Last week I briefly touched on some guys who had been getting raked across the coals in the BABIP/LOB% department, making their raw stats look like something out of a horror film. This week I’ll take a look at the flip side; guys who have sparkling ERAs, but looking under the hood implies that your nice new sports car might not be purring quite as well as you had hoped. Just remember, it’s very early and a lot of the underlying peripherals haven’t stabilized yet; we’re just looking for guys we don’t want to make the mistake of overpaying for.

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I asked. You answered. Who knew the most commented on post with my byline would be a poll about OBP leagues? Over 1,000 of you play in leagues that count OBP in some way or another. So that means I will be publishing articles specifically focusing on players in this scoring format. Today I will identify a couple of hitters who may be available in your league and gain value when OBP, rather than AVG, is a category.

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Come on, people. Take a moment here. Take a breath. Take a Xanax for all I care. You need to relax. We’re not even a week into the season and I’ve already seen more panic here than I did when Phish announced they were breaking up and the dirty, spun hippies woke up and  realized they had no place to go. I’ve seen roster moves galore, bad impulse trades, people giving up on some players already and far too much faith being put into others who are undeserving. I truly wish this was just some strawman I decided to make up and treat like a punching bag for a while, but this is truth I’m speaking here and those of you who are guilty of this early obsession with the panic button need to pay attention. Read the rest of this entry »

Leagues with daily lineup changes can be a blessing or a curse. If you play in a league like a couple of mine — ones filled with old friends from college who cling to fantasy baseball as a tie to their more carefree days — you probably hear a lot of “Daily lineups? Ain’t nobody got time for that!” But to the right group of guys, daily leagues can be bliss, spurring constant motion within a team’s roster and keeping every engaged on an almost an hourly level. Total immersion. Leagues allowing daily moves also have another side benefit that many fantasy owners ignore. While it may take another five minutes of research per day, there are gains to be had by platooning certain hitters, just like their major league teams do. “Gluing” a few $4 players together and alternating them when they are against their dominant split could return as much as a “set it and forget it!” guy who went for $25. Here are a few options sitting around on benches or wires that could prove useful in the next few days.

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The Yasiel Puig movement is starting in Los Angeles. Carlos Beltran is hurt in St. Louis and the temptation is to turn to Oscar Taveras. And Wil Myers was the biggest prospect traded this offseason, and he’s on a team that could use a corner outfielder. What to do with these young outfielders in redraft leagues?

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Millions of people play fantasy baseball each year. It follows that hundreds of thousands of these folk win their fantasy league championships. And while this is an impressive feat, to be sure, it is hardly a unique one. We congratulate the winner, give him or her a trophy to put in his living room, and next year the slate is wiped clean. We each want something more: we want our foes to look upon our works and despair.

What follows is a strategy guide, but it is not a strategy guide. It does not pretend to maximize your chances of winning; in fact, it does quite the opposite. But what Plan Z sacrifices in terms of probability it more than repays in terms of potential payoff. Because when you play fantasy baseball the normal way, you win for a year. When you play by Plan Z, you win for a lifetime. Stories will become legends, which will in turn fade into myth. You’ll be a baseball Beowulf.

The rules of Plan Z are deceptively simple. They are, in order:

1. Only draft players whose names contain a Z.

That’s it.

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Back in the seventeenth century, French philosopher-mathematician Blaise Pascal contributed to the foundations of calculus, probability theory, physics, the scientific method, and the mullet. He also left a lot of stray papers an stray ideas around after he died, one of which has become known as Pascal’s Wager. His idea, which is the first recorded modern example of game theory, can be paraphrased as follows:

Suppose there are two states, there being a god and there not being one. Also suppose that you have two choices: believe in Him or don’t. You have to choose. There are four possible results.

You believe in God, and he exists: eternity in heaven, worth infinite points.

You believe in God, and he doesn’t exist: you waste time praying. Worth a small, finite number of negative points.

You don’t believe in God, and he doesn’t exist: you get a few extra hours each week to watch football. Worth a small, finite number of positive points.

You don’t believe in God, and he does exist: brimstone.

Having laid all these out, Pascal’s premise is pretty simple: negative infinity is pretty lame, and positive infinity is pretty good, so you may as well choose the side that leans toward the positive side, whether it turns out right or not. Thus, God.

Pascal’s Wager has had its critics over the years, but it still stands as a solid theory for pragmatism – given the choices beyond your control, do what works best – as well as a rousing endorsement for drafting Brandon Beachy in your head-to-head fantasy league this year.

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Rebirth. A new beginning. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Life anew. A fresh start. Read the rest of this entry »

I finished last in 2012 in the FanGraphs Experts League on the ottoneu platform. There’s a lot of shame in that for me — I played hard all the way to the end and rarely have teams that finish at the bottom of the table, this team was fourth in the inaugural season, and finishing last changed the meaning of the team name in a bad way (Eno’s Slaughter). I may argue with Dave Cameron that more major league teams should do full rebuilds, but when it comes to my own dynasty teams, I usually try to remain competitive every year. Especially if there are prizes at stake. Cause, hey, you never know.

The process I went through with this team might represent, for me, a new understanding of how best to treat a bad team. I think I’d recommend it for real-life teams, even. While I maintain that the Mets should have traded Jose Reyes, maybe there’s room for them to sign David Wright in order to keep building for the future. Prospects aren’t the only way out of the basement, in other words.

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Before you go thinking this is just another mock draft column, read the next sentence — your mouse will practically click “more” by itself.

At a time when every fantasy owner and their sister is prepping for the upcoming season by doing mock draft after mock auction…what if we threw a curveball at that concept by selecting only prospects for a mock dynasty league?

That, friends, is what the fine folks over at Fake Teams came up with, and they so graciously asked FanGraphers Mike Newman, J.D. Sussman and me to participate as part of a panel of a baker’s dozen’s worth of prospect pundits. What comes next are the results.

But that’s not all! To help keeper and dynasty league owners everywhere who get to partake in the always-exhilarating, often-painstaking process of drafting prospects, I’ll present my approach and strategy to this enlightening exercise — which when you think about it, was really just a make-believe draft of non-major leaguers for this made-up fantasy game we all love to play.

Yeah, like you’re not gonna click.

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