Value is nebulous term in fantasy sports. In fact, some (namely colleague and friend Todd Zola of Fantasy Alarm) don’t even like the term anymore as it can be often misused. I believe Zola has some good points against using the word so often, but nevertheless we’ll push forward with it as it conveys the idea I’m going for today. Who delivered the most bang for their buck? For this particular piece, I’ll be looking at those who were drafted regularly.

Determining who was drafted “regularly” will come via the excellent FantasyPros data on average draft positions (ADP) across six different sites. I used a 350 ADP as the cutoff, that covers 10- and 12-team leagues easily (23-man roster plus reserves) and gets pretty deep into 15-team leagues. Here is the overall ranking and then you can click by each position. I’m looking at this by position and comparing a player’s draft slot at his position to where he stands now.

To qualify as the best value, they must be in the top 12 at their position per the FantasyPros Player Rater. It’s great that Adam Lind is 32 spots higher than his draft spot at 1B, but he’s still only 17th at the position. Mark Teixeira is similar in that he’s 26 spots better than his draft slot, but sits just 20th at the position (due in part to an injury shortening his season, obviously).

CATCHER

Stephen Vogt [OAK – Draft: 23rd at C, 315th Overall; 2015: 6th at C]

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Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer gave you 10 pitchers to start for yesterday (and yesterday only). Indeed, the well of relevant advice has run dry save a few drops here and there, yet it’s too early to look forward to offseason chatter.

You all liked Pod’s idea, though; you just needed the advice in advance. Still, continuing this pattern leaves us without any names for today. Perhaps you’re in a league where you can make moves prior to the day’s first game. If that’s the case, then I hope this helps! You have about 45 minutes until day games start.

Games are ordered by start time per ESPN. And, for your convenience, here’s some color-coded goodness: No-Brainer, Maybe, Sit (or a desperate deep-league play)

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Fantasy baseball has made great transformations thanks in large part to the internet. The mounds of excellent data that have made the game on the field have also improved this game we play off the field. We’ve learned better ways to analyze players and while we still can’t predict the future, we certainly have a better understanding of what is happening with players and why. One casualty of the increased information should’ve been the age-27 breakout theory, but unlike the poor animal that sacrificed its life to be Donald Trump’s hair, this theory won’t die.

It’s not that we don’t see anyone breakout at 27 years old. It’s that being 27 has virtually nothing to do with it. Derek Carty covered this is some detail several years ago at The Hardball Times. And yet it persists every spring with lists of upcoming 27-year olds primed for a breakout. I’m fine with lists of breakouts, those are fun to read. It’s the adherence to age-27 that bothers me. Or the fact that a lot of these lists include guys who have already broken out and thus a huge season at 27 wouldn’t be a surprise in the first place.

I found 11 players who were mentioned as age-27 breakouts on various lists and I’m not sure any of them really had breakouts this year. Some of them were great, but we already knew they were great (Goldschmidt). Some had big gains from last year, but it wasn’t really a breakout since they had been good in previous seasons (Kipnis). Some just flat out busted (Ramos). Here is the whole list:

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As Lou Reed and Jimmy Durante, among numerous others, have observed, it’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September. In other words, as Yogi Berra (RIP) evidently really did say, it gets late early.

For the Birchwood Brothers, though, the situation is direr. It’s not just late, but too late–too late to cast off the drab cloak of mere respectability and don the royal raiment of Fantasy preeminence that we crave. We co-manage teams in three leagues, and our fate in each of them seems to be the same:

–In our NFBC Main Event league, a modest surge has taken us to 5th Place (198th of 450 Main Event teams overall); we’ve got an outside shot at 4th, though could easily finish 8th, thanks to the saboteurs on our pitching staff. If our pitching had been as good as our hitting, we’d be 18th overall. Conversely, if our hitting had been as bad as our pitching, we’d be 405th.

–In our NFBC Slow Draft league, an epochally bad two weeks for our pitchers (6.27 ERA and 1.373 WHIP in 70 innings) has taken us from first place to fourth. It’s probably too late to recover. We begrudge Dallas Keuchel nothing, but his 11 baserunners and 9 earned runs in 4 2/3 innings last week finished us off, statistically and emotionally, and produced a game score of 11, a number so bad that…that…that it’s worse than all but one of Kyle Kendrick’s 25 starts this year, and Kendrick pitches for Colorado and has an ERA over 6.

