1/26/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host

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Notable transactions

• A.J. Pollock to LAD (4:40)
• Drew Pomeranz to SF (14:52)
• Brad Brach to CHC (23:00)

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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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Have you guys heard of Adalberto Mondesi? No one’s been talking about him the last few months, so I figured it was my duty to discuss him. He’s obviously been surging up early draft boards after a remarkable close to the season. He went 73rd on average in the #2EarlyMocks and then Top 50 in both my AFL draft the PitchersList Mock.

It’s not hard to see why everyone is excited. The 23-year old former prospect had 14 HR and 32 SB in just 75 games and no matter how many times we suggest not taking brilliant numbers like that and extrapolating, we all do it. Even if it’s just to get drunk on the insane numbers for a little bit. Just for the record, his 162-game pace was 31 HR and 70 SB… annnddd now I’m wasted.

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I think there are not one, but many, questions because there are not one, but many, ways Adalberto Mondesi and Byron Buxton are similar.

Here’s one answer to one possible question:

who has the best fantasy season in 2019?

— Alex "Oxlade" Chamberlain (@DolphHauldhagen) August 29, 2018

I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m kind of surprised. I asked this question very deliberately, its design not remotely accidental, the response options dripping with subtext. Mondesi, with his elite speed, decent power for a speedster, and very questionable contact skills, in 2018 is almost a dead ringer for Buxton in 2017. Mondesi doesn’t quite have Buxton’s baggage — he doesn’t carry the weight of expectations of a No. 1 prospect — but he has his own, continuing a familial legacy. But they do have a lot in common, as aforementioned, which can be summarily boiled down to this great quip from our Eric Longenhagen: “wholly untamed physical abilities.”

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The All-Star game has come and gone, but the festivities are ongoing here at RotoGraphs. It’s time to rank the first half’s “All-Sell-High Team.” These are players who had big first halves, but who aren’t necessarily the best bets to repeat that performance in the second half. Without further ado, let’s get right to the list: Read the rest of this entry »

Contrary to popular belief, the secret to rebuilding (and winning) your fantasy league is not hoarding prospects. This season, you could be waiting patiently for the arrivals of Michael Kopech, Willie Calhoun, and Luis Urias to save your team, or you could have jumped on pop-up producers like Max Muncy, Jesus Aguilar, and Ross Stripling. Last year, Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, and Charlie Morton were universally available if your timing was right.

The thing about prospects is that sometimes they pan out, and sometimes they don’t. Even a “successful” one like Ronald Acuña has just a 114 wRC+, with a rest-of-season projection slightly below that. In real life, that’s fantastic for a 20-year-old and Acuña is a likely future star. But in the meantime his production is nothing special.

And again: Acuña is a success story. Owners might wait years for the likes of Byron Buxton, Dansby Swanson, and Alex Reyes to carry their teams to relevancy. All the while, players like the following four who are owned in less than 40 percent (well, actually, 43 percent) of Ottoneu leagues have been quietly carrying contenders: Read the rest of this entry »

Our staff composite rankings are back! We’re onto shortstop and we’ll be rolling out a new position each day over the next week-plus. I will still be doing my commentary by position rankings to give a quick little thought, but those will be separate posts.

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
• 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.

Key:

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

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3/9/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

Strategy Section: Middle Infield Previews

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So far in 2018, the hot stove has been more of a cool counter, leading to a dearth of enjoyable “change of scenery” fantasy baseball topics. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of fantasy fun to be had, because the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) has draft data ready to roll. I’m going position by position through this slow offseason, picking out players with an average draft position (ADP) significantly higher or lower than I expected.

Today, it’s time to discuss the shortstop position — namely Chris Taylor and Marwin Gonzalez. Neither guy is a full-time shortstop in real life, but in fantasy that’s where the vast majority of owners will play them in 2018. (The player pool I used included all players with at least 10 starts at short in 2017.) One of the main commonalities between Gonzalez and Taylor is that they’re both eligible to play several positions (1B/2B/3B/SS/OF for Marwin, 2B/SS/OF for Taylor).

Both players also experienced shocking breakouts in 2017, so it’s probably a good idea to see where they stand heading into the 2018 fantasy season, correct? I sure thought so.

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UPDATE 4:00pm ET: In the less than one hour since this article was published, Castro re-signed with the Colorado Rockies.

Anybody with information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of the Daniel Castro Fan Club (@DanielCastroFan) should contact the FanGraphs tip line.

Perhaps the weirdest thing happening to me and my fellow FanGraphists is the Daniel Castro Fan Club. Presumably, the club consists of one dude, but I’ll give “them” the benefit of the doubt. “They” contact me at least once a week to promote their pro-Castro agenda. And, for lack of a better topic today, they’re getting their wish. Sort of. Today we’ll discuss bad players who become good. Because Daniel Castro is bad.

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