The 2017 World Baseball Classic has been riveting thus far. Many of the teams are loaded, and the players and fans have been wildly into it. Saturday’s game between the Dominican Republic and the United States was perhaps the greatest heavyweight match-up the game has ever seen. The lineups on both sides were absurd, and the game lived up to the hype. The Dominicans overcame a 5-0 deficit to win in dramatic style, 7-5.

The Dominican lineup could be the best ever, but the United States gives them a run for their money. Since the majority of FanGraphs readers are, presumably, American, and pulling for Team U.S.A., it struck me that it would be fun to analyze the roster from a fantasy perspective. Although many on the roster are undisputed stars, there are overrated players, players to avoid for other reasons, and potential bargains mixed in. Let’s get right into it, analyzing the starting position players on Team U.S.A.: Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last several weeks, we’ve taken a look at available deep league options at catcher, first base, and second base. In this latest edition of Deep League Draft Targets, we move onto shortstop. Previous installments can be found below:

Deep League Draft Targets – Catcher

Deep League Draft Targets – First Base

Deep League Draft Targets – Second Base

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In fantasy auction leagues, among shortstops, many in the top- and middle-tier are either extremely pricey, or risky, or both. There are important question marks about some of the players that should give owners pause before making hefty financial commitments: Can we trust less than a full season of data on Trea Turner and Aledmys Diaz? Are Brad Miller and Jonathan Villar really worth their hefty price tags? Is Troy Tulowitzki just OK now, and can he stay healthy? Is this the year Addison Russell breaks out offensively?

If you don’t want to spend a fortune on one of the very best shortstops, it may be worth considering some of the names at the bottom. Among those are two shortstops who quietly had breakout campaigns in 2016.

Elvis Andrus has had a very strange career. He burst onto the scene as a 20-year-old rookie in 2009, and helped the Rangers win back-to-back American League pennants in 2010 and 2011. Andrus’ elite defense and contact skills earned him an 8-year, $120M contract with Texas in 2013, despite the fact that at the time of the signing Andrus had just an 87 wRC+ and .314 wOBA in his career. After he signed the contract, Andrus had just a 78 wRC+ and .292 wOBA from April 2013 through the end of the 2015 season.

However, in 2016, things changed in a big way. Andrus batted .302/.362/.439 with a 112 wRC+ and .344 wOBA. It was his first wRC+ above 97 and his first slugging percentage above .378. His .136 ISO was also a career high, easily surpassing his previous high mark of .099. The following tables help explain Andrus’ breakthrough season: Read the rest of this entry »

No need to fret. The unofficial conductor, who is also the author of this post, does not expect the cabin to reach capacity. Not prior to April, at least.

Brett Lawrie’s time with any organization, not just the White Sox, was ticking away; more writing was scribbled on more walls with each passing year since his debut. So when the White Sox released Lawrie, the first thought on most fantasy owners’ minds was not Where will Lawrie end up? but, rather, When will Yoan Moncada get the call? Moncada, a consensus top-5 prospect, changed socks and is now the marquee name of the South Side’s now-promising future.

Yet one could argue Moncada’s not quite ready for the big show. After raking and running absolutely wild in High-A in 2016, Moncada graduated to Double-A and, well, his performance is open to interpretation. On one hand, his 11 home runs, nine stolen bases and .277/.379/.531 triple-slash in 207 plate appearances amounted to a batting line that was more than 50% better than the league. On the other hand, he struck out more than 30% of the time — and that lack of contact carried over into his Major League debut, during which he struck out in 12 of 20 PAs. The tools are immense, but, at 21, he could definitely use some polish, and the White Sox have no incentive to rush him along.

Allow me to (re)introduce you to Tyler Saladino.

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Jose Peraza’s prospect hype seemed to have stalled after a rough 2015 campaign. He had a rough offensive season at triple-A for the Braves that year and then was included in a package for Hector Oliviera at the deadline when, presumably, the Braves started to look at Peraza more as a utility player than a regular middle infielder. Peraza was on the move again a few months later and, based on his usage at triple-A and in the Majors, it seemed like the Reds were ready to roll Peraza out in that super utility role. That thought seemed to be furthered by the Reds acquisition of Dilson Herrera at last year’s trade deadline.
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Over the past few weeks I have been writing about xStats outliers, and to date I have covered Gary Sanchez, Trea Turner, and Jay Bruce. You may think Jay Bruce is the odd man out on that short list, but all three of these guys have big question marks around their power potential for different reasons, and you can read the three pieces for more information.  Today I want to focus on Trevor Story.