–Meanwhile, in the Fangraphs mid-season league we ourselves oversee, we are in third place, and that’s where we’re going to wind up, once again held back by our pitching.

That’s right, we’re whining again about our pitchers. We’ll stop now. Forward-looking and sunny-dispositioned as always, we have risen on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things, and are already thinking optimistically about next season’s draft, and asking ourselves, What have we learned? Can we derive any lessons from our season that go beyond Draft Better Guys? Three things, we think: Read the rest of this entry »

Say it ain’t so! There’s only two weeks of the season left? Wow, how time flies. Hopefully you’re either already in a prize spot or fighting to reach one. The final two weeks are fun because you might decide to make roster moves you would never consider during the earlier part of the season. So here are some random pieces of advice and thoughts for these final two weeks.

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Continuing from yesterday, here are updates on key young arms facing potential innings limits in September.

The biggest question in fantasy this September isn’t “who are the must-get call ups”, but rather “how many more IP does Pitcher X have left?” This is because many of the potentially high-impact call ups are already up and producing so barring substantial injuries, there just isn’t a lot of room for September additions to make a massive impact. Meanwhile several of those aforementioned high-impact prospects who might’ve been call ups a couple years back are now several months into their MLB careers after getting the call this summer and sticking.

Let’s take a look at where the youngsters of note are at this point in the season and try to get a read on how much they might have left in the tank. The general rule of thumb that Eno and I adhere to is 20% over your workload from the previous season. There is no set ideal for all pitchers, but 20% is usually what teams will give a young arm and then take it beyond that in a case-by-case basis.

We will start with the guys who won’t come close to the +20% threshold and thus shouldn’t be in grave danger for an innings limit cutting their season short:

Yesterday I offered up five potential September call-ups who could be substantial power boosts to your lineup if they are indeed called up and find a measure of playing time. Today I’m doing the same thing with some speedsters. While home runs are likely the most important category in fantasy baseball as they impact everything but speed, stolen bases often offer the best route to multiple points in a short timeframe.

This isn’t always the case as your league standings may have stratified in a way where you’re 10+ SBs from even the first point, but in many others that number of stolen bases could be worth three or four points. Expecting 10+ SBs from any one of these players is likely to result in disappointment as just eight players have had a 10+ SB September since 2012, but adding 6 or 7 to your count from an unexpected source can pay real dividends.

Here are five speedy players who might be ready to deliver just that in September:

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The long baseball season tends to take a toll on bodies, but with just a handful of weeks remaining, there is hope to be had for those looking to replace injured players. Alternatively, some owners may be looking to scoop up a currently injured player to make a push in the final weeks. Every player listed has sub-50 percent ownership in Yahoo! formats — so maybe they’re available in your league. As always, for more injury news, Jeff Zimmerman’s MASH Report is excellent.

Matt Adams, 30 percent owned
Count me among those surprised to see Adams expected to play again this season. After experiencing a tear of his right quad, Jenifer Langosch reports Adams seems set to return to action around the first of September. I’d expect his playing time to come at the expense of Brandon Moss, as both are left-handed hitters, though Moss owners may not see a dip in his plate appearances as he can shift to the outfield. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re on the cusp of September call-ups when rosters expand to 40 guys and a bevy of relative unknowns flood the league. Given the influx of players, it’s hard for even the most alluring of these call-ups to be guaranteed a substantial amount of playing time, but a fast start can help get their name penciled in more regularly as we hit the homestretch of the 2015 season (by the way, how are we almost in September?). It’s been a banner year for rookies coming up and making an impact which actually makes call-up season a little tougher in terms of identifying guys who could really help.

Everyone is still hoping to see Corey Seager, but the playing time issues that have been present in LA all year haven’t exactly cleared up with the emergence of Enrique Hernandez and the addition of Chase Utley into the mix. Plus, at this point Seager is stashed so he’s likely not even be available to you even if we thought he had a bead on significant time. Instead of perusing the top prospect lists, I went through the leaderboards of the upper minor leagues (Triple- and Double-A) looking for guys who could be primed to give us that boost in the standings in the season’s final month.

Some of these guys are in fact top prospects themselves, but others are off-the-radar prospects or journeyman-types who we might not expect a lot from generally speaking, but the opportunity could be there for them to parlay their big minor league season into some major league success. I’m looking specifically for power and speed assets here with the former coming today and the latter coming later this week.

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