Before I try to do this in a (slightly) more scientific way, let me say that you can easily create tiers via the sniff test. Take a look at the pitching pool and try to assign groups labels, like ‘ace’ and ‘front of the rotation’ and ‘mid-rotation’. It’s what we do when we are trying to talk about prospect pitchers and where they might slot in later, it should come fairly naturally, and it will help you make sense of your specific player pool. It’s a worthy exercise no matter how rigorous the background work was.

Now let’s try to apply a more reasoned approach to the matter.

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Finish third in each rotisserie category and you’ll win the league. We’ve all heard or read that at some point. Where does it originate from? Is it founded in fact?

I’ve spent a lot of time acquiring and analyzing standings data of late (AL-only, NL-only, mixed).  And looking at that information got me to thinking that I could easily determine if finishing third across-the-board is really what it’s cracked up to be.

Turns out that it is. Finishing third in all ten categories would have won 67 of the 76 AL-only leagues and 47 of the 51 NL-only leagues I looked at.

But in looking at things a little closer, I found an even better reason you should set your sights on finishing third. One that had never crossed my mind. Read the rest of this entry »

So you’ve joined a new, established keeper league. Or maybe it’s a dynasty, ottoneu, or some other deep format. The team that was abandoned has a couple good guys on it. Or maybe it doesn’t. Clearly, it’s not ready to contend. You have some rebuilding to do.

I bet I know the very first thing you’re going to do – shop your best veterans. In fact, if my experience is any guide, you’re going to really rush into the trade market. Both feet in, taking the best offer on the first day without getting to know your leaguemates, shopping offers, or researching past trades. You’ll swing deals with the zest of A.J. Preller, except instead an ill-fated attempt to contend, you’ll probably acquire a bunch of prospects who are one to five years from any fantasy contributions. And we all know how heartbreaking prospects can be (oh, hello there Fernando Martinez).

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If you participate in snake or circular drafts, you’ll have asked the following questions. Do I need to reach for Player X? Can I wait on Player Y? Once you’re in the draft room, the meta game revolves around guessing upon which players your leaguemates will and will not pounce.

Yesterday, Chad Young and I had the 15th pick in the dynasty league The Devil’s Rejects. It’s a 20-team league with 28 keepers, 45 player rosters, and a circular draft. We can select any player in the world regardless of affiliation. While very few of you will be faced with similar decisions, this league creates a lot of reach or sleep scenarios.

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Last week we took a look at standings data, for 12-team AL-only leagues. Now I’m back to present the same findings using a sample of 51 NL-only leagues. What follows is a look at the points required to win an NL-only roto league, what it takes to finish first in each rotisserie category, standings gain points information, and a downloadable Excel file for you to analyze further. Read the rest of this entry »

August Fagerstrom did a fantastic piece of the most promising platoons for the upcoming season. They were focused on WAR which of course includes defensive value and that doesn’t really do us any good. August kindly included a wRC+ column in the piece so we can isolate the offense and pick out the best platoons for fantasy purposes. These are best deployed in a deep league (ideally an AL/NL-Only league) with daily transactions. They require diligence to pay off. The internet age has cut out or minimized a lot of the hustle advantages in fantasy baseball and this is still one of them.

These are my 10 favorite platoons for the upcoming season. Note that these are my favorites so in some instances I expect them to do better than their projected wRC+ so this isn’t just a list of the 10 best projected wRC+ totals.

TAMPA BAY RAYS OF: Corey Dickerson v. RH, Steve Pearce v. LH [124 wRC+]

This one just so happened rank highest on August’s list by wRC+ (his calculation was 67% for the v. RH player and 33% for the v. LH player). Dickerson has owned righties in his career with a .934 OPS in 728 PA, though a lot of that is no doubt influenced by Coors Field (1.085/.695 home/road split). There will be a piece later this week by new writer Justin Mason on Dickerson that outlines why I’m not afraid of him outside of Coors.

Pearce didn’t do his normal work vs. lefties last year (just .623 OPS in 124 PA), but he has a career .824 OPS against them. He only comes into the season with OF/1B eligibility, but he played 18 games at 2B and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rays gave him some time there. He hasn’t been terrible against righties lately, either. In fact, he was flat out good in 2014 (.856, 12 HR) and while it dropped to .765 in 2015, he still hit 11 HR. Both of these guys could end up as full-time plays ,but if they happen to struggle against same-handed pitchers, they’re a perfect platoon.

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In what has become an annual tradition for me, I have gone a-hunting through Yahoo’s pitcher universe to find every reliever with SP eligibility. The goal is to find a few relief aces in the haystack. I used a fancy process called manual scrolling. Jeff Zimmerman was also kind enough to furnish a short list too.

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As a standings gain point disciple, one of the questions I get asked most is if I know where to get final standings data (and SGP denominators) for AL- and NL-only leagues. You can find reliable mixed-league data if you search hard enough on the web. But you won’t find much, if anything, about the only-league format.

Thanks to a tip from Mike Gianella, I finally got my hands on a nice set of AL- and NL-only standings. Mike suggested I check with the guys that run OnRoto.com. If you’re not familiar with OnRoto, they’re a league hosting and stat service that caters to hard-core and old-school rotisserie leagues… Meaning they host a lot of only leagues.

OnRoto has also historically hosted the various Tout Wars competitions. So this is legit data from a trusted fantasy resource. In this post we’ll be looking only at the AL data (NL coming soon). I was able to obtain the standings for 76 different 12-team AL-only leagues and here’s an analysis of the data… Read the rest of this entry »

Fantasy baseball is an inherently analytical game – you are trying to use a scarce resource (either dollars or draft picks) in a wiser manner than your competitors. And so it is no surprise that fantasy players have become big fans of the projection systems from ZiPS to Steamer to PECOTA and beyond. Just last week, Justin Vibber shared his ottoneu Surplus Calculator which uses Steamer projections to find expected values for MLB players.

In the ottoneu Slack community, the surplus calculator and other similar tools have become the primary manner of determining player value – if Steamer says a player will produce $30, that is the baseline. And this creates an opportunity to profit by ignoring projections.
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Hard to believe, but it’s almost February.  Almost all the top free agents have signed.  It’s almost prospect season, and it’s almost time for pitchers and catchers to report.  All these things add up to a baseball season that is almost here.

Patience.

But patience is a luxury we don’t have these days in fantasy leagues like Ottoneu that have a keeper deadline (January 31st) fast approaching.  Auction formats make player valuation even more complex, and now that it’s crunch time, tough decisions need to be made.  How comfortable are you hanging onto that $20 Corey Dickerson while the risk of a possible trade out of COL remains a real possibility in February or March? Despite the power and the incoming fences, how does Giancarlo Stanton’s unavoidable injury history influence your decision to keep at $56? How much value, if any, has Zack Greinke really lost moving to Arizona? Is he a $35 starting pitcher? Everybody loves Kyle Schwarber as the next best thing (C and OF!), but where’s the line? $20? $25? $30?

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