Michael Taylor

I was a little surprised to find the 27-year-old available in my Tout Wars league where every semi-decent full-time player seems to be owned. While I didn’t need outfield help, I examined his profile and jumped at the opportunity to roster him.

I valued Taylor as an endgame option coming into the season based on his low AVG and suspect playing time with Victor Robles ready in the minors. The 2018 Nationals outfield has been decimated with injuries so far, so Taylor’s playing. The playing time could end with Adam Eaton attempting to return but, for now, Taylor’s roster spot is secure.

As for Taylor’s talent, he falls into the Drew Stubbs player profile, horrible AVG/OBP skills but a decent combination of home runs and stolen bases. Combining his 2017 minor and major league totals, he posted 20 home runs and 21 stolen bases. While the home runs haven’t come this season, he has hit four with 13 steals in 14 attempts.

Read the rest of this entry »

This means we’re actually getting close to official baseball, right? It’s bold prediction season and you know the drill (with an Ottoneu context), so let’s get started.

1. Freddie Freeman achieves 8.0 WAR

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week and earlier this week, I highlighted a group of hitters who my Pod Projections projected stolen base upside and stolen base downside compared to Steamer projections. Until I performed the comparison, I had no idea I was so bearish on steals, relative to both Steamer and to 2017.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s tough to create a perfectly balanced team on draft or auction day. Owners are feeling the push-and-pull of trying to balance all five categories in a roto league. Mid-draft, many owners decide to drop a category with the hope of finding the needed stats on the waiver wire. Knowing which stats can be found can be tricky. By looking back at last season’s Tout Wars leagues, a decent idea of available stats can be determined.

One feature of the OnRoto.com fantasy league website computes the league’s final standings using just the drafted teams (nine pitchers, 14 position players). I took these draft values and compared them to the actual final values for each of the four roto leagues (12-team AL and NL-only and the two 15-team mixed leagues).

Some specific notes on these leagues. First, they are deeper than most leagues so every player who might be good is already owned. As for the timing of the mixed draft (the other three were auctions) happened a few weeks before the other three. Additionally, only the 23-man rosters were used used for the projected standings. Each team had an additional five or six-person bench.

Read the rest of this entry »

Absolutely…nothing! For our immediate purposes, that is. The usual off-season lull, further deadened by the glacial free agent market, has left us with nothing current and baseballish to ponder during the long winter, other than stuff that, frankly, doesn’t interest us much. Thus, the WAR wars—in brief, Bill James, the Cornel West of sabermetrics, doesn’t like WAR as an evaluative tool—have left us longing for PEACE! (Though if your curiosity is piqued, here’s a judicious evaluation by our Fangraphs colleague Dave Cameron.)

Likewise the Hall of Fame debate, which has long outlasted our attenuated interest. Your stats tell you that Curt Schilling should be inducted into the Hall of Fame instantly? OK with us. You’d prefer to see him tarred and feathered? Godspeed, say we. Just don’t bother us about it any more. We have less important things to think about.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I began an examination of stolen base rates. The process is messy with too many variables and nuances to consider. I’m examining the information through several different lenses and seeing what applies. Today, I’m going to look at how success rate plays a role.

Team Level Analysis

As sabermetric principles are being utilized more and more by front offices, they quickly came around to the idea that for stolen bases to be helpful, the success rate needs to be high. In 2000, the success rate was 69% for the entire league and it has increased to 73% last season.

Knowing that each team is made of different players and their individual success rate are a factor, here are the three-year success rate along with total stolen base attempt percentage ((CS+SB)/(1B+HBP+BB)).

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, I asked our readers for any aspects of the fantasy game which are missing. Okra stepped up and said:

“I feel like we still do a poor job of predicting stole bases. I think we could better utilize the new Sprint Speed data and speed scores to predict SBs. Taking it one step further would be to try and quantify each managers propensity for SB attempts.”

This statement is 100% true. We really don’t know which measurable factors fantasy owners should focus on when looking for stolen base breakouts. I’ve gone ahead and dived into the topic of just the manager influence with positive results.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I reviewed my Pod vs Steamer projections series with the stolen base upside guys, those hitters whose Pod Projection in stolen bases was well above the Steamer extrapolated projection. Today, I’ll finish the series on the offensive side with the stolen base downside list, the guys I projected to steal far fewer bases than Steamer. Let’s see how they performed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Starling Marte had an incredibly disappointing 2017 season, fueled by his PED suspension that limited him to just 77 games. While on the field, he had his lowest batting average (.275) since his 47-game debut in 2012 (.257), a solid .333 OBP that wasn’t too far off his .344 career mark, and a career-worst .379 SLG (has a .439 career and was at .456 last year). He did go 21-for-25 on the bases which would’ve netted around 35 had he played his average 568 PA from the last four seasons. He was the 23rd overall pick in NFBC leagues last year, but the rough season hasn’t even cost him a round as he went 35th on average in Justin’s draft and then 45th in my NFBC draft-and-hold from Friday night in Arizona.

Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Game 7 Day!

About a year ago I released my (2017) Top 50 Fantasy Prospect rankings using the Prospect Scorecard to weight a variety of important variables in the context of fantasy baseball.  Today I’m publishing an (early) expanded list of the Top 100 Fantasy Prospects for 2018 for both Ottoneu’s FanGraphs Points leagues (where wOBA is a key measure on offense) and Roto leagues (5 x 5).

A few quick notes before we begin:

• Since “Cost” is league-dependent (auction salary, keeper round, etc.), I’ve ignored it here for simplicity by keeping it constant for every prospect listed. Feel free to use the Scorecard to make changes that reflect true player costs for your league, which will impact these rankings.
• These rankings below are intended to represent the 100 most valuable prospects for fantasy leagues (depending on scoring format).
• It’s quite possible I’m missing an obvious player that should be ranked, so let me know in the comments.  We can discuss the specific rationale for player rankings in the comments, too.  Player ages are current ages.
• For a lot more prospect resources, check out the Ottoneu community.

Here are the (early) 2018 Top 100 prospects for the linear-weights-based FanGraphs Points scoring format (a good proxy for those in OBP leagues):

Read the rest of this entry »