Archive for Site News

This application is now closed. Thank you for your interest. We will be in contact with potential candidates soon.

RotoGraphs is now accepting applications to join our staff as a contributing writer.

Contributors typically write two to three times a week. Familiarity and comfort with fantasy baseball and the data on FanGraphs is a requirement, but just as importantly, we’re looking for writers who can generate their own ideas and questions while providing interesting analysis and commentary on the game of fantasy baseball. From standard roto redraft to long-term keeper leagues, identifying intriguing prospects and breakouts to managing a fantasy roster, we want to cover it all.

We use rigor, creativity and the latest analytical tools to provide useful, interesting insights and advice to fantasy managers. And while we take our responsibility to support fantasy managers seriously, we’re also willing to be silly and keep things light. After all, fantasy baseball is supposed to be fun! Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve launched a new Player Rater feature for fantasy baseball. It is powered by the Auction Calculator with a few new exciting features to make it stand out for the casual fantasy players, as well as the deep league enthusiasts.

Some of the features that separate the Player Rater from the Auction Calculator are:

• Toggle between stats and dollar values.
• More time frames to choose from:
• First and second half
• Last 7, 14, and 30 days
• Individual weeks over the course of the current season

• Compare batters and pitchers on one table.
• Roster% and Start% from NFBC
• Player Cards

Player cards are an interactive dashboard that highlights each player’s fantasy contributions, including:

• Dollar values for different time frames.
• Season positional and overall ranks.
• Weekly graphs with dollar values, playing time, rostered%, and started%.
• Projection dollar values.
• 5×5 stats and dollar values for different time frames.

Some of you may be wondering why dollar values? Converting stats to an auction dollar value has become widely accepted within the fantasy community as a method to compare and rank players. So even if you aren’t in an auction league, the dollar values still have meaning as a means of comparison.

Also of note, the weekly dollar values in the player card graph are scaled to season long values. They are NOT cumulative to the total season dollar value.

The Player Rater settings used in the Auction Calculator are 12-Team 5×5 and 15-Team 5×5. One subjective decision made was to use 7 SP and 2 RP for pitcher positions. This is to reflect the importance of starting pitching and to mimic more real life lineups. Managers rarely start middle relievers with no save opportunities. The Auction Calculator is always available if you need to evaulate player with your own league-specific settings.

We hope you enjoy our take on the Player Rater and its player cards. As always if you encounter any issues or bugs, please contact us at support@fangraphs.com.

From now until some point before the season starts, the focus of most RotoGraph articles will be on getting the most useful information out of the StatCast information. It’ll include as many or as few of articles to create a good understanding of the data. With tons of available information much has been written about the subject especially here at RotoGraphs. The key with this series is to cut through all the different data points (e.g. launch angle, spin rate, sprint speed) and how they measured (e.g. max, average, weighted) to find which values to focus on and which ones to ignore.

The point of this article is to provide an initial forum, via the comments, to collect and try to answer the question with any previous research. There is no need to completely recreate everything.

Read the rest of this entry »

RotoGraphs is looking for information on the types of leagues that our readers are in order to more specialize the content. Feel free to submit information on one or as many leagues you belong. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Goto the following link to answer the questions. Thanks for your time and we will publish the results soon.

Link to RotoGraphs Reader Survey

Today we will begin to roll out our preseason content in an effort to get you ready for all of your drafts. So that we can remain short and punchy yet also comprehensive, we’ve settled on a certain approach for these next few weeks.

We’re going to dedicate our time to attacking each position one by one. This week, we will cover catchers and first basemen. Those lumbering lumber-swingers will be our focus, and once we debut the combined RotoGraphs rankings, we’ll cover risers, fallers, divers, dippers, lungers and squatters.

In other words, each RG writer will take a different slant at the two positions. Some will talk about the old guys that are sliding down the rankings, others about young guys coming up. We’ll outline some $1 sleepers and some deep league options. We’ll handicap some position battles.

This way, you’ll get many different opinions about one position at a time and we’ll still be able to get you your rankings in time.

