Yesterday, I examined some hitters with the largest plate appearance projection discrepancies using five separate sources. Today, pitchers take center stage.

I’m using the projected playing times from FanGraphs Depth charts and four other sources. Again, I won’t name them as I don’t want to debate the merits of each. My goal is to just find and evaluate different takes on the same players.

The differences aren’t nearly as drastic as the hitters, especially for the top arms. Most of the major differences involve around unknown roles and injury risks. I listed the top-200 at the end while the values for free agents and foreign signings may be off or missing. I’m going to focus on the biggest differences in some top-ranked pitchers.

Ross Stripling
Range (Max-Min): 67
Average: 112
Standard Deviation: 33

I’m not surprised one bit on Stripling. Unless the Dodgers get hit with a ton of injuries to their starters, he’s going to begin the season as a reliever or in the minors. He’s got the talent to be a top-20 starter but the number of starts he’ll get is unknown. Owners can draft him and hope his talent forces the Dodgers hand. The other issue is that he’s on the Dodgers who manipulate their roster to give pitchers scheduled days off via demotions or “injuries”. Good luck guessing right with him.

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The amount of stats available to analysts today is overwhelming. At least it’s getting that way with me. I’d prefer everything to be available to investigate an idea. But no one has the time to go over every single stat to see if a player has changed for the better or worse. I’m going to eliminate all but 10 stats to focus on those few that matter the most.

The key behind my analysis is to find if a pitcher or hitter has changed. A few dozen projection sets exist to set a talent baseline but once the season starts, most people want to throw them out (some even before the season) if a hitter is batting .150 or a pitcher has a 6.00 ERA. Players are human and creatures of habit so most won’t change. But some do and being able to focus on these few can help to find values.

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There wasn’t a ton of moves with fantasy implications over the weekend but there was enough to lump together some. I’m still at the point that no major team breakdowns can really start with the two big bats still available. Anyways, here is a breakdown of the moves:

Phillies sign David Robertson

The 33-year-old righty immediately joins the Phillies closer discussion for the simple reason he’s projected to be the best bullpen arm. Steamer has him for a 3.22 ERA with Seranthony Dominguez next at 3.39 and previous closer Hector Neris at 3.62.

The Phillies front office would prefer Robertson to close instead of the other two to save money. The team is already on the hook for his $23 million dollar contract, so his price is set. The more Saves the pre-arbitration arms get, the higher their arbitration contracts will cost.

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When Yusei Kikuchi was posted in early December, he had only a month to sign with a team. For this reason, his signing decision was going to fall over the holidays and Seattle broke the news right before the end of the year. Because of the unique timing, he didn’t get a ton of press, but owners should be aware that he’s a decent starter and not to be ignored on draft day.

First off, the other Jeff beat me to writing about the 27-year-old lefty. Twice to be exact. Once before the signing and once after.
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The current fantasy focus is evaluating the top-100 or so players, especially the first couple rounds. I’m going to deep dive and investigate some later round values.  I will group 10 players together and pick which one I would take earlier than the others.

201: Arodys Vizcaino
202: Jonathan Schoop
203: Kevin Gausman
204: Luke Voit
205: Chris Taylor
206: Jake Arrieta
207: Forrest Whitley
208: Ross Stripling
209: Odubel Herrera
210: Yusei Kikuchi

There are several players I really like in this group like Taylor, Stripling, and Herrera but easily the best bargain is Kikuchi.

Kikuchi isn’t on par with Asian imports Ohtani or Darvish but he’s still extremely talented. He’s considered to be a better talent than Miles Mikolas and Mikolas is going 86th overall. I believe once Kikuchi signs and everyone gets to know him, his ADP will be cut in half and around a top-100 pick, if not double digits.
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With steals becoming more scarce, owners were forced to reach for the few stolen base sources which could carry a team. In 2018, Dee Gordon and Billy Hamilton were supposed to be two such sources. Both disappointed their owners but the risk of a decline was evident even though their owners, which includes the author, ignored them. The owners were hoping for a stolen base panacea but ended up with burnt pancakes.

Going into the season, our Depth Charts projected Hamilton to have the most stolen bases at 52 and Gordon was third at 46. Both missed badly with Hamilton stealing 34 and Gordon with 30. In my Tout Wars league, 16 steals were the difference between 7th and 2nd in the category.

