Mike talked earlier this week about being patient, essentially arguing that the best moves you can make this early in the season are no moves.  In other words, the season is so young and the sample size so small that you shouldn’t overreact.  While that is probably true, it doesn’t hurt to prepare yourself to pounce on a potential free agent waiver pick up if you see a skill or talent that looks convincing.  Sometimes you need to jump early to find the best bargain of the season, so here are four players that I’m watching closely over the next week or two.

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It has been a wacky first week of baseball. One part heartbreaking, two parts breathtaking, eight parts endlessly fascinating, the sport never ceases to amaze. Some storylines (I can’t even avoid that pun if I tried) with serious fantasy implications emerged last week — namely, the historically great start to Trevor Story‘s career and the earth-shattering injury that ended Kyle Schwarber’s season.

I’m here, like everyone else, to discuss the former. I’m sure you’ve read your fair share of takes. This fruit is hanging so low, I almost stepped on it. I hope this doesn’t exhaust you, and I hope this doesn’t bore you. Because Story is more than just a statistically anomalous home run-hitting machine. He has a ceiling, and he has a floor, and I want to find out where — or, perhaps more abstractly, who — exactly they might be.

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It’s easy to be tempted to overreact to the small sample size of strong performances very early in the season. Like many fantasy pundits before me, I’ll continue the tradition of preaching patience with your best players and your preseason evaluations. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should be sitting on your hands. Three things I keep tabs on especially closely in the first few weeks of the season are PITCHf/x data, lineup constructions and playing time distribution. Colleague Scott Spratt tackled fastball leaders in the bullpen and Jeff Sullivan discussed velocity in depth relating to King Felix’s first start. I wont’ tackle PITCHf/x data in this piece — as others have done so already — but I will look at a few playing time situations that might be sorting themselves out as well as a few players whose stock is on the rise as a result of their lineup spot.

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It’s another day of picking and panning, and today we move onto the shortstop position. A discrepancy in ranking could really only be for one of two reasons (or both) — either a difference in projected performance or a difference in converting that projected performance into a ranking or dollar value. It’s not always easy to figure out what is causing the gap, but it is always interesting to discover who I am more bullish and bearish on than the gang.

For the shortstop position, my Picks will only include those in my top 20 and my Pans will only include those in the Consensus top 20.

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Making bold predictions is one of my favorite activities in advance of an upcoming baseball season. It allows me — and the other writers partaking in the bold predictions series — to identify the bandwagons we’re on (or perhaps even driving). While now is the time of fluffy stories about players being in the best shape of their lives and poised for career years, not all is rainbows and butterflies. Below, you’ll find a few not so friendly bold predictions, too.

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I’m always torn when setting a draft date for a fantasy league, particularly a redraft one. Most people I play with generally want the draft to be as close to the start of the regular season as possible, which makes sense – the longer you wait, the more information becomes available, and the more certainty players have, especially when it comes to playing-time estimates.

Depending on your level of risk-seeking, the depth of the league, and your confidence in finding early-season waiver-wire sleepers, an earlier draft might be your preference. It’s certainly mine. In those cases, I’m comfortable using picks in the later rounds on sleepers who may or may not make a team, trusting that if they wind up optioned to the minor leagues (or designated for assignment, as it were), I’ll be able to plug someone in out of the free-agent bin comparable to a “floor” pick I could have otherwise used that selection on.

The longer you wait to do your draft, the less opportunity there is to take those playing-time-uncertain fliers. Either those players will be deemed to be without a job, or others will have grown wise to their hold on a job, bidding the price up.

My favorite example to illustrate the impact of draft timing this year is Trea Turner, the No. 2 prospect of the potential NL East-champion Washington Nationals.
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We are doing our March ranking updates. You can follow each position here:

• Outfielders
• Starting Pitchers
• First Base

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
• Zach Sanders
• Mike Podhorzer
• Dan Schwartz
• Paul Kastava
• Justin Mason

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.

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The worst kept secret in the fantasy sports industry is that the people in it are amazing. A little over a year ago, with the help of some friends (with fantasy benefits), I entered the industry with a silly little podcast, a website, and no real expectations that it would ever turn into anything more than a hobby. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how helpful and encouraging the majority of the fantasy industry is. No one ever said no to an appearance. I was given a ton of advice on what works and what doesn’t in the industry. You read what these people write and listen to what they have to say, but what you don’t realize is that they are just as cool in real life as they appear to be from the outside. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

Yesterday, I published my first Pod Projection of the year, and the honor was bestowed upon the Dodgers’ hyped young shortstop, Corey Seager. Several commenters asked me to clarify my feelings on Seager’s ADP in relation to Xander Bogaerts, so I figured I might as well expand upon my thoughts on the latter by giving him the full Pod Projection treatment.

Bogaerts, a former top prospect with the Red Sox, completely transformed into a new type of hitter in 2015. It’s odd because this is something you might expect from an established veteran who is compensating for deteriorating skills. Established veteran Bogaerts is not, but the finished product delivered significantly more offensive value than the 2014 version. He struck out far less, though his SwStk% only declined marginally, the respectable minor league power he had displayed in the past declined even further, he became an extreme ground ball hitter, at the expense of fly balls, he went to the opposite field with dramatically greater frequency, and his BABIP skyrocketed. Phew! Is there anything in Bogaerts’ statistical profile that didn’t change drastically?! His line drive and pop-up rates were virtually unchanged, so there’s that!

With all these changes, it makes projecting his 2016 performance that much more difficult. It’s hard enough forecasting a player with just two Major League seasons to his name, so when we cannot even determine a true baseline for his skills, we’re essentially just taking a wild guess. So here goes…

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The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

The honor for first 2016 Pod Projectionee goes to Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager. He came to the plate just 113 times in his Major League cup of coffee, but man did he impress. He posted a robust .421 wOBA and displayed elite underlying skills across the board. I wrote him up in mid-November, concluding with the following:

With all the other exciting sophomores getting more attention, it’s possible Seager slips under the radar, even with his excellent September performance. Normally, he’s the type of player who would be a near lock to be overvalued. But I’m not so sure about it. In fact, I’m rather curious where fantasy owners will peg his value. I don’t expect a big breakout, but he could very well be a solid across the board contributor.

“…it’s possible Seager slips under the radar”, ha! He’s currently the 55th player off the board and third shortstop selected according to NFBC ADP. Surely fantasy owners haven’t forgotten about him and are putting an awful lot of stock into his prospect pedigree and a tiny sample of MLB performance. Are they justified in their optimism?

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