Archive for Uncategorized

On New Years Day, I promised I would create a number of experimental leagues. Today I’m unveiling the first – Utility Wars. There is a method to my madness when designing these experimental leagues. In recent seasons, I’ve been unable to keep up with the sheer volume of industry leagues I get roped into, so I’m cutting down on most of them.

I plan to play a dynasty, ottoneu, sim (2005 season), home, college, and MLBTR league. The latter is my only redraft. But I love draft season way too much to have only three normal leagues. These experimental formats will combine my love of drafts with a minimum of in-season management.

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Last week, I mainly focused on first round picks and where the most players are being drafted from, as well as some positional distribution. I had mentioned focusing on individual MLB teams and how they have drafted in this concluding article. To start, however, is a map of where first round picks are coming from and what value they have had. This map does not represent the hometowns of first round picks. The map shows the location of a school where a player came from.

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We’ve been running a series looking at the potential top rookie producers at each position around the baseball diamond for a few weeks now. This series should be valuable for anyone participating in a fantasy league that allows keepers. It could also help anyone playing in more traditional formats who may need to fill holes throughout the season or may be in need of a little spark.

This class of freshmen outfielders has a chance to be a really strong group this year, although there are a lot of questions marks in terms of playing time. Today, we’ll look at the players with the best shots at regular playing time. Next week, we’ll look at the bigger questions marks — although they’re outfielders that could still have a fantasy impact in 2016.

Previously:
Catchers
First Basemen
Second Basemen
Third Basemen
Shortstops

Top Targets:

Byron Buxton, Twins: This former top pick had a tough MLB debut in 2015 but retained his rookie eligibility and will try and use last year’s experience as a springboard to bigger and better things. He’s all but assured of a starting gig in center field on opening day thanks to the off-season trade of Aaron Hicks. If he can get his contact issues ironed out, Buxton has a massive ceiling and could develop into a five-tool talent in a very talented (but young) lineup. The speed value will show up first, followed by the batting average, and then the power.

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Truth be known, even we don’t find the subject of the second half of our recently-completed NFBC slow draft that riveting, but we promised, so here goes. We’ll forbear commenting except when and as necessary. Maybe we’ll provide you with some giggles, some ideas, or both. These are picks 26 through 50. Bear in mind throughout that, with a couple of exceptions, to be duly noted, our hope is actually not to have to use any of these players in our starting lineups this season. We’re listing them by the order in which we took them in the overall draft; numbers in parentheses are their Average Draft Positions in NFBC slow drafts so far this year.

384. Danny Espinosa (ADP 457). On its face, and perhaps even deep in its very soul, a feeble pick. But it illustrates how draft tactics have to change as a draft and your roster develop. We don’t see Espinosa as the starting shortstop for a contending team. He’s not great in the field (though he is pretty good at second base), and while he’s got more power than your average middle infielder, his .230 lifetime BA and .301 lifetime OBP assure that his offense is likewise nothing special. But it doesn’t matter what we think. The only thing that matters is what manager Dusty Baker thinks, and he evidently likes Espinosa—this despite the fact that the Nationals have Trea Turner (number 15 prospect in MLB, according to Fangraphs’ own KATOH projection system; number 13, according to Baseball Prospectus; number 9, according to Baseball America) ready to go. And—here’s the nub of the matter—we ourselves also have Turner ready to go. We figure that Espinosa either does well and keeps the job or does poorly and relinquishes it to Turner. The possibility of the former made us the only ones who wanted Espinosa this early. Did we, then, subsequently also acquire Stephen Drew (ADP 601)? We did not; it would have been like wearing suspenders, a belt, and a diaper. Read the rest of this entry »

When we looked at movement and velocity with respect to changeups, curves, sliders, and rising fastballs, we found that more movement was almost always better. It gets a little bit more complicated that than that — drop is mostly better for swinging strikes and horizontal movement was better for grounders, and the effects are not super large — but it’s a decent pole to hang on to in the storm that is projecting pitchers.

We can then easily do the query that asks: which pitches changed the most from last year to this year?

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After 7 disappointing years under Jack Zduriencik (which followed 5 soul-crushing seasons under Bill Bavasi), new Mariners’ GM, Jerry Dipoto, raced up I-5 with a mandate to bring consistency and a fresh approach to the Emerald City. Faced with a number of holes to fill, the former Angels exec has already made a series of moves signaling a shift in the Mariners’ philosophy towards defense and on-base ability, a welcomed change from that of the last regime’s affinity for low on-base, immobile power hitters who strike out a lot. Huzzah.

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Last week, I introduced some data on the MLB Amateur draft, and focused on some trends throughout the entire draft. I looked at the value of different rounds and compared the value of different years as well. For this week, I am going to focus on players drafted in the first round using draft data from Baseball Reference. I chose to isolate the first round since that’s where we tend to see the most successful players on average and will also help eliminate most of the players who were drafted twice, even though there will still be some players who were drafted twice in the first round. This data also includes players who were drafted, but never made it to the majors. Without further ado, let’s dive right in.

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Welcome to the RotoGraphs Matchmaker Service. No, I cannot find you a date. However, we could hopefully facilitate the marriage of league owner with leagueless owner. If you are seeking an owner to fill your fantasy league or are the owner hoping to be seeked (how is that not a word?) to join that unfilled league, this is your new home. In the comments, please advertise your league openings or your availability and desire to join a league. To make things easier, it would be helpful to include the details of the league you’re seeking to fill or prefer to join in the following format:

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It’s mid-Feburary, and that means that another eeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrlllllllyyyyyyy LABR Mixed draft has been completed. Tout Wars auctions/drafts don’t go off for another month, my local league’s auction is in a month and a half, and opening day is still six and a half weeks away! The early timing of LABR Mixed presents some interesting challenges in that there are many position battles yet to have even begun and several potentially valuable free agents yet to sign. So on one hand, it requires us to do serious research, but on the other, we’re all just speculating, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best.

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Most normal citizens, we’re pretty sure, can imagine few things more tedious than reading a round-by-round account of a Fantasy Baseball draft. Indeed, many such citizens, some related to us by consanguinity or wedlock (though not by both), have told us as much. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably the kind of person who can imagine no more diverting pastime than speculating about who might be the Phillies’ closer this season. (No, we don’t know either, except we bet it’s not David Hernandez.) And if you are, you may want to join us, over the course of this and next week’s installments, as we review our just-completed, 3-week-long National Fantasy Baseball Championship slow (indeed, glacial) draft.

First, the mise-en-scene: 15 teams, 50 rounds, snake draft, 8 hours to make a pick or else rely on Autopick, standard-issue 23-man active rosters, semi-weekly (Monday and Friday) lineup changes, and—this is the important part—no post-draft transactions. If you’re dumb enough, as we were last year, to draft Shae Simmons the very day he has Tommy John surgery, you’ve got a dead roster spot.

Despite the Simmons mishap, we did okay with our slow draft last season—second place in our league, one point out of first—so we approached this year’s iteration with even more than our usual optimism and brio. Our strategy, if you can call it that, was simple: take the best available guys for a while, and then fill the holes as best we can. This was a reaction to last year’s results, where our misguided beliefs that (1) we needed to take two elite closers early, and (2) we had mapped the starting-pitcher topography accurately enough to wait ten rounds before exploring it, caused us significant dismay. We wouldn’t make the same mistakes this year, no sir. Read the rest of this entry »