tidings. Regardless of what you read, no matter how hyperbolic the verbiage, I’m afraid there is no such thing as a “league winner” in fantasy baseball. Not “rare” or “uncommon” – actually imaginary. Like, unicorns, imaginary. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you remember being a kid and really wanting a swiss-army knife? They were always locked up in a case, out of reach of 10-year-old grips which would happily test the product right there in the store if the guy with the keys would let them. The swiss-army knife could do it all and would turn any youngster into an adventuring hero instantly. But next to the super utility red magic instrument were the scarier single-blade knives that you were sure, positive, your mom would say no to. In fact, you weren’t so sure yourself if you could handle such an object. If fantasy baseball players on draft day are knives spinning in the display case at your local hardware store, ATC’s IntraSD provides instructions on how to use each one.

Spend a moment sorting by IntraSD on the ATC projections page and you’ll quickly understand what the metric seeks to explain. Players like Seiya Suzuki and Fernando Tatis Jr. have very low values and represent your swiss-army all-around player. Players like Pete Alonso and Jake McCarthy have high values and represent your scary, yet very sharp and useful, single-blade knives or category-specific players. IntraSD, in essence, measures how equally, or unequally, distributed a player’s roto category values are. Here are our four examples in both roto-values as created by z-scores on our auction calculator and the raw projections that generate those values:

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My favorite way to approach a draft is to target the low IntraSD value players. I’m all for drafting Tatis and Suzuki because of the spread of their values. You can see that both players have fairly even values across categories and Tatis provides a little bump in the mSB value. Alonso’s value is mostly tied up in mRBI and mHR while McCarthy’s is isolated to mSB.

I love spreading the value around and I don’t like having one-category players on my team. However, many fantasy managers have great success in balancing a team with those solo cats. So let’s experiment with this season’s player pool. Let’s build two teams using two different strategies. We’ll use ATC’s IntraSD to build one team that has players whose value is equally distributed across offensive categories. Then, we’ll build a second team that isolates specific skills. I’ve only included hitters in the first 10 rounds because pulling in pitchers to this analysis makes things complicated. I’ll write up a pitchers-only version of this post next week. For this analysis, I’m using ATC projections and ranking players based on 12-team leagues and average draft position (ADP) from NFBC drafts. I’m also not using a specific draft position, rather, I’m simply pulling out the highest IntraSD hitter and the lowest IntraSD hitter per round. Here are the two players per round who meet those qualifiers:

If you have the number two pick and you skip over Acuña for Tucker, you’re bound to get some funny looks in the draft room. This analysis is a little unfair in the first round, because all players with first round ADP and high dollar value will naturally have high value in each category. But without going through this exercise, I would have never realized that Kyle Tucker (33) is expected to hit more home runs than Acuña (29). In the end, Acuña’s mSB and mR values edge out the total dollar contest.

You know what’s going on here. Tatis provides stolen bases and Alonso doesn’t. Alonso is expected to hit more home runs (38, Tatis 31) and Tatis has better potential batting average value. Tatis is a perfect example of an all-around player and should be the captain of the ATC Swiss-Army Knives.

Realmuto’s value is on par with Arenado’s because of a huge positional adjustment and while Arenado looks like the better player from a projections standpoint, every team needs a catcher. To have a catcher with a low IntraSD, one who can contribute in all categories exceptionally well relative to other catchers, has tremendous value.

What an interesting battle this one is. Olson has most of his value tied up in home runs and the rbi that come with those home runs. But Altuve is so well balanced. Could there still be some more pop and stolen base potential in the 32-year-old second baseman? Projections say yes. It’s a tough decision to make.

Round four and round two end up looking very similar. Homeruns, runs, and rbi, or stolen bases and average? Remember that scarcity is built into these raw category (z-score) values, so while Schwarber’s 39 ATC projected home runs is third best in the league, Albies’ 15 ATC projected stolen bases lands him at 48th. However, since it is more difficult to find stolen bases laying around on the waiver wire than it is to find home runs, Albies’ stolen base value rounds out his IntraSD to a lower number.

Another catcher appears on team ATC Swiss-Army Knives and already we can see drawbacks to simply selecting the most category-diverse player per round. Unless you want to go H.A.M. in a two catcher league, I wouldn’t advise drafting both Rutschman and Realmuto. But, this does point out the batting-average drain a player like García can be on your roster. However, that stolen base value is always attention grabbing. Had you selected Realmuto as your catcher earlier and avoided García, your team would be much more balanced.

