I will continue to help define how to value a prospect for fantasy purposes. Last week, I examined how major league position players’ production lines up with the standard scouting grades. Today, I go the other way and look at how graded prospects perform in the majors.

I believe I am making this study about two years too soon. I would love for there to be more MLB information after the player received his grades and his 4-5 year production. I don’t have that luxury right now. I feel any answer I come up with will be a nice anchoring point but will need to be adjusted later.

To do this study, I took the grades given by Baseball America (2011 to 2014) and MLB.com (2013 to 2014). With each of these players, I looked at those who had 300 plate appearances in their career. With this fairly encompassing group, I would only able to match of 118 seasons. In some of these cases, the same player was compared. For example, both BA and MLB had their own 2013 grades for Xander Boegaerts. Like I said, a person can shoot about 20 different holes in this study, but I am just working with what I have been given so far.

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The 2016 season was a banner year for the longball and not just in relation to the recent downturn in offense. The 5610 hit this year are the second-most ever. Ever. Per plate appearance, it was even more than the 2000 season that saw 5692 homers hit. Within that surge, we saw an all-time high in 20+ home run hitters with 111. The previous high was set in 1999 at 103. Prior to this year, the top 14 seasons for 20+ HR hitters were all set between 1996 and 2009. Adding the 20+ HR hitters from 2014 and 2015 barely eclipses this year’s total (121 to 111) and this year’s output is nearly 2x higher than last year’s (64 to 111).

Let’s take a look at how this year’s home run surge broke down by position, with catcher and first base, second base and shortstop Friday (forgot I had my chat on Thursday), and then third base and outfield early next week. We’ll focus on the 20+ HR hitters at each position and identify some players who could enter those ranks next year.

CATCHER

Backstop saw one of the bigger surges in 20+ HR hitters compared to recent years with eight this year after just 10 in 2014-15 combined, including a whopping four last year (all who did it again this year).

Evan Gattis (32), Yasmani Grandal (27), Jonathan Lucroy (24), Wilson Ramos (22), Salvador Perez (22), Gary Sanchez (20), Russell Martin (20), and Brian McCann (20).

Gattis, Martin, McCann, and Perez were the four who also achieved the feat in 2015 as well. Notice the consensus #1 catcher, Buster Posey, didn’t make the list as he hit just 14 homers this year. He could find his way back in there next year, but it’s no sure bet with just one 20+ HR season over his last four (22 in ’14).

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Joe Camp won his league, probably because he reads us and listens to our podcasts here, I dunno, but that’s my guess, totally not because he’s an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. Anyway, he won his league, and his leaguemates started chirping about a couple trades he made that year that may have appeared lopsided at the time — my personal opinion is that vetoes suck, and are a dampener on league activity, and we should all be active and talking to each other as much as possible, so if you were on it, you would have made that lopsided trade first — and so Mr. Camp set out to prove he would have won the league anyway.

The way he did it? He took the worst team in the league and replaced everyone on the team with the best free agent pickups of the year. He then compared that team with everyone’s originally drafted teams. The free agents easily won — 96 points to 87 for the best drafted team.

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A week ago, I was able to hold on a win to win my first Tout Wars league. The extremely gratifying experience was the culmination of too many years of managing fantasy baseball teams. From the early auction to the results coming down to a Christian Yelich at bat, the season was great. I am not going to talk about the team in detail because no one wants to hear about someone else’s fantasy team. Instead, I will stay away from the details and go over some of the keys to winning the league.

Know and exploit the rules

This idea is hard to implement in leagues which have the same set of rules for years, but in new leagues with unique rules, this is the biggest key to winning. Since it was my first year in Tout Wars, I was added to the lower/experimental league. Tout Wars has four other leagues, AL-only, NL-only, mixed-draft, and mixed auction. If any rule is being considered for any of the other four leagues, like moving from batting average (AVG) to on-base percentage (OBP), it is done first in this league. The league got hit straight on with new rules this year with net steals, net Saves, K/9 vs strikeouts, and a head-to-head format (detailed in a previous Rotographs articles).

