Back in December of 2013, in one of my earliest appearances on this site, I pontificated about how to value your last roster spot. I spent… oh my… 1,482 words on a topic that is indisputably of marginal importance. For most fantasy formats, the last player on your roster is incredibly fluid and has a minimal effect. Let’s critique this old behemoth of a post.

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We have a somewhat controversial topic on the docket for today’s Fantasy Baseball Strategy 204 session: is it better to have an accurate or unique approach to player valuation? If you read the title, you’ll notice I’ve already led with the lede. I regularly advocate for taking the path least traveled by your rivals. Whether that requires a zig, a zag, or some other three-letter nonsense, it’s so much easier to create value when you aren’t competing for the same resources in the same way.

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The Process is done. After months of writing and disagreements, the fantasy baseball guide I wrote with Tanner Bell is for sale. Simply, we researched and created the guide we would want. It’s not going to contain player capsules or positional rankings. Dozens of sources provide them. Instead, it’s going to give the reader the ability to create their own and the 2017 NFBC Main Event Champion and my podcast mate, Rob Silver wasn’t happy about the end results as he states in his intro.

Jeff Zimmerman and Tanner Bell are both awful people.

Thanks Rob. Before Rob gets to explain himself, here is the general flow of he book.

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A while back, I ranked hitters if all their 2018 stats were prorated to 600 plate appearances. It’s now time for the pitchers. In all fairness, the rankings are a huge disappointment with no surprises coming through.

I adjusted the rankings for 180 innings for starters and 60 innings for relievers and no one seemed out of place. With the hitters, Raul Mondesi at the top was an attention-getter. Looking over both sets of top-25 pitchers, the biggest surprise was Joshua James and he’s not really a surprise since he dominated at the season’s end. Time to get bored.

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It’s rankings time so the comments are open for everyone to go batshit crazy about how a computer program and I are wrong.  We are both ready for everyone’s best shot as neither one of us gives a flying  f***.

As part of my soon to be released e-book, The Process, the Standing Gain Points formulas will be included for several league types. I took the one for The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, merge it with Steamer projections, and created some overall rankings.

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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.

When I hear or read about a hitter playing through an injury my interest perks up and he becomes an immediate draft target. Standard projections have no idea these players played hurt and the lower production keeps down future estimations. Savvy owners can give these players a small talent bump and reap some nice rewards. My current request to create a detailed list of hitters playing through injuries for 2019 preseason research and to test after next season.

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Royals phenom Adalberto Mondesi is going to be a hot topic this winter. By ripping off 32 steals in 291 plate appearances while also popping 14 home runs, Mondesi won quite a few fantasy championships. The hype may have crested yesterday when he was selected 28th overall in the very first NFBC draft of the 2019 season.

I’m going to do something novel (lazy) and just kind of assume we’re all on the same page about who Mondesi is as a player. This isn’t an analysis of his skills. I’ve done been there, done that elsewhere. As a hitter, he compares to one of the top fantasy assets in the league. This same comparable player was a massive resource suck for many years before finally breaking out.

Could Mondesi skip the painful growth seasons?

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In the #2earlymock drafts run by our own Justin Mason, Javier Baez is going 17th and Trevor Story is going 20th among all hitters. The picks are quite high considering Baez was the 58th hitter taken, and Story was 65th in NFBC drafts last year. The pair didn’t have must-draft preseason hype and their suspect plate discipline limited their perceived value. Both exceeded all expectations as they came in at 6th and 7th overall this year. This was a huge miss by the industry and I’m going to see if some traits point to why some low plate discipline players break out and others don’t.

For every Baez and Story, other bad plate discipline hitters failed like Byron Buxton (.383 OPS), Chris Davis (.539 OPS), Miguel Sano (.679 OPS) and Jonathan Schoop (.682 OPS). No obvious difference stood out. While Chris Davis is old, Buxton, Sano, and Schoop should be in their primes. To find out who may break out, I decided to start with the 2018 Bad Plate Discipline Class.

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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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