A lot of times we see a projection line like that of Swanson’s:

G: 151 PA: 648 HR: 23 R: 85 RBI: 79 SB: 14

…and nothing really stands out. But, it’s an incredible line. Compare it with Edman’s:

G: 147 PA: 624 HR: 12 R: 85 RBI: 58 SB: 26

…and you might jump out of your shoes when you see that 26 stolen base projection. But Swanson has him beat nearly everywhere else. Are you noticing a pattern? If a player has high positive stolen base value and is lacking in any other category, their IntraSD increases and they become a little more one-sided.

Henderson holds the third loweset IntraSD among players in this analysis and he has the second lowest IntraSD among projected third basemen. Reds prospect Spencer Steer holds the lowest among third basemen at 0.20. Add to that impressive mark the fact that the third base position has such a steep drop off this upcoming season and Henderson’s value, or perhaps ADP, is likely to continue to go up. But once again, that stolen base inhibition comes creeping into your mouse clicking finger and the the “Draft” button starts pulsing.

Suzuki’s recent injury news came as a heavy blow to a few of my draft strategies. He has the lowest IntraSD among all players projected by ATC and I planned on capitalizing on that fact, making him the tiny little scissors in the swiss-army knife that all too often come in handy. He is projected to be such a useful, all-around player that those less “in the know” may let him slide down draft boards. Add to that the fact that he is not a first year player and the shiney new toy in the draft room and I had Suzuki as one of my most common targets. While his season is certainly not over, oblique injuries are so nagging and tough to assess. Kirk, on the other hand, can start to balance out a team that focused on those stolen bases and home runs early on.

Much like in the way that this exercise allowed me to notice Kyle Tucker’s “better than Acuña’s” home run projections, I unexpectedly notice Torres as a well-balanced player. His playing time is certainly in question as the Yankees have Isiah Kiner-Falefa and DJ LeMahieu, but Roster Resource currently has Torres listed as the lead-off hitter and starting second baseman. I really do believe in a healthy home run total from Torres in 2023 given his HR/FB improvements in 2022 along with his improved ability to hit the fastball. McCarthy’s IntraSD tells us the same old story of how valuable higher stolen base projections can be.

Now, it’s time to look at how our individual teams would fair in standard roto formats. Please, meet team ATC Scary Single Blades and team ATC Swiss-Army:

C: Alejandro Kirk 1B: Pete Alonso, Matt Olson 2B: Tommy Edman SS: – 3B: Nolan Arenado OF: Ronald Acuña Jr., Kyle Schwarber, Adolis García, Starling Marte, Jake McCarthy
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C: J.T. Realmuto, Adley Rutschman 1B: – 2B: Jose Altuve, Gleyber Torres, Ozzie Albies SS: Fernando Tatis Jr., Dansby Swanson 3B: Gunnar Henderson OF: Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker

Fascinating. It turns out that the scary single-blade knife slowly spinning in fluorescent light is the better option. The natural balance of one-sided players ends up producing better totals than seeking a diverse team. Looking at the positional distribution of both teams tells us that selecting from either side of the strategy leaves us with a poorly constructed roster. In the end, Mom knows best and as you stomped around the hardware store begging for her to buy you a knife that you probably shouldn’t have, she suggested you settle for something more age-appropriate, the Victorinox Knife, a useful yet less overly utilitarian option:

C: J.T. Realmuto 1B: Pete Alonso 2B: Jose Altuve, Gleyber Torres SS: Dansby Swanson 3B: Gunnar Henderson OF: Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker, Kyle Schwarber, Adolis García

Finally, here are the hypothetical roto standings of our three-team league:

The results of this exercise would indicate that drafting a healthy balance of high IntraSD players is actually a really good thing. But that caveat of not actually being able to get these players in a snake-draft is a pretty big one. Regardless, it is an exercise you can conduct yourself with your known draft position prior to draft day. A balanced team is a good one, but if you can get players who are the best at certain categories, like the Single-Blades, you will be drafting a very good team. There is one thing that has not been included in this anaylsis thus far and that is, what happens if a player just doesn’t meet their expectations for a category? IntraSD also allows you to spread that risk. If you have a base-stealer who stops stealing bases and no back-up plan, then you better get creative mid-season. Take a look at your personal draft strategy from a perspecitive of balance using IntraSD and you’ll likely gain some insight and perspective that could better prepare you for the season.

