It is much easier to get excited about a player than it is to see the negative. Sure, if a guy has a rotten injury record, it is pretty easy to knock him down. But most fantasy players are eager to identify to the next set of sleepers or breakouts or whatever term you feel is adequate to describe middle-round guys who will explode into early-round assets. What about looking at some of the flaws of those early-to-mid round guys we’re all so certain will explode this year? There are certainly reasons to love these guys (and several of them are guys I’m quite high on coming into the season), but let’s at least be aware of the shortcomings and what could possibly hold them back from that big time season we’re banking on.

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Friend Eno explored the world of punted statistics yesterday. For those of you not in the know, “punting” occurs when a fantasy owner does not attempt to score in a specific stat. It’s most commonly seen with stolen bases and saves. Eno’s findings confirm that those are the optimal categories to punt.

Eno also discusses when to punt, noting that it’s a much more viable strategy in an H2H league than Roto. He explains the details, so check it out. If you’d like to discuss why H2H and Roto leagues are treated differently, let’s chat in the comments.

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It’s a tale as old as fantasy sports: pay attention to nine of the ten categories on draft day and you can dominate those categories and win. There are some accepted tenets to this strategy, called ‘punting,’ but as it is with all these things we hold for granted, it’s useful to look at what the numbers think of our Conventional Wisdom.

For one, which stats to punt?

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Last Sunday, the FanGraphs Ottoneu League #2 did our auction. Chad Young, Brad Johnson and Scott Spratt have each given their thoughts on it. It was a unique auction (most are in some way) and by making a few early adjustments I was able to come away from it better than I expected.

To begin with, I hate to start any fantasy season in complete rebuild mode. I want to have a chance to win if everything goes right. Before last season was half way over I had about zero chance of winning so then I started a rebuild. I had the most free agent dollars, I picked up some $1 players (Harrison, Petit, Boxburger, House) and waited for a team to drop a high dollar player to free up some cash. The plan worked great by getting Joey Votto and Brian McCann. Also, I like prospects, even if they have limited upside, near the majors and picked up players like Matt Wisler, Carlos Rodon and Ty Kelly.

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I have never thought much about, or given much attention to, FanGraphs’ fan projections. It’s primarily a matter of stubbornness: I run my own projections, and I develop my own strategy, so why should I listen to you? At least there’s a trace of rationale behind it: I know how I created my projections (whether or not they’re any good is a topic for another day), but I have no idea how you created yours. Thus, I am more likely to blindly trust a computer-generated projection system such as Steamer instead of random fan projections.

Still, there is a sort of bizarre, secondhand wisdom to fan projections. For every person who is high on a particular player, there could be another person who is equally-and-oppositely down on him. Solicit and aggregate enough fan projections and you could produce a very reasonable prediction of a player’s performance by sheer chance.

Which is why fan projections intrigue me. If, for example, Steamer predicts the most likely outcome from a wide range of possible outcomes for a player, then the fans convey the anticipated outcome for a player. The difference between them, you could say, is what amounts to a market inefficiency (aka a price distortion). The larger the difference, the greater the inefficiency. We see these inefficiencies arise every year — 2014’s most prevalent example is probably Corey Kluber — and they typically manifest because of a lack of information about certain players.

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Last week, we came out with our Top 300. The outcomes looked excellent and I would not hesitate simply using the presented composites for your drafts.

CoolWinnebago asked if we would present our approaches. I provided a high level summary under bago’s comment, but I’ll summarize and then embed my personal rankings (without all the highlighting of my targets of course).

Feel free to skip toward the bottom for my embedded rankings, but here is the context/approach:

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After two straight first place finishes, I landed in second in the FanGraphs Staff League last year, and went into the off-season dead-set on regaining my crown.

I made a few trades, made my cuts and sat down to look at the available free agents…and was stopped in my tracks. I really had no good options.

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The baseball community — owners, scouts, fantasy analysts et al. — is slowly learning how Cuban hitters plucked from the Cuban National Series (CNS) perform in Major League Baseball. Unfortunately, the sample size is not increasing very quickly. The common fantasy owner is helplessly resigned to rely on a) scouting reports, and/or b) his or her own eyes, probably via a batting practice video uploaded online. Ideally, a Cuban hitter’s salary would serve as a proxy for what one could expect offensively and defensively from his imported bat and glove, but the market, and the information that defines it, is far from perfect.

The market for Cuban hitters is a pendulum, but rather than coming to rest, it is in full swing: hitters such as Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu, who are all but locks to fulfill the value of their modest contracts and then some, have plumped up the market for international signees. The Diamondbacks’ Yasmany Tomas, therefore, should not be compared to Abreu simply because the average annual values (AAV) of their contracts are almost identical. The dynamics of this particular market are nebulous, changing with every transaction.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t compare Tomas and Abreu statistically. Comparing the CNS and MLB performances of hitters more recently signed out of Cuba can still give us at least a faint idea of how we can expect Tomas to perform. This is my hope, at least. I’ll be the first to admit the analysis that follows is not as rigorous as I wish it could be, as the sample of contemporary, fantasy-relevant Cuban hitters who recently played in the CNS simply lacks breadth.

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On Tuesday night I partnered with Jason Collette for the LABR Mixed League Draft over at RTSports and aired on SiriusXM. We had the third pick in the 15-team league which uses the standard 5×5 categories and drafts a standard roster of 14 hitters and nine pitchers with six reserves. We didn’t need to have a full 23 before drafting reserves which can be interesting later in the draft when perceived talent at a position you’re full in ends up falling.

I’m going to take you through the rest of draft with my thoughts. Keep in mind that we are a team so there was give and take. I’m going to point out some picks that were more Collette than me*, but that doesn’t mean I dislike them or anything. If I was vehemently against someone, I told him as did he with guys I’d suggest and then we move on. It’s rare that we have vastly different notions on a guy, so we came to a consensus pretty easily in most cases.

*And I’m sure he has picks are more me than him. That’s just part of team drafting and ideally you wouldn’t partner with someone who plays the game way differently than you or you’d just have a hard time coming to agreement on picks.

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On Tuesday night, I participated in the 15-team LABR Mixed League draft (full team recap coming Monday). If you were following the draft live and/or were active on Twitter during the evening, you may very well be aware of the firestorm that erupted after my second round selection. I drew the #11 draft slot, which meant that my second round pick was the 20th. I settled on Billy Hamilton and I will explain why.

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