I am getting ready to take part in my first weekly-lineup fantasy baseball league. I’ve done this for fantasy football (which I suppose goes without saying) and for fantasy basketball (back in high school when the “find the guy playing five games this week” strategy seemed novel), but never for baseball.
As I try to build a team, I am realizing that I need to completely shift the way I value opportunity.
About a week ago during one of the RotoGraphs podcast, Eno Sarris and Mike Podhorzer were discussing Adrian Gonzalez’s walk rate falling off the cliff. It was basically cut in a third going from 18% in 2009 to 6% in 2012. Over the time frame, Adrian’s eye didn’t change, instead he just was not intentionally walked (IBB) as much. Today I am going to look at the effects of intentional walks on walk rates and some player whose walk rate have recently been bloated because of them.
Positional flexibility is always something coveted on fantasy rosters. Players such as Matt Carpenter help optimize roster construction because owners have the opportunity to utilize him where it best benefits his or her team, as Carpenter can be slotted in at first base, second base, third base or even the outfield.
That’s why I find it rather interesting that six of the top eight fantasy catchers also have first base eligibility. Guys like Jonathan Lucroy and Joe Mauer have recently gained the distinction, while Carlos Santana and Victor Martinez serve as examples of catchers who have long carried dual citizenship.
Although I immediately worked under the assumption that having catcher and first base eligibility would be highly beneficial next season, it recently occurred to me to ask whether that even matters. Would an owner willfully hold two catchers on their roster — such as Wilin Rosario and Mike Napoli — with the designs of playing both on an everyday basis while punting the first base position?
In recent months, Eno Sarris has talked a lot about going to the opposite field and how a hitter who sprays the ball to all fields may have a higher BABIP than those who primarily pull the ball. Furthermore, last summer Jeff Zimmerman updated an older BABIP formula and shared with us an xBABIP spreadsheet. Simply copy and paste a couple of lines of numbers from a player’s page and the calculator spits out an expected BABIP. The formula incorporates a hitter’s power, speed and batted ball distribution and does a darn good job of it. But with Joey Votto crediting his ability to go to all fields as a major factor behind his always near league-leading BABIP marks, I felt that it was time to start doing the research to determine if he was indeed on to something.
It’s almost impossible to prove empirically, but the anecdotal evidence is fairly strong: teams put bad lineups on the field the day after they clinch the postseason. Especially if they’ve clinched the division. Look at this stinker the Dodgers sent out on Friday, the day after they jumped in Arizona’s pool:
In the post-roster expansion period, it is easy to lose track of who the heck is playing these days, especially for non-contending teams. If you’re an NFL fan and fantasy football player, it makes it even more difficult to monitor playing time situations. With less than two weeks to go, deeper leaguers who are scrambling for bats should consider the following hitters who have enjoyed significant playing time over the past couple of weeks, perhaps to the surprise of some.
Two weeks left in the season. At least a few of you are staring at the batting average category and wondering if you can do anything about it at all. You have 11/12ths of the season in the rear view weighing you down, it’s not likely. But I thought it might be fun to do a thought/math exercise.
If you could get lucky, and get the league-leader in batting average at every position over the last two weeks of the season, how far north could you push your team’s overall batting average?
We all want home runs. And so it’s tough to stream for power — if they coulda hit homers, they woulda hit them allready. But we can look for the best situations for power, and look for borderline power guys for people of differently-sized leagues, and maybe we’ll help you ‘luck’ into some extra dingers for your playoff fantasy squad.
The basic philosophy is simple. Power is well-correlated with hot weather, and certain parks are more conducive to home runs. You can add in a fly-ball pitcher if you want to really want to set the scene for Elvis Andrus‘ one home run of the year.
We stream all the time for pitching stats, but now it’s getting into crunch time for every stat on the board, especially in head-to-head leagues. Let’s look at the schedule this week and try to identify some key players in each category. Oh, and if this isn’t enough, check out the Daily Fantasy Strategy column on the site. If you squint right, you can find what you’re looking for in the Daily Five, even if you’re using it for a different reason.
We’ll start with steals because steals might be the best offensive stat to stream for.
A year or two before ottoneu was founded (so about a decade ago) I swore off head-to-head baseball leagues. The beauty of baseball, I think, is in the daily grind – six months of daily grind, with no one day being more important than any other. Besides, if you are going to make one day count more than another, choosing September, when the rules of the game change and when different teams have such wildly different incentives and goals just does not make sense to me.
But I am now in my second year playing in a matchup league again. I took over a last place team in this dynasty league, barely missed the post-season a year ago, and now I am just a few hours away from my first playoff matchup in years. And the strategy for the post-season is taking some getting used to.
