On Saturday, fantasy baseball nerds across the land gathered inside the clubhouse at Richmond County Bank Ballpark in Staten Island, for our first in-stadium Tout Wars extravaganza. It was a cool experience, and four auctions were completed in one day! As usual, I participated in the AL-Only league, but this time, I was returning as the defending champion. Now if only my leaguemates would have allowed me to win Aaron Judge for $3 again.
I’m taking a break from March Madness to bring you the madness of me thinking I can get some of my bold predictions right this year.
This means we’re actually getting close to official baseball, right? It’s bold prediction season and you know the drill (with an Ottoneu context), so let’s get started.
1. Freddie Freeman achieves 8.0 WAR
The LABR only league auctions are a fantastic way to start off the fantasy season (AL and NL results). I’m co-captaining one of the AL-only teams with Eno Sarris who is making one last attempt for a championship. Here are some takeaways from the weekend.
For a quick rundown of the rules.
Hey Justin Mason, this industry slow draft thing was a good idea! I’m of course referring to The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational aka TGFBI aka NFBC for industry nerds. The most beautiful thing about it? I can report on my internal thought process in real time. In a typical draft, everything happens too quickly. Any after-the-fact explanation feels like a self-congratulatory narrative.
With four hours per pick and 15 owners taking their sweet time*, I can very thoughtfully tinker and tailor my approach. Spying is an option too (you’ll see), but I haven’t found a role for soldiering. As I mentioned last Friday, the original plan was to take a contrarian approach. I’m not just trying to beat 14 other industry rivals, I want to win the whole shabam. Achieving ultimate victory requires out-drafting, out-managing, and out-waiver wiring 194 opponents. It’s a tall order. To this point, my roster isn’t feeling very contrary. Let’s explore.
The ADP movers over the past two weeks can generally be group into several specific categories. Others are off on an island. I’ll examine the outliers and place others into their obvious groups (full top 245 at the article’s end).
Billy Hamilton (60 to 62)
I’m not sure why Hamilton has fallen a bit as the draft season has moved on. One theory I can make up is that owners are drafting with a more balanced approach and they don’t need to reach for Hamilton. The problem with Hamilton is he is a complete sink on your team in every other category besides steals. I have him as the 61st ranked hitter so he’d be lower with pitchers added so I can understand the drop.
Justin Turner (85 to 83)
I don’t think he’s moved as much as everyone else around him started moving. The talent curve begins to flatten at this point and small value changes can lead to bigger jumps.
As you may have heard from Justin Mason and Jeff Zimmerman, The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (#TGFBI) slow draft begins today. Jeff recently wrote about the conundrum of picking third overall. I’m also picking third. While he took Charlie Blackmon, I selected the chic Trea Turner. I’m not too happy about it.
Blackmon made my list for the third pick, but he was the first name I crossed off. For a very simple reason. I’m in a lot of leagues. Too many leagues. They’re all either a keeper or dynasty format. In fact, TGFBI may be my only redraft league this season. The point is this – I’ve been sitting on multiple Blackmon shares since he broke out. I got them cheap, and I’ve kept them cheap. He’s treated me well, but one bad season could sink nearly ALL of my teams. I opted to diversify. I’ve never owned Turner before.
They say to zig when others zag. Or vice versa. I’ve always thought that the others would be zigging, thus encouraging me to zag. Never mind. The point of this article is to discuss weird incentives.
On Wednesday night, one of my Ottoneu baseball leagues had its second-year auction. I’m a bit of an Ottoneu junkie—I’m in three different baseball leagues and one football one—but this is the first time I remember completing a draft before March. As such, I thought it would be fun and hopefully useful for readers for me to share some of the results from the auction as well as my thoughts and strategies.
In the latest episode of the Launch Angle Podcast, Rob Silver asked me how many Wins did I expect Chris Archer to accumulate this season. Basically, I came back with my normal response, I don’t chase Wins and don’t care. He pushed a little harder and wondered the actual difference. I just stammered out a horrible response because I didn’t know. I’m not one to not know so found out with the answer being a win or two.
For years, I’ve used the potential for more Wins as a tie breaker between pitchers with similar baseline stats (strikeouts, walks, and groundball rate). I focused on talent first. Usually, I found pitchers on projected better teams being drafted way ahead of those with similar skills on worse teams. I just assumed the better skills will lead the pitcher to as many Wins as the worse pitcher on a better team. There is no need for me to make that assumption anymore.
Eric and Kiley have graciously taken the time to give us some of the best prospect content on the net, but today as prospect week continues I’ll provide a quick fantasy spin for each of the 2018 Top 100 prospects. 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).
