Another year, another set of bold predictions, and another introduction to The Process^TM. I did well last year, hitting on Matt Chapman and Miles Mikolas out-earning their teammates Matt Olson and Luke Weaver despite enormous divides in National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) as well as Madison Bumgarner being worse than a not-top-20 starting pitcher (with an asterisk for his late start in 2019). I might’ve hit more bold predictions last year than in my previous three seasons combined.

Bold predictions can but don’t have to be a frivolous exercise. As fun as it is to slap a 40-homer prediction on Franmil Reyes (…should I do that?), I don’t find it particularly illuminating unless it’s supported by evidence (…which exists for Reyes?!). You can make bold predictions without being outrageously bold — it’s exactly what I intended to accomplish last year simply by leveraging what I observed to be extreme market inefficiencies at play. I stuck my neck out for Chapman and Mikolas and Bumgarner, but not as far as folks might think. There was enough evidence in their (and, where applicable, in their teammates’) bodies of work for me to make objectively bold predictions on the basis of draft price or market consensus without them feeling particularly bold to me.

While endeavoring to go 6-for-10 this year just to match last year’s hit rate would be absurd, I do think I can hit another three, at least, in 2019 if I pick my spots correctly. So, here goes: my 10 bold predictions for 2019.

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Consensuses make me nervous. When everybody agrees, there’s usually a way to profit with a contrarian approach. This season features perhaps the most monolithic consensus I’ve seen in the last decade. Ace starting pitchers are the key to life, liberty, the cosmos, and a rockin’ bikini bod. You can’t possibly contend without at least one ace. Multiple aces are preferred. This leads me to ask a question…

Is 2019 a LIMA year?

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I’m headed back from a weekend in New York City after participating in the 15-team Tout Wars mixed auction and a NFBC Main Event league. It was great catching up with everyone and meeting some new faces such as our first president. The weekend didn’t completely consisit of bagels and beers. I had work to do and compiled a couple of teams. Here are my thoughts which other fantasy owners may find helpful.

Pre-weekend thoughts (written before either event).

• Historically the Tout Wars hitter/pitcher split has been a steady 70%/30%. With pitchers being taken earlier and earlier this season, I wonder if this split will change. I’m creating my values with the 70/30 split but know I may need to adjust the split on the fly. Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend was Tour Wars weekend in New York City. The committee extended me an invitation, likely by mistake, into its head-to-head points league auction. I’ll take a moment to self-indulge and say it’s pretty surreal to finally, like, reach the pinnacle, in a sense. I appreciate and am endlessly grateful for the kind words folks have extended my way in the past few weeks and months and years.

Rudy Gamble, of Razzball fame and a delightful human being whom I finally met in person Friday night, passed along to me positive feedback about my recent draft recaps (NFBC, TGFBI, Rotoballer mock), which seem to have been a helpful prep tool this preseason for some folks. I endeavor to provide a recap that goes beyond a simple list and self-aggrandizement — it would fundamentally misrepresent my rampant self-doubt. Besides, I think it’s helpful to articulate a plan and, when a plan falls apart, how a plan changes mid-draft.

This draft review differs from previous reviews in that the Tout Wars head-to-head points league spawns from an auction draft and not a snake. (A classic auction, each of the 12 teams was allocated $260 to fill 24-man rosters.) Thus, the structure will vary and may be a bit rough around the edges. Still, let’s give this a shot.

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This is FanGraphs which means we’re all predisposed to translating reality into numbers. In our world, every event on a baseball field has a run value, and we can assign credit for these events to specific players. We like things to be tidy. A 3.0 WAR player is better than a 2.5 WAR. It’s right there in the numbers.

Except… well… per Dave Cameron, WAR comes with a +/- of about 1.0 over a full season. These are estimates. When comparing a three-win player with a 2.5-win player, it more accurate to say that there’s something like a 60 to 80 percent chance that the three-win player was better. The math is even fuzzier when comparing players of different positions. Especially pitchers and non-pitchers. And let’s not get started on who will be better. Ooh boy.

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For the last couple months, it was popular to wonder aloud – either on Twitter or to a room full of strangers – how Adam Jones remained unsigned. Nobody thinks peak Jones will return, but it does seem like he should perform like a one-win player. That has value, especially when it can be expected to cost about $3MM.

Everybody agreed he belonged on a roster. Selecting an actual fit was where we disagreed. For much of the offseason, I touted him as an obvious solution for the Indians. They’re the only contending club who could have actually improved with Jones. Rebuilding teams tend to shy away from veterans. Even so, he’s a proven clubhouse leader so he made sense for weaker clubs too.

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When I released my SP rankings yesterday, I was fairly certain that the German Marquez slotting would continue to garner attention. There were questions when I had him 34th back in February and after more research and shuffling, he actually dropped a spot to 35 on the March list. Part of me definitely finds it weird that I have to keep justifying my Marquez ranking while those with him in the Top 25 just skate by unchallenged. How is anyone comfortable ranking someone that high when they must contend with Coors Field for half their games?

Furthermore, are we just completely ignoring Marquez’s career before last summer now? He undoubtedly made improvements, namely the excellent curve and surge in fastball performance. But I’m just not sure that 113 excellent innings is enough to say he’s a completely new pitcher, especially with Coors lingering overhead. Let me be clear about one thing: I think German Marquez is a good pitcher. I don’t want my ranking to be seen as some indictment of him. I just don’t think he’s ready to be an unmitigated fantasy ace.

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I’m going to focus on position battles until the season starts and possibly into the season. Most of the early season breakouts happen because of additional playing time.

Pirates Third Base

Jung Ho Kang vs Colin Moran

Other analysts and I probably didn’t give Kang enough love but he’s coming out firing with an OPS twice that of Moran. The 31-year-old Kang had a couple of acceptable seasons with double-digit home runs and an OBP near .350. He didn’t play any last season because of a DUI in South Korea and wasn’t able to obtain a visa. He seems to have not missed a beat.

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A few years ago I posted an article about designing fantasy league incentives.  While the popularity of customized, add-on incentives is hard to measure across the fantasy community, it’s clear that leagues conceptually understand the potential value of features and rewards that attempt to keep owners engaged over the course of a long baseball season.  In the standard winner-takes-all format of many points leagues, commissioners are often left to mitigate the wreckage of AWOL owners that sell off and check out early, so carrots, even small ones, can help in cross-checking drastic, standings-shaking transactions if designed thoughtfully. But designing the right league incentives is easier said than done because owners are motivated by different values.

The purpose of this article is for you, the reader, to help me design the right incentive structure for the very first 20 team Ottoneu league (more on this soon), an exciting experiment that will dramatically alter the traditional economic model that serves as the foundation of standard 12 team Ottoneu leagues. Your feedback will be critical to building a league that lasts, but the discussion will hopefully be a helpful reference for others attempting to structure leagues that are as engaging as possible.

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If two outfielders are projected for identical stats but one is also qualified at first base, the one with multi-positional eligibility will have additional value. The player gives an owner more flexibility during the draft or auction, allows the owner to maximize at-bats or games played during the season, increasing roster flexibility by having more bench spots to use for pitching, and owners can focus on talent versus position with waiver wire acquisitions. The question being posed today, how much is this extra flexibility worth?

It’s not a simple answer. Over the next few days, various RotoGraph authors, including myself, will provide our takes. Will we come to a solid answer? Probably not or an analyst would have figured it out and the adjustment would already be universally incorporated. We just want to put our best foot forward.

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