Let’s also take this moment to welcome Erik Hahmann (of DRaysBay), Justin Merry (of Basement-Dwellers), Michael Barr (of RotoHardball) and Howard Bender (of FantasyBaseballBuzz) to the RotoGraphs team. We’re excited about this year!

I’m pleased to announce that FanGraphs first publication, The 2010 Second Opinion is now available for sale at the price of $7.95! What you get is a PDF and all the information is also available online through your FanGraphs.com account. Here’s the rundown:

Player Profiles – Over 400 in-depth player profiles written by many of the FanGraphs and RotoGraphs contributors you’re already familiar with.

Articles – Closer situations, players coming back from injuries, sophomore players to watch, 2010 fantasy prospects, impact trades, the big questions for 2010, and something that Carson wrote, where he answers your questions before you even ask them!

Stats & Graphs – Each player profile is accompanied by a stat box with 10 very useful stats for both fantasy and real-life player evaluation including spark graphs showing career trends.

Team Previews – Each team is previewed for next season, giving you the rundown on what to expect from a fantasy and real-life standpoint.

Bonus Material – FanGraphs has partnerned with ESPN Insider this season and if you purchase the PDF, you’ll have access to anything we write for ESPN Insider right here on FanGraphs.com up until March 1st, 2011.

Online Integration – In addition to the PDF, you will have access to all the information in the book on FanGraphs.com when logged in to your FanGraphs account. This information will include the written player profiles which will be integrated into the stats pages and all the articles and team previews in the book.

If you run into any payment problems or other issues please fill out a contact form and we’ll try and solve the problem as soon as possible!

RotoGraphs is now accepting applications for fantasy baseball writers. These are paid, part-time positions that require a commitment of five posts per week. We are specifically looking for writers with knowledge of multiple fantasy formats, who are comfortable with writing strategy-based articles.

Writers may be asked to tackle specific topics as assigned, but a big part of the job is to independently develop interesting topics and ideas on a regular basis. Strong writing skills and the ability to write clean copy are important along with a familiarity of the statistics found on FanGraphs.

To apply, please send us email with your background and why you’d like to write for us. Please include anything you think will be helpful in evaluating your application such as: writing samples, links to current blogs, fantasy experience, resume, etc….

Interested writers can contact us (David Appelman and Marc Hulet) at wanted+rotographs@fangraphs.com with the heading RotoGraphs Application 2010.

Many people have written in to ask for advice on trades. We now have an email address rotographs+mailbag@fangraphs.com specifically (and only) for questions of this nature. This will be a work in progress initially but it will be a collective effort among all people on the RotoGraphs staff.

When you submit to the mailbag, please include all relevant details. We need to know your league parameters. Also, if you are trading different positions, like an outfielder for a pitcher, your other options at both positions are key considerations. Try to give us the most information in the fewest amount of words.

Here’s an example: In a 13-team mixed roto league I was offered Matt Garza for Carlos Lee. I have OF depth to trade Lee and my SP are Beckett, D. Davis, E. Jackson, Meche, Pelfrey, Washburn and Zito. That was 35 words and had all of the necessary information.

We will try to answer as many questions as possible but please understand that it may be impossible to respond to everyone. The first priority will be to interesting proposals that could apply to many different leagues. A two-for-two trade in a 12-team mixed roto league probably will have a better chance of being answered than a five-for-five deal in a 16-team NL-only points league.

Fire away!

The CHONE Projections are now up in the player pages, the projections section, and you can get a customized player list of projections using the MyTeam feature.

Huge thanks to Sean Smith for allowing us to post the projections again this year and don’t forget to check out baseballprojection.com to see any player’s projection in more detail.

They’re here!

The 2009 Bill James Handbook projections are now available on FanGraphs in the individual player pages. Big thanks to Baseball Info Solutions for letting us run these for the 3rd year in a row! If you want the sortable stats version and are not content with seeing one player at a time, you will have to purchase a copy directly from them.