A new year and in turn, a new decade is now upon us! We have begun the Roaring Twenties once again. More importantly, fantasy baseball draft season is now upon us.

I am not one for paying large amounts of attention to positional rankings. Knowing who is valued as the 7^th best shortstop, or who the 11^th ranked second baseman is – is helpful no doubt, but that alone will not win you your fantasy leagues. We can spend time debating whether Rhys Hoskins is better than Trey Mancini, but since the duo have similar profiles, the discussion isn’t all that helpful on its own.

To me, the task that needs the higher priority – is the comparison of market prices to player valuations. The greater assignment is to determine the players which the market undervalues. One of the first exercises that I engage in – is to find the players which projections foretell a superior year as compared to where they are currently being priced.

The two needed components to complete this analysis are very generally:

• Projections
• Market

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Over the years, I’ve been working on how to fine-tune my player evaluation process. The following are six datasets that I’ve found useful I’ll not go into detail on any of them since I provide a link to the original article. The following is basically a referenceable data dump.

Note: I know there is a lot of content and when questions arise, make sure the area in question is obvious in the comment. Also, I’ll only answer questions here and not in the original articles.

Voit/Muncy All-Stars (link)

These are older AAA hitters who have shown signs of a breakout.

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Note: For my next few articles, I’m going to examine the hitters and pitchers who underperformed and overperformed in 2019. Each article may spawn off others since some areas may need to be explored in more detail. After performing horribly in 2019, I need to take take a hard look at why I missed last season and what I can do to improve.

I’m going to start with the one player class every owner hopes to hit on, breakout hitters. A couple of these cheaply acquired star hitters can help carry a team. It could be a prospect turned uber-prospect (e.g. Pete Alonso) or just a hitter displaying new skills (e.g. Ketel Marte). I’m going to dig into the reason these breakouts were not draft-day targets and look for any common themes.

To get the test subjects, I ran our auction calculator for end-of-season production and then compared the auction dollars to the values created from their ADP. I didn’t want to just use the difference in ranks because the gap from #1 to #15 could be over $10 but the difference between #250 to #300 might just be $1. Using this method, I found 62 hitters who outperformed their value by $10 or more.
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… but not by much for teams I just owned …

My 2019 fantasy season did not live up to my standards with most of the struggles being self-inflicted. Here are some overarching themes I spotted with each league plus some additional points at the end.

Horrible FAAB management

I ran out of money in almost every league and spent too much FAAB on worthless assets. Looking back over the leagues, the root cause was chasing week-only plays. From my work writing “The Process”, I found out how valuable it is to grind out each week. Additionally, I ran the weekly FAAB projections here so I knew around what it would take to get each. Initially, I got the players and but dropped them a week or two later for better options with little to show for the FAAB spent

I need to set a FAAB limit for chasing week-only plays and just accept it’s fine to miss out on a few players. A week’s advantage is worth the same in week 1 or the final week. The rest of my FAAB can be used for chasing long term improvements. Some players may straddle the long-term and weekly play so the FAAB may come from both the weekly and long term pools. I need to have a plan and stick to it.
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Opening day is finally here!

Draft season is now ending. It is time for our fantasy teams to finally start accumulating statistics (Japan series aside). After the long winter, the excitement of a new season has finally reached its pinnacle.

Now it is time to share my 2019 bold predictions with you. The ATC Projections helped shape some of these. Others come from my own personal analysis on the player, or team situation. The rest arise from blind optimism or the crossing of my fingers. These are all possibilities that could happen, that I feel will happen if things break just right.

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The 2019 season is here.  Let’s get right to it.

1 – Dan Vogelbach will finish with a wOBA higher than Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.

You could say that to date neither Dan Vogelbach nor Vladimir Guererro, Jr. have accomplished anything in the major leagues.  While true, that’s where the comparison ends.  Vogelbach is 26 years old and has less than 150 major league plate appearances on his resume (career 78 wRC+). Vlad, Jr. just turned 20 years old, is the consensus #1 prospect in baseball, and is the son of a beloved Hall of Fame player.

I have absolutely nothing against Vlad, Jr. and am as excited as anyone else to watch him carve out what is likely to be a stunning career with the bat.  However, as I tried to express recently, the expectations are so high here that we may all be setting ourselves up for a little bit of disappointment.  As we are often reminded with even elite prospects, baseball is hard, and the game has a funny way of humbling even the most talented athletes in the world, at least for a time.  Patience will be prudent with Vlad, Jr., but most of us will have none of it.

Vogelbach has posted a minor league slash of .282/.391/.472/.864 over eight seasons, including a .907 OPS in 342 AAA games.  He’s a professional hitter, but up until this point he’s had Nelson Cruz blocking his path to SEA.  That roadblock is now removed, and as of this writing it’s all but certain Vogelbach will get a shot to stick on the Mariners’ roster to begin the season.  From the write up for the 2019 Seattle top prospects:

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3/19/19

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Late Hitters I Like

ADP (select Main Event in the second column)

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Major league teams have become increasingly sensitive to roster flexibility. One way to extend the back end of the roster is to have players with options. In most cases, players come with three option years. This means their team can demote them to the minors without penalty. Once an option is used in a given year, that player can be demoted any number of times. For example, the Rays yo-yoed numerous relievers between Durham and Tampa to extend their bullpen.

Once a player has been optioned three times in his career, he is said to be “out of options.” In other words, he can no longer be sent to the minors without passing through waivers. If the player is good enough, he’ll be claimed by another club. They’ll either use him in the majors or try to pass him through waivers again.

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I just wrote about some of the players I did not know about from my LABR AL-only league. It’s time for the NL players I didn’t recognize. I figured there would be more on the list because I didn’t do the pre-auction prep work needed to roster full teams. I was wrong. I knew quite a few but a few names didn’t initially

Here are the full AL and NL-only lists.

Most fantasy owners may not agree with the recent #LABR auction values. They may not be even close to rostering as many players. BUT they should look over the players taken and find out why an "expert" wanted them.

AL: https://t.co/uCKWquXmXr

NL: https://t.co/pMafCbEK4O pic.twitter.com/4cCa0yTlU9

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) March 4, 2019

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Spring is sprung and all that gobbledygook. More importantly, things are happening in the baseball world. After an offseason of stasis, players are gaining value based on the early results of their offseason training regimens. Some are losing value via injury. Others will have to contend with last minute signings of key free agents. Many spring stories are flying under the radar. Here are five that caught my eye.

1. Bryce Harper fallout

There are some repercussions to the Phillies signing of Bryce Harper. Obviously, Nick Williams is no longer the starting right fielder. He was a sneaky breakout candidate entering his age 25 season with a track record of steady gains to contact rate, plate discipline, and ISO. The Phillies have options with Williams. Literally, he could be optioned, serve as an overqualified fourth outfielder, or be traded for something the club needs more. At present, that’s nothing.

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