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.
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.
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.
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.
Last 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 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 that he was way out on and then we moved on to another name. It’s rare that we have vastly different notions on a guy, so we came to a consensus pretty easily in most cases.
Humans are really good at pattern recognition. It’s what makes us who we are as a species. In some ways, we’re too good with patterns. We see them even when they aren’t there. There is an important phrase in statistics that not all of us take to heart – correlation is not causation.
Today, I want to talk about potential false patterns. Put another way, when we pick a player to outperform his draft position, we should have a reason.
Earlier in the week, I went over how I set up a for a draft (Part 1 and Part 2). Last night I participated in the draft set up by Howard Bender and his Mock Draft Army. The pre-draft work I normally go through may seem a little tedious, but after the dust settled, I look to start the season in good shape.
The draft was fairly standard 5×5 league with 23 rounds and 15 teams. The draft participants consisted of nine industry experts and six non-experts. I will give some thoughts on my draft results (full results), my final roster and the projected finish.
Well, it is finally time to move on and show how I finish setting up for a draft (Part 1). I was hoping the following article was going to be in two parts and have a little more detail and polish. Instead I am have been dealing with a fan error on my computer and a pile of oil under my car. Neither is really resolved. So with a borrowed computer, I will step through the rest of my procedure. Let me know if you have any questions.
Note: For reference, here is my spreadsheet I used to get the initial SGP values and has the rest of the sheets referenced in this article.
Injuries and unanticipated performance decline are the twin banes of fantasy owners. It’s one thing if you’re reaching to the waiver wire to replace Josh Reddick. It’s another thing entirely if it’s Paul Goldschmidt going down for a couple months. Your chances to field a winning roster are hurt anytime you have to replace a key contributor from waivers.
Over the last couple of weeks a few of my fellow writers here are FanGraphs have been going over some draft strategies. This week, I am going to step through my exact process for a draft. On Thursday night, I will be joining a few fantasy writers for a 15 team mock draft. Over the next few days, I will go through the exact process I normally use to set up for a draft. If one of the other drafters steals borrows my info, fine. This is actually more a way to show you my process for drafts.
First off, I will be following the procedure I set out last season in this three part series. There is quite a few good links in those articles for the procedures I use.
