Archive for Uncategorized

This is not a fun article to write. Although writing it may be better than how I got here. For the last few weeks, I have been telling you how I lay out my plans for auctions, and for the last few years, executing those plans has resulted in some terrific fantasy seasons. And then Sunday, March 9 happened.

It was set to be a busy day, with back-to-back three hour auctions scheduled, but was made even worse when I woke up with some sort of terrible stomach virus. Instead of hanging out with friends and auctioning, I was doing my best to grab the players I wanted between (and sometimes during) mad dashes for the bathroom. The resulting rosters were not what I had planned on, which is unfortunate for my fantasy seasons, but convenient for writing an article on how to recover from a failed auction.

Read the rest of this entry »

In what should hopefully be the final update to the draft ranking spreadsheet that you can download here — thanks to Blake Murphy, Jeff Zimmerman, Mike Podhorzer and Zach Sanders for their work on it — we’re now adding the top 300 as a tab and a post.

I will say it felt sorta nonsensical by the second half. In most drafts, by the time you’re in the 15th round, your needs have overtaken any value-based picking you could do. It might be great that there are first basemen available for cheap, but if you have first, corner infield and utility already lined up, you won’t be looking at that position. The good news is that we still have the deep positional rankings on the same sheet, now with updated composite projections.

The bad news is that we had to try and figure out the relative value of a flier setup man that might close or might not versus a position player too deeply ranked to actually expect to play on a mixed league team. Enjoy!

Read the rest of this entry »

I keep making these bold predictions, and keep hitting about .300 on them. No idea if that says I’m not bold enough or if there’s some predictability in the crazy things that happen each year.

Really, that last reason is why we make these predictions every year. Crazy stuff happens every year, and it takes a little elasticity of the mind to consider the possibilities of the coming season. Maybe by doing this we’ll be in a better spot to reap the rewards when crazy things do happen. Sure, 70% of the following will not happen. But 30% probably will! And as long as you don’t invest too much in the possibility, and keep an eye on the floor, you might be able to use our bold predictions to your advantage.

This year, there’s a bit of a wrinkle: Jay Long of Razzball and I are having a gentleman’s wager regarding our Bold Predictions. With some right of veto on each other’s predictions, we’re putting our ten up against each other. His will publish on Razzball later today. Loser buys the winner a six pack of craft beer.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the leagues I run that have inexperienced and/or casual team owners, I always use the standard 5×5 roto categories because I feel that it would give me and the other experienced players an advantage. I know that the casual players in my leagues are using the rankings provided by the website on which we’re drafting or some other set of rankings from a major industry source. And almost all of those rankings are based on standard categories. If I replaced, for example, home runs with slugging percentage, I would be able to identify the players whose valuation or ranking would change with the different category. But the noobs would be using rankings made with home runs in mind.

I polled my Twitter followers to find out the most common uses of non-standard categories so that I could determine the players whose valuation/ranking changed the most when non-standard categories are used. The most common answers were OBP replacing batting average (which I covered here), slugging percentage replacing home runs, and OPS being added as a sixth category to the standard five hitter categories. Sorry if your league has a different non-traditional format.

Below are charts showing the biggest changes in SLG and OPS leagues. For an explanation of the methodology used, check out the OBP piece I just linked to. And if you’d like to see how all 242 hitters that I have projected are affected by SLG replacing HR or OPS being a sixth category, you can find the SLG list here and the OPS list here.

First up, guys who get a bump when slugging percentage replaces home runs.

Miguel Cabrera and Paul Goldschmidt are even more valuable in slugging percentage leagues, and they close the gap between them and Trout in auction leagues. Joey Votto shows up on this list just as he did in my OBP post. He’s obviously excellent, but the standard categories aren’t the best measure of his excellence.

Unsurprisingly, we see a few young first basemen here who haven’t reached the ‘power potential’ some thought they might. But really they just haven’t put up big home run totals. Freddie Freeman and Eric Hosmer may never settle in as 30+ HR regulars or even 25-30 HR regulars, but if you play in a slugging percentage league, their power plays. And Brandon Belt gets the biggest boost by switching to SLG. It’s possible his ballpark has something to do with it, but he’s very much in the Freeman/Homser mold. The only non-1B/DH player on this list is Yadier Molina who was 4th in the league in doubles last year.

Now the guys who you would prefer in a home run league. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training is fun. It is simultaneously the best of times (your favorite team doesn’t stink yet) and the worst of times (that player you were excited to watch this season is already out for the year). Every spring we see former stars trying to hang on to what once was (Johan Santana), and youngsters on the verge of their own meteoric rise (Javier Baez).

