Eric and Kiley have graciously taken the time to give us some of the best prospect content on the net, but today as prospect week continues I’ll provide a quick fantasy spin for each of the 2018 Top 100 prospects. The goal here is simply to each prospect’s grades and scouting reports and then translate those skills into “what could be” for fantasy context (for example where “upside” might represent an 80%+ outcome on a prospect’s potential).
Several years ago Alan Nathan, Jeff Kensrud, Lloyd Smith, and Eric Lang brought an air cannon and a few boxes of brand new baseballs to Minute Maid Park. If you’re anything like me, you like where this is going. They set up their cannon to fire balls roughly 96mph on a 28° angle and used Trackman to measure their distance and spin rate. They tested four groups of balls, two groups composed of MLB balls, one MiLB, and one NCAA. One group of MLB balls, group A, were tested using reasonably low spin rates, about 1800. The other, group B, had variable spin rates, ranging from 2100 to 3300. The results of their study were published in an article titled How Far Did That Fly Ball Travel (Redux)? on Baseball Prospectus, although it can also be found here. I encourage you to read the piece, but today I want to focus on the MLB-A and MiLB groups.
| Ball Lot | Distance (S. D.) | Spin (S. D.) |
|---|---|---|
| MLB-A | 390 (8) | 1806 (58) |
| MiLB | 362 (8) | 1583 (49) |
The major league ball traveled 28 feet further than the minor league ball. Albeit with a higher spin rate. Presumably, the higher spin rate should translate to increased distance, but it is difficult to imagine that a difference of 200 rpm could bridge a gap of 28 feet. More on this in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »
We had some good-natured fun on twitter yesterday taking shots at CBS Sports’ Chris Towers. He drew the bullseye on his back when he tweeted:
The Ohtani thing brings up a good point I always like to make: Daily lineup leagues are bad.
— Chris Towers (@CTowersCBS) January 17, 2018
The obvious implication: weekly leagues are good. As somebody who writes columns named The Daily Grind, Streaming Wars, and Streaming Away, this left a sour, chalky taste in my mouth. I can actually feel the grit between my teeth, and I’m out of floss.
I generally view weekly formats as the refuge of Neanderthal football fans who need a fantasy fix during the warm weather months but can’t handle actual fantasy baseball. However, now is probably a good time to leave a friendly, politically correct preface to this post. Sporer warned me (actually, he warned twitter person Yancy Eaton) about high horses so I’ll leave mine at the stable.
Now I’m not sure which idiom to use, I got distracted by googling high horses. How about the one with the folks stroking… things … differently. Yeah, let’s use that one. It’s super cool that there are a billion ways to play fantasy baseball. Some of my favorite formats are unusual. No need to shame somebody if their preferences are different from you own. At least not too much.
The impetus for this post arises from a Tweet by our very own Al Melchior:
Holy BABIP, Willie Calhoun pops out a lot! pic.twitter.com/BDyHtfJsZJ
— Al Melchior (@almelchiorBB) January 3, 2018
This is, in no way, meant to shame Melchior; if anything, he has afforded us a valuable learning opportunity, especially because it became clear to me there likely exists a large swath of FanGraphs users who routinely misinterpret the relatively new Minor League batted ball data. (Through no fault of their own, by the way. The new data didn’t come with a user’s guide or anything. We have been left to our own devices, and it’s easy to assume such clean data comes without warts.)
Last year, I missed my annual resolution to slay mine foes. While I’d like to say the universe imploded as a result, there’s no sign anybody noticed. I’m here to announce that my resolve has returned in time for 2018, lest I inadvertently prove responsible for the annihilation of humankind. Or something.
It’s Festivus, the best and most important holiday of the year. Popularized on Seinfeld, Festivus includes The Airing of Grievances, which normally takes place after dinner, but we’re moving it up this year because as Frank Costanza says: “I got a lotta problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!” Frank aptly explains the AoG: “At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!”
So we’re virtually gathering the baseball family around and it’s time to let ‘em know what’s what!
Yesterday, the Giants decided that Pablo Sandoval wasn’t actually the answer at third base for them in 2018 and traded for Rays-lifer Evan Longoria. Now, Longoria’s chances of rebounding in the home run category have just gone splat. While he has posted HR/FB rates in the mid-to-high teens for most of his career, that mark dipped just below 11% in 2014 and 2015, before rebounding back into the mid-teens in 2016, en route to a career high homer total. The rebound was short-lived though, as his HR/FB rate fell back down to just 10.5% — a career low — this season. Given that he’s not so totally over the hill and he has shown strong power skills as recently as that 2016 season, you had to have figured some sort of dead cat bounce. But now, that bounce is far less likely to occur.
Thus far this offseason, I’ve been in a late-round target mood. Part of that is due to the fact I won’t dive into creating my own player rankings until next month. Therefore, I’m not yet taking an in-depth look at the top players, and I won’t have fantasy analysis for them until I start to dig into their stats. Instead, I’m still combing over leaderboards and adding players to keep an eye on to a growing list. Two more players who recently joined that list are a pair of rookies, Jesse Winker and J.D. Davis. Winker narrowly retained his rookie eligibility with 121 at-bats in 2017, and Davis received a smaller cup of coffee and remains rookie eligible, too. Oddly enough, Davis isn’t even my favorite blocked third base prospect in Houston, Colin Moran fits that bill and was discussed a few weeks ago. Nonetheless, he’s an intriguing player in his own right. Read the rest of this entry »
In what has become an annual tradition, today I will hold myself accountable to you the reader by publishing the results of my 2017 fantasy season.
This year, I finally feel like I finally whittled down to a manageable number of rosters – one dynasty, two ottoneu leagues, two keepers, one redraft, and one sim league (mostly played over the winter). While I did woefully under-manage my ottoneu rosters – especially on the trade front – I gave nearly all my teams the attention they deserved. That wasn’t happening when I played in over 10 leagues.
On the Daily Fantasy front, I was able to rebound from a bad start to the year to post only a slight loss – less than the amount of money I spent on rakes. That’s… something. Although I didn’t manage to land any big scores, I did go on a nice streak of more modest wins in late-August. Overall, I lost about $75. I plan to reinvent my process next year.
Most fantasy owners expect drafted players to under and over perform some amount. When a player overperforms, the owner looks and feels great because they “knew” a breakout was coming. Owners hope they didn’t pick too many players on the other end of the spectrum. The underperformers are the ones who drag down a team and owners find as escape goats for a bad season. I’m going to start laying the groundwork to determine a hitter’s disappointment chances.
The first major step in finding a disappointing hitter is to define what is a disappointment. After owning too many fantasy teams over the years, I’ve had my share of disappointments (e.g. Brandon Webb in a 2009 first round) and feel they are just part of the game. This ambivalence doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know the breakout chances. Even small changes in the odds can make a major difference after rostering 20 or more players.