Archive for Roto

Looking over the depth chart for the defending NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers, one is reminded that Ryan Braun, 35 years old and entering his 13th major league season, still projects as the team’s starting left fielder. Some observers, perhaps even Brewers fans, might feel skeptical about Braun’s chances of a bounce-back season, considering how things have gone these last few years:

Here we see steady decline in every category. After reviewing this table, it would be easy to conclude that age has caught up with Braun, that he will probably contribute nothing more than league average offense in 2019, and that the Brewers should perhaps even consider upgrading in left field. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s prospect season (thank goodness, as nothing else is happening).  Nearly one year ago I borrowed from the great work by Eric and Kiley here and applied some fantasy context to their overall Top 100 prospect rankings from 2018.  We’ll do something similar for 2019, but before the full frenzy of this season’s prospect rankings reaches it’s peak, I thought it prudent to review prospect perceptions from this time last year to see if we can learn anything.

From last year’s post, the same purpose applies:

The goal here is simply to each prospect’s grades and scouting reports and then translate those skills into “what could be” for fantasy context (for example where “upside” might represent an 80%+ outcome on a prospect’s potential).

For comparison, last year’s comments are at the top, followed by a value trend and general update on where things appear to be for each prospect heading into 2019.

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At first glance, Max Kepler had a very Max Kepler year. In several key categories, he was pretty much the same player he’s always been, which is to say that he once again came close to, but failed to achieve, league average offensive output:

Where it really counts, in wOBA and wRC+, Kepler has been consistent—but consistently underwhelming. Skimming over these results, one would be inclined to conclude that the Twins are still waiting for Kepler to break out.

But ask anyone in the Twins front office, and they’d likely say that Kepler broke out last season, beneath our noses. And indeed, looking under the hood, we find several reasons to reach that same conclusion for ourselves:

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It is projection churning season and today, I’m going to investigate hitters in the top-200 who have the largest variation in projected plate appearances. I’m trying to see who seems off and any adjustments I’d make to their projections.

Normally, I just use a plate appearance average of several unique sources for my projections. I don’t have time to adjust each player. For now, I’m using five sources who constantly update their projected playing time. One is FanGraphs but I’m not going to reveal the other four as I don’t want to debate their merits. More importantly, it’s tough to know for sure who is wrong and who is right. In most instances, a reasonable explanation can be drawn for any total. Besides the players with the larger variation, I’ve included my top-300 hitters at the article’s end with their plate appearance differences.

Note: I ignored catchers and will look at them in detail at a later date.

Eloy Jimenez
Range: 336
Standard Deviation: 238
Average: 446

I’m not surprised with Jimenez being divisive. I sort of expected projections to have him being promoted either in mid-April (extra year of service) or early June (miss July two cutoff). One source was extremely low with a sub-300 value increasing the range. For me, I’d split the possible callup dates and go with a 525 plate appearance total and adjust it as more news becomes available.

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Catchers … what a dumpster fire for a fantasy position. I can’t remember it being worse. It probably was at some point but with the increased knowledge of pitch framing, more horrible hitting catchers are accumulating plate appearances. Today, I’m going to go through the natural catcher tiers for various league types and show where owners need to buy for the best values.

Before I go any further, I need to explain a few concepts. I’m going to be using Standing Gain Points (SGP) to differentiate the various players. The main reason I like to use SGP is it takes all of player’s Roto stats and combine them into a single value. This important with differentiating the value of a speedster leading off or a middle of the lineup slugger. Additionally, I’m using The Process’s 15-team, two-catcher formula for all the following comparisons. It may not be the perfect formula when comparing different league types but it will provide a nice baseline.

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It’s time to really get for the 2019 fantasy season and start and release out a set of hitter rankings to nitpick. In all fairness, some of the following projections need to be blown up. Normally, I just average several projections and use them for my fantasy values with great success. With a ‘wisdom of the crowd’ approach, I usually make sure one extreme value, high or low, doesn’t dominate my decision.

Some people get on me for just following these projections. Generally, I do follow them but just as a starting point. As I’ve shown this last week, I add in my own adjustments as I see fit into the baseline values. While Steamer has been out for a few months, other projections are now becoming available. Today, I just wanted to compare them to see who are some of the more divisive players.

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It’s been a week of big trades for the Mariners as they gut their club. On Monday, the team traded away starting shortstop Jean Segura after two solid fantasy seasons in Seattle. He joins the Phillies, where he’ll have ample opportunity to try the many famed cheesesteaks the city is known for. Hopefully, all that cheesesteak eatin’ won’t hamper his speed. Let’s dive into the park factors to see how the switch might affect his offense.

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A while back, I ranked hitters if all their 2018 stats were prorated to 600 plate appearances. It’s now time for the pitchers. In all fairness, the rankings are a huge disappointment with no surprises coming through.

I adjusted the rankings for 180 innings for starters and 60 innings for relievers and no one seemed out of place. With the hitters, Raul Mondesi at the top was an attention-getter. Looking over both sets of top-25 pitchers, the biggest surprise was Joshua James and he’s not really a surprise since he dominated at the season’s end. Time to get bored.

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I try not to miss examining players who had great, short seasons. An injury or time in the minors kept them off the end-of-season rankings. They flew under the radar but given a full season of playing time they stick out and could provide hidden value. Today, I’m going to start by examing the top prorated hitters.

I needed a way to value the hitters and decided to create an overall Standing Gain Points (SGP) formula from The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational leagues. The 13 15-team leagues were set up with  14 hitters (1 C, 2 Util), 9 pitchers, and used AVG. Tanner Bell and I will be providing this formula, along with several others, in our new book, The Process, available within weeks (shameless plug).

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Yesterday, I sat down to write this article only to discover there was another topic I had to cover first. Classic 5×5 Roto is one of the original forms of fantasy sports. And, despite attempts to tinker with the inputs, it remains the king of fantasy baseball.

A common change to the classic 5×5 categories is to swap out pitcher wins for quality starts. Although all agree a quality start doesn’t exactly measure its name – after all, a six inning, three run performance is pretty mediocre – everybody also agrees the stat is less capricious than pitcher wins. This season, Jacob deGrom won 10 games with a 1.70 ERA over 217 innings. He led the league in quality starts. Ryan Yarbrough won 16 games with a 3.91 ERA in 147.1 innings. He only made six starts, none of which were a quality start. Yeah, wins are sloppy.

Despite the flaws with wins, they’ve become vastly preferable to their number one alternative. It’s time to ditch the quality start. Don’t believe me? Behold, a table!
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