Must. Reach. Finish line…So. Close. We’re almost done with our positional previews, having now covered catchers, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, outfielders, and relievers. We got started on the starters last week, checking it on the Top 50 options. But as we leave those tiers behind, the waters necessarily get choppier, with more categorical warts appearing as player quality (and reliability) begins to drop off. So, before we get to this latest Rankening*, let’s have a quick chat about how these ranks come to be and the wiggle room inherent. Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, alright – the official start of fantasy baseball has officially officialized, with the NFL kumite finally in our rearview mirror. We’ve now come to our final positional rankings, after first covering catchers, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, outfielders, and relievers. It’s time for starting pitchers – let’s have some fun. Read the rest of this entry »

A ridgeline distribution plot allows you to easily compare distributions across multiple categories. For this post, I’ve created one plot for each classic 5×5 roto category and position. I used ATC projections to graph the distribution and I’ll point out a few interesting trends that we can gather from each visual. Let’s have some fun with visualizations!

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Stolen Bases

First, you may notice the left tail of this visual goes below zero. Since the ridgeline creates a smooth curve over where the bars of a histogram would be, it smooths out into an area that may not be represented by data. However, if you take your cursor and move up the zero line, you can see that there are a lot of 1B and 3B players projected for one stolen base. The same happens on the right side of each plot. ATC projects only two outfielders for 30+ stolen bases, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Jake McCarthy.

The ridgeline essentially stops at 32 (Acuña’s projection) and tails off from there. So, it’s best not to focus too much on the tails of these graphs but instead on the peaks and to the left and right of the peaks. If you do that, you may notice that there’s a wide range of base-stealers in the SS, 2B, and OF positions, but you already knew that. Instead, look at the 1B peaks and notice that you can target players projected to accumulate six or more stolen bases. Here they are:

This mostly goes to show why players like Freeman, Goldschmidt, and Guerrero Jr. are all elite picks. However, you can pick up a few SBs in Rizzo and Myers without spending too much. That could be valuable on the bench. Miguel Vargas is penciled in as the second base nine-hole hitter on the Dodgers’ Roster Resource, but if he has 1B eligibility in your league, he may be a nice late-round flier.

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Batting Average

Different from stolen bases, we see that there are players all over the field who can provide high averages. However, take your cursor and move it from top to bottom along the .300 line. You’ll notice that the 1B and SS lines keep going whereas the OF, 2B, and 3B lines stop. There are a few 1B and SS players skewing the distribution to the right. Who are they?

If you don’t think Freeman, Goldschmidt, and Guerrero Jr. are worth the spend (roto or salary) then what will it take? These three show up as top targets in both stolen bases and batting averages among first basemen. I wonder if they hit home runs too? But, if you want to zip when everyone else zags, look no further than Pasquantino, Lowe, and Abreu. Yes, you’re faced with a big drop-off in runs, but you still have a power/average combo at a more modest price. How about the shortstops?

While it’s a smaller list, there’s a lot to like. We can deduce shortstops are more likely to provide an average/speed combination and that first basemen are likely to provide a power/average combination when targeted appropriately.

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Home Runs

This time, take your cursor and drag it from the top of the visual to the bottom at the 35 mark. What I find interesting here is the power drop off at 3B. Many fantasy analysts have been writing and talking about the major drop off at the 3B position, and this visual reinforces it. First base shows up yet again as such a critical spot and OF positional players hold a lot of power beyond that 35 mark. Here are the OF and 1B players projected to hit 30 or more homeruns by ATC:

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Runs

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RBI

Runs and RBI come from offensively productive players and it helps when they are on good teams. These visualizations reinforce the importance of drafting top-tier 1B and 3B players. But, the distributions are a little more even. Certainly OF players are holding higher run totals, but projected RBI totals are shared fairly evenly among OF, 3B, and 1B players.

If you want a larger summary of what to glean from these distributions it’s that waiting on corner infielders is not recommended, that you can double up on speed and batting average from shortstops, and power doesn’t have to come with empty stolen base potential and that there is simply more production in total to be found in the OF position.