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There were big expectations for Marcus Stroman coming into last season on the heels of a strong rookie campaign that saw him throw 130.7 innings of 3.65 ERA, but a very impressive 2.84 FIP. A heavy groundball focus, 4.0 K:BB ratio, and stifling homers (0.5 per 9) laid the foundation for the lofty expectations before a torn ACL in Spring Training put all of that on hold. To his credit, he returned in time to make four starts in the regular season and three more in the postseason which rejuvenated the hype to the point where he was the 26th starter off the board this past draft season.

I don’t need to a deep breakdown of his season to show that it didn’t live up to said hype. His 4.37 ERA says it all. However, he did have a 3.71 FIP and the breakdown of his season might actually be enough to yet again foster some hype heading into his age-26 campaign. He likely won’t go as a top-30 arm again, but those who look beyond the surface stats will see a tale of two halves, the second of which saw a surge in strikeouts unlike anything he’d done before and at no expense to his league-best 60% groundball rate. This jump in strikeouts will be our focus today.

(By the way, I’m splitting the sample right down the middle – April through June, July through September.)

In the first half, he pitched to a 5.33 ERA in 101.3 innings with just a 16% strikeout rate – worse than the passable-but-modest 20% rate he’d posted in 2014-15. His fastball was the biggest issue, netting a 7% strikeout rate that stood 94th of the 96 qualified starters. This folds in both his four-seamer and sinker, but neither were anywhere near the 16% league average strikeout rate for fastballs. Adding in the cutter boosted him to 10%, but he still slotted just 81st. The soft stuff had a passable 31% mark, just over the 29% average, but the slider, curve, and change accounted for just 30% of his plate appearances, muting the impact of those strikeouts.

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First, a few words about my offseason writing at Rotographs. Besides reporting any possible relevant fantasy news, I plan on systematically going through two groups of players and work on their 2017 values. I will start at the top of the 2017 rankings and also somewhere in the middle and work my way down each list. I may be able to do a handful of players each article or I might by limited to just the two players. Either way, I will start putting together a 2017 draft ranking.

Additionally, I will try to follow Eno’s schedule for the other writers (e.g. players on playoff teams for the next couple of weeks). If they are looking at outfielders for that specific week, I will also look at outfielders.

The other project I will work through is being able to put a better evaluation on prospects for fantasy purposes. I will use the evaluations of various prospect writers and publications and put their evaluations into something which can be used in fantasy circles. I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish, but I am sure there will be some roadblocks and detours on the way. I will start this series Friday.

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Over the course of the last three weeks, I have explored different ethical and strategic questions posed to me via email and social media. It has been a fun series to write, but now we have reached it’s conclusion for the 2016 regular season. I hope to make this a reoccurring series next season. So, whenever I can get enough questions and/or scenarios for a full piece I will write up my answers. Some people really enjoyed this series. Others hated it and the answers I gave, but it made for interesting discussions within the comment sections. I would label that a success. Feel free to send me more questions at JustinMasonFantasy@gmail.com or on twitter @JustinMasonFWFB and when I have enough, I will do an offseason installment. Thanks for playing along! Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations on playing meaningful (fake) baseball this late into the season! At this point, your nerves, eyes, and pitching staff are shot, and you’re plugging leaks with sieves. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

Either way, maybe you’ll find this guide to the rest of the week’s streamers useful. If you’re in a redraft roto, I suggest using up your innings by Friday. The best prospect pitchers probably don’t have the innings to step in and pitch five or six on the weekend, the veterans will get some rest, and you’ll be left with some unsavory matchups, in large part, if you wait for Saturday and Sunday to blow out the rest of your innings.

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Many years ago I met the woman who would become my future wife while we were standing in line to get into a bar. While I had been to that bar on a few occasions before, I was only there because a friend of mine had been invited to a toga party on the following night by a coworker of his and asked them if I could come along since I was new to the area and he wanted to meet me first. As I was waiting to enter the establishment, I heard the woman in front of me talking about this party. I looked up to see the most beautiful woman standing in front of me, so I used the party as an opening.

“You’re going to a toga party?” I asked. “I’m going to a toga party too! I hear it is like a frat house. I can’t wait! It should be crazy.”

That is when I got the answer I was not expecting. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t grow up a fan of baseball. I was born and raised in Washington DC; an area that was devoid of a professional team until after I moved away. However, just like many kids, I played it growing up, but because I didn’t watch much of it growing up, I didn’t know about many of baseball’s unwritten rules until later in life. Read the rest of this entry »