Trevor Story became a national sensation after he hit 7 home runs in his first 28 plate appearances, then hit 7 more over the course of the next few weeks.  Two months into his rookie season and the guy had 14 home runs, only nine shortstops hit more than 14 home runs through the whole of the 2015 season, three of whom had 15. His power persisted through the warm mid summer months, where he hit five home runs in June and eight more in July prior to suffering a season ending thumb injury on August 2nd.

Trevor Story hit 27 home runs, slugged .567, had a .272 batting average over the course of 415 plate appearances last season.  His power numbers have him ranked as the seventh best short stop – eighth if you count Trea Turner- and his ADP appears to have stabilized somewhere between 30 and 34.  Of course, you may ask, is this power sustainable? Read the rest of this entry »

We’re going position by position this week and next with our initial roll out of rankings. We will update these in March based on Spring Training activity and injuries.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Brad Johnson
• Justin Mason
• Al Melchior

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

Key:

• AVG– just the average of the seven ranking sets
• AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings
• SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

Previous rankings:

• OF
• SP
• 1B

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Last Friday we kicked off our ottoneu FanGraphs points league rankings. This year the rankings will include values from myself, Justin Vibber, and Chad Young. We are presenting our individual dollar values, the average of all three individuals, plus the ranking of that average. In addition the tables below include ottoneu eligibility (5 games started/10 games played in the prior year). Players are ranked at their most valuable position, and the hierarchy we are using is C/SS/2B/3B/OF/1B (with 3B and OF being a coin toss in terms of replacement level, we chose to include 3B/OF eligibles at 3B).

Prior Rankings: C/1B/3B

Key:
Split – Difference from highest to lowest $ value
Otto.– Average price across Ottoneu FGpts leagues
AVG. – Average $ value from the four of us
(+/-) – Difference between Ottoneu average price and our average $ value Read the rest of this entry »

I love pouring over ADP data in the dead of winter to see how the next season’s market is shaping up. I didn’t touch on this in the first base/catcher review last time out, but I should mention that ADP is merely a guide and a partially blind one at that. It only takes one other person in your league to throw everything off.

This is where knowing your league is very important because if you know that most of the league takes their cues from ADP, it can be especially helpful. But if you play with a group of folks who march to their own drum – and it doesn’t even have to be the whole league, it can be just 2-3 people – then you’re getting very general information from it at best.

Anyway, I just wanted to make that clear before continuing this series. If anything, this is a jumping off point to give some thoughts on a handful of players at every position. We all know that this is a living, breathing market that is in its infancy for the 2017 season. Enough preamble, let’s get into the middle infield.

Previously: 1B/C

SECOND BASE (click through for ADP data)

• Jose Altuve (pick 4) has a remarkably narrow spread early on with a minimum pick of 3 and maximum of 7. He will go 2nd overall in some drafts by the end of draft season, too.

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Prior to the 2016 season, a number of fantasy enthusiasts — and Marlins fans — took a look at the healthy distances that Christian Yelich would hit flyballs and wondered what could be if he just hit a few more of them. This season, we got a snapshot of what that would look like. For the first time in his four-year career, Yelich hit ground balls at a rate below 60 percent (56.5 percent, to be exact) and drove his flyball rate up to a whopping 20.0 percent. Those trends, in combination with a higher hard-hit rate and a greater average flyball distance, helped Yelich to become the legitimate power source some of us dreamed of, as he hit 21 home runs and 38 doubles.

By hitting grounders at an extreme rate, Yelich wasn’t making full use of some strong power-hitting skills that his indicators suggested he owned. But could there be a hitter who does just the opposite, hitting too many flyballs in the face of flagging power indicators? If his rookie season is a sign of what’s to come, Jorge Polanco is becoming such a hitter.

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