The reason for their decline didn’t involve their ability to steal a base. Both couldn’t hit enough to get on base and continue leading off. Both had on-base rates under .300 and OPS’s in the low .600’s. By the season’s end, both were deservingly hitting at the bottom of the lineup (Hamilton 106 times, Gordon 34 times). In all fairness, their projected OPS values (.674 and .648) were below the average catcher (.676).

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Mitch Haniger surprised about everyone this season with top-25 production when his average draft position was over 200 in NFBC leagues. In all fairness, he should have made several sleeper lists but the industry failed to pick up on his productive but ignored 2017 season.  He’s the type of hitter owners need to focus on rostering, late-round injured hitters.

His stats speak volumes. Here are some of Haniger’s projections and results over the past two seasons.

His projection coming into 2017 was decent with a 20 HR and 8 SB profile when prorating to 600 PA. The season started out great until he went on the DL with an oblique injury which lasted for over a month. He came back from the DL, struggled, got hurt a coup of times (finger and face), and finally turned it on over the last month. This profile screams sleeper and everyone slept on him.

By just prorating his 2017 season to 600 PA, he would be at 23 dingers and 7 bags with an acceptable .282 AVG. His results were similar to another pre-season unknown, Marwin Gonzalez (23 HR, 8 SB, .303 AVG). Gonzalez’s average ADP was 123, about 100 picks before Haniger went off the board.

As for Haniger’s 2018 season, he showed the value of a well-rounded player. A near .300 batting average, over 20 homers, and about 10 stolen bases placed him as a  top-25 overall batter. Unexciting stats can still be good.

Going forward, owners can take several lessons from this failure. First, dig into hitters after pick 100 who struggled with injuries but showed positive production when healthy. Most owners are going to hope the top names like Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve will rebound. They aren’t going to surprise anyone. Instead, players like Kyle Seager (toe), Steven Souza Jr.(pec), and Jorge Soler (rib) might be acquired for nothing and end up being a top-50 player.

Another item is to prorate each player’s previous season to 600 plate appearances to see if anyone pops up if given more playing time. With Haniger’s nearly identical pro-rated 2017 and 2018 seasons, his 2017 season would have stood out and owners could have taken notice. Instead, he was relegated to the reserve rounds.

Missing on Haniger’s points to some obvious projects for me later in the offseason. Until then, let me know of any players who the industry missed on and there was no obvious cause.

Looking back, Jesus Aguilar had so many forces working to hold down his pre-season value, I’m amazed some teams rostered him (566th in NFBC ADP). While he had the tools for a breakout, it’s tough to find actionable pre-season moves to prevent similar players from slipping through the cracks. Once he got the opportunity to play, owners should have jumped in to roster him.

The first item to consider in the miss is that Aguilar’s projections weren’t glowing. Of all projected hitters in our pre-season depth charts, he came in at 245th by OPS. Not the best ranking for a 1B, especially compared to his teammate Eric Thames.

Here are the pair’s various OPS projections coming into the season.

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Every season a few hitters come out of nowhere to become major fantasy contributors. And by nowhere, I mean no one targeted them at all during draft season, even in 50-man roster draft-and-holds. This past season, Max Muncy, Joey Wendle, and Luke Voit provided fantasy production for nothing. An interesting trait for each of these hitters is that savvy teams targeted them in trades before the breakout. In recent seasons, these breakouts include Chris Taylor. Jose Martinez. and Jesus Aguilar. While the general public doesn’t have the same resources, scouts, and data as major league teams, I found the general traits some teams are looking to acquire.

I asked for help in creating the list. I end up with many responses but I wanted productive hitters on no one’s radar. I removed a suggestion if the hitter was on any top-100 list (e.g. John Hicks) or if they were ever an MLB regular (e.g. Scooter Gennett). In the end, 12 hitters made the cut: Chris Taylor, Max Muncy, Luke Voit, Joey Wendle, Jose Martinez, Jesus Aguilar, Teoscar Hernandez, Adam Duvall, Daniel Palka, Eugenio Suarez, Mitch Haniger, and Justin Turner.

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Today, I start the process examining who the industry, owners, and myself missed on with their preseason evaluations. Did a smoking gun exist and everyone missed it or was there no way to guess the outcome?  I’m going to start with two pitchers who had smoking guns, I wrote about the smoking guns, and then I totally ignored them.

The two starters are Gerrit Cole and Anibal Sanchez. Back in February, I highlighted both in a pitch mix change article. Looking back, I made a convincing case for taking a chance on either one. I spent a few hours doing the research and when it came to draft day, I never picked up a share. I failed as both overperformed.

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