While it is exceedingly true that spring training stats don’t matter much, it is not true that spring training itself does not matter. It does matter. Quite a lot. What matter most are the storylines (scouting reports, projected playing time changes, etc). It’s still very early in the spring, and everything is subject to change, but with that in mind let’s look at two players whose stock may rise this month.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all have our little mind tricks when it comes to draft preparation. Many rely on tiers. Others prefer straight list rankings. Maybe you use a magic 8-ball. But a principle I typically take into any draft is the point at which the talent available at a position isn’t distinguishable enough for me to care who I get. I call this the threshold in which you just punt: when your targeted players have left the board, and the remainder you could care less about.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a subject I tackled last year, but the basic idea for this article is that people playing in leagues that use non-traditional roto categories may not be equipped with proper draft materials. Almost any set of rankings you can find online are compiled with the standard 5×5 roto categories in mind. Some sites may have rankings published specifically for leagues that replace batting average with OBP, but the vast majority assume standard categories. If you’re using a set of rankings from a site or magazine, you’re doing yourself a disservice unless those rankings were designed for OBP leagues.

I’ve compiled my own projections for 242 hitters to generate my own rankings, and I’ve generated rankings specifically for standard 5×5 leagues and leagues that have replaced batting average with OBP. I want to highlight the players who gain the most in OBP leagues and the players who are hurt the most when OBP replaces average. I base my rankings off a number Zach Sanders calls Fantasy Value Above Replacement (FVARz). Essentially I assign each player a value for each category and add them all up while adjusting for positional scarcity.

Below I’ve included two lists; one shows the players whose FVARz increases the most when OBP replaces average, and the other shows the players whose FVARz decreases the most. I’ve also included their ranking among hitters and auction values for both batting average and OBP leagues. Over on a site of which I’m the managing editor, TheFantasyFix.com, I’ve posted how the rankings and auction values change for all 242 hitters I have projections for when the switch is made to OBP. You can find that here. All values are based on 10-team leagues with 25-man rosters, 13 starting hitter slots and three bench slots. If you have questions about the methodology, the charts or anything else, hit me up in the comments. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a super easy post, I’ll admit it. All I did was take the difference between my rankings and the consensus rankings (which you can find on the right-hand nav bar) and sort. But I’ll do a little writeup for each group of hitters so you can know why I like them. The numbers listed for each player are steamer projections, which aren’t exactly what I used, but can give you an idea of how useful the player will be in your league. Good luck drafting.

Read the rest of this entry »

I stunk up the joint last year in AL LABR, one of the longest-going super leagues in the business. I combined terrible draft choices with terrible free agent auction decisions and even a bad trade in order to end up tenth of twelve. I showed poor restraint and discipline at the draft, I lacked the context necessary for making good decisions, and I panicked a bit late in the season. I’m not so proud of that season.

At least this year I feel a lot better about the draft. As Razzball’s Grey Albright said at the after-party, there’s a long way from feeling good to doing good in the final tally. Admitted. But since I actually didn’t even feel great about my draft results last year, I’ll take this as a positive sign.

Let’s take a look at the team and the better decision-making process that went into it.

Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s easy to sum it up when you’re just talking about tiers. We’re sitting in here, and I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we in here talking about tiers. I mean, listen, we’re talking about tiers. Not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about tiers. Not a game. Not, not … not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last. Not the game, but we’re talking about tiers, man. I mean, how silly is that? … And we talking about tiers. I know I supposed to be there. I know I’m supposed to lead by example … I know that … And I’m not … I’m not shoving it aside, you know, like it don’t mean anything. I know it’s important, I do. I honestly do … But we’re talking about tiers, man. What are we talking about? Tiers? We’re talking about tiers, man. [laughter from the media crowd] We’re talking about tiers. We’re talking about tiers. We ain’t talking about the game. [more laughter] We’re talking about tiers, man. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you see me play don’t you? You’ve seen me give everything I’ve got, right? But we’re talking about tiers right now. We talking about ti- [interrupted].” – Allen Iverson, noted rotisserie enthusiast.

Ahem, yeah. It’s that time again — the time to take great, big, giant lists of baseball players at different positions and pare them down to smaller, more manageable groupings. Yes, we’re talking about tiers! National League outfield tiers, to be specific. (Not the game, to be clear, in case there was confusion there, but tiers.)

These are derived largely from projection systems, including Steamer, ZiPS, Fans, Marcel and the author’s whimbrain. They serve mostly as a conversation starter, so let’s treat them as such and chime in either below or on twitter: @jackweiland.

As is custom around these parts, we’ll name tiers in this episode after something fun: some of the most rantful sports rants that ever ranted. Ready? Let’s go!

Read the rest of this entry »