Joe Camp won his league, probably because he reads us and listens to our podcasts here, I dunno, but that’s my guess, totally not because he’s an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. Anyway, he won his league, and his leaguemates started chirping about a couple trades he made that year that may have appeared lopsided at the time — my personal opinion is that vetoes suck, and are a dampener on league activity, and we should all be active and talking to each other as much as possible, so if you were on it, you would have made that lopsided trade first — and so Mr. Camp set out to prove he would have won the league anyway.

The way he did it? He took the worst team in the league and replaced everyone on the team with the best free agent pickups of the year. He then compared that team with everyone’s originally drafted teams. The free agents easily won — 96 points to 87 for the best drafted team.

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Ah, the final week of fantasy baseball. The time of year when guys you would normally never consider rostering become crucial lynchpins in your quest for championship glory. If you’re still reading fantasy content in the last week of September, chances are you’re in a highly competitive league, so I’m not going to waste your time talking about players that are likely owned. Instead, I’m focusing solely on players who are available in nearly every league. (If speed is your need, take a look at Mike Podhorzer’s column from this morning.)

Adam Rosales – San Diego Padres

Shocked doesn’t come close to describing my reaction to Rosales’ 2016 numbers. Entering this season, the 33-year-old journeyman infielder had a 0.9 Wins Above Replacement through 1,226 major-league plate appearances. This year, he’s sitting on a 2.3 WAR, with just 245 PA. In the past, Rosales always hit lefties better than righties, but it’s not like he mashed lefties either:

• vs LHP (pre-2016) – 529 PA – .242/.311/.375, .133 ISO, 15 HR
• vs RHP (pre-2016) – 697 PA – .215/.281/.317, .102 ISO, 12 HR

Now take a gander at his numbers from this season, his first in San Diego:

• vs LHP (2016) – 113 PA – .242/.354/.505, .263 ISO, 6 HR
• vs RHP (2016) – 132 PA – .224/.295/.500, .276 ISO, 7 HR

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9/11/16

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @paulkastava

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

• Rich Hill – yeah, we’re talking about it (2:50)
• Kevin Kiermaier (15:00)
• Hanley Ramirez (22:30)
• Robbie Ray (29:30)
• Byron Buxton (40:30)

Strategy Section:

• Middle Infield Power – Jason’s Rotowire piece [$] (46:00)

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In fantasy, I generally consider utility players to be more valuable than ever in September, when expanded rosters allow managers to schedule in a few more rest days for their regulars. Throw in the fact that these guys have already played five months of baseball, and the combination of nagging injuries and general fatigue further encourages managers to work in additional rest days.

The last thing you want in the fantasy playoffs is empty lineup slots. Of course, there’s the obvious caveat that it’s difficult to find productive utility players on waivers at this point in the season. In other words, don’t go picking up Cliff Pennington just because he’s eligible at four positions. Let’s not get carried away here.

The three players featured in this piece are all widely available, and capable of producing when they find their way into your lineup.

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Listeners of the podcast should be well familiar with this format. Paul Sporer and I try to come up with a few salient points about each player to help you make your decisions. So This week I thought I’d help as many of you as I possibly could with one article. So let’s take three (okay six) hitters and three pitchers from the twitter mailbag and have us some fun.

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In looking through the largest discrepancies between in game production and my various xStats, namely xOBA, I noticed that four of the largest differences come from the Yankees. Disturbingly, these are in the negative direction, meaning xStats are making a claim that these four Yankees are playing over their head and are due for a regression. Who are these Yankees? Didi Gregorius, Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Brett Gardner.

Three left handed hitters and a switch hitter playing in Yankee stadium, a ballpark geared for left handed production. On first blush, you might scoff and claim the stats aren’t accounting for the ballpark, these guys are probably benefiting from the short porch. Yes, they likely are benefiting to some degree from the short right field fence, but last season didn’t seem to have this problem with the xStats from these four batters.

The All-Star break is a time to furiously send trade offers before those bottom half teams check out, or at least try to entice them back to their computers for one last look at their teams so that they might help you improve yours. But we’re all in different types of leagues, so instead of a few mixed-league buy low players, I thought I would try to dream up some buy-low players for every situation. I won’t cover all of you, that’s impossible with the proliferation of fantasy baseball styles these days, but maybe I’ll cover more of you.

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Back in March, I made some bold predictions, as all RotoGraphs staff do. Some bold predictions I make simply for the sake of being bold. Or for the sake of making a prediction. One of the two. But I don’t have a vested interest in my predictions, mostly because (1) they typically suck and (2) I don’t own many, if any, shares of the subjects of my predictions (because, well, the predictions suck). It’s kind of like not putting your money where your mouth is.

In this case, I absolutely have a vested interest in Jose Ramirez. Chris Mitchell and I both hold a special place in our hearts for him. I’ve come to realize, in my years of watching and loving baseball, that I most appreciate the hitters who are (debatably) underappreciated contact hitters. Victor Martinez. Pre-breakout Daniel Murphy. Nick Markakis. Martin Prado. Reggie Willits???

Speaking of Prado, Ramirez looks like peak Prado right now, and in more ways than one:

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It’s not like we need to talk about Jonathan Villar. We have all seen what he’s doing. But when a guy seemingly comes out of nowhere to become a top-10 fantasy player, it’s usually a big deal. What gives? Who cares. We’re here now. Let’s talk about Jonathan Villar.

Villar is on pace to hit 13 home runs, steal 60 bases, and bat .292. That’s 2014 Jose Altuve, but more power and less batting average. We’ll check the validity of all those paces in a second. The middle one is really not open for much contention, though. It took 16 games for Villar to steal his first two bases this year, but he hasn’t gone more than five games since without successfully swiping a bag. With 21 steals in the 45 games since April 23, he’s basically taking an extra base every other day. Billy Hamilton who?

Neither the speed nor power should have caught any of us by surprise. All of it is well-documented, dating back to 2014. Blake Murphy gave Villar his due back then, noting a 10-homer, 30-steal, .250 hitter is “immensely valuable” given the paucity of talent at shortstop. That has obviously changed this year, what with Corey Seager and Francisco Lindor and Carlos Correa and all that jazz. (Despite their presences, Villar still holds his own.)

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Just straight hitting the ball hard has its value, but there is an ideal angle. Hit the ball a million miles per hour into the ground, and you’re Giancarlo Stanton, grounding out to second base on the hardest hit ball so far in the Statcast era. You gotta hit it square.

People smarter than I am have determined that the ideal launch angle is between ten and thirty degrees. That combines the line drive angle (10-25 degrees) and home run angle (25-30), but in fantasy baseball, we’ll take a line drive or a home run, either’s fine.

So if we want to know who’s hitting the ball harder this year, it’s probably best to ask who’s hitting the ball harder in the right angles for success? That will tell us a little about some hot starts that are more believable because of what’s going on under the hood.

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