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In a poker tournament, the top 15 percent of participants usually land “in the money.” House games can be a little more communist, I played in an eight man tournament last weekend where the top three received some portion of the pot (third got less than money back after counting his three rebuys). In fantasy baseball, it’s common for only the top 16 to 25 percent of participants to receive a payout. While that’s more than your average poker tournament, it’s still a top heavy distribution.

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When Boston won the 2013 World Series (spoiler alert!), many pundits anticipated the reality that the team would look very different in 2014. Expiring deals for key cogs like Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew and Jarrod Saltalamacchia made that the case. And yet, on the verge of the 2014 season, the Red Sox infield has many familiar faces.

Except, of course, at shortstop. The Red Sox don’t seem to have a concrete plan there, which is a strange position for a defending champ to be in during spring training. How this all shakes out will matter a great deal to fantasy owners, so it bears watching. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big fan of keeper leagues. The thing I like most about them isn’t that I get to keep a core of talent from year to year, it’s that I can make fair and reasonable trades at just about any point in the season. In redraft leagues, I’m convinced that the optimal strategy is to never trade unless someone is offering you insane value. Usually, a trade is mutually beneficial such that both owners gain a similar number of points. There are cases where that’s useful, but generally speaking, there aren’t many opportunities available.

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Now would be a good time to talk about the Mets outfield, both because spring training convened in full this week, and because manager Terry Collins made comments last Friday that may throw a wrench into otherwise well-laid plans.

A week ago, before the team made any concrete decisions regarding 2014, the most sensible solution looked to be defensive whiz Juan Lagares in center field, big ticket free agent signing Curtis Granderson in one of the corner spots, Chris Young in the other, and some combination of Eric Young, Jr. and Lucas Duda serving as reserves or injury replacements. That was before Collins met with the media Friday afternoon and offered this:

Collins on leadoff: I’m going to talk to Chris Young about leading off Sitting here today Eric Young is the guy you’d like to see at the top

— New York Mets (@Mets) February 14, 2014

So where does that leave things as we head into spring training, and what does that mean for fantasy owners?

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Maybe we all use rankings differently. Most of the time, I look at rankings and try to find where I value players differently. That’s gold! A ranking that’s too high for my liking means I can throw that player to get money on the table, or wait a round because I’m sure someone will take him. A player I like better than others is someone I can wait for.

I guess there might be a ranking out there that would be perfect for me, that I would take and use for myself without editing. Not even sure my rankings are those rankings. Because we’re getting information daily and that can nudge a guy up or down. But sure, I’ll be using my rankings in my drafts, in some form.

What you could also do is use the spreadsheet that will come at the end of these rankings, bump guys up or down a bit as you see fit, and really personalize your ranks for your needs, wants, desires and outlook on life. That might work, too.

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Despite dropping 100 games in 2013, the Miami Marlins managed to unveil one of fantasy’s hottest young starters, though the rotation behind him offers no other obvious must-draft guys. Still, there’s some talent in this group, and as fantasy owners, we’d be remiss not to do our due diligence in examining the guys slated — or possibly slated — to take the ball every fifth day in Miami.

The ballpark

Welcome to Marlins Park, a third-year stadium memorably described by Orel Hershiser as a place that looks “like a cruise ship had a baby with a spaceship.” Whatever its architectural trappings, however, this is a place that favors pitchers — StatCorner finds it depresses home runs significantly for both left- and right-handed hitters, and ESPN’s Park Factors ranked it middle of the pack in regards to runs scored.

The defense

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It’s time now to start rolling out the rankings, as the drafts are starting to get scheduled and everyone’s prepping. Once we’re doing rolling these out, we’ll give you a spreadsheet with our rankings and steamer projections. That way you can erase my rankings and improve your experience, if that’s what you’re all about. You’ll notice that the ‘draft tools’ box to the bottom right is slowly filling up. And if you need a little ‘extra,’ there’s always FG+ to give you advanced fantasy research and player caps on 1250 player pages.

No more ado. Catchers!

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I’m always talking about how good a pitch’s peripherals are, on our podcast, or on the radio, or on twitter, so I thought I’d help you get a sense of makes a good off-speed pitch, when it comes to whiff percentages. Since some of the listings in different places are whiff per swing (more here), and yet our site uses swinging strike rate (swSTR%), I thought I’d make the benchmarks in swinging strikes. You can see the whiff benchmarks in this oft-linked post here. You’ll also get ground-ball rates there, which is an important pitch peripheral that I won’t talk about much today.

So what makes a good pitch, swinging strike wise?
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Sleepers are the holy grail of fantasy analysis. Everybody has players they like more than others and sleepers are those special someones who offer tantalizing upside at a piddling price. Sometimes, they’re just overlooked, small market players who have been good all along while other times they are players predicted to have a break out season.

It’s good to have sleepers. It’s good to acquire them on draft day, assuming you have some skill at parsing the mountains of data available on the internet. It can even be good to throw an extra dollar at your favorite targets in the auction. Where owners run into trouble is when they convince themselves that they must acquire their sleepers.

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There’s no sense beating around the bush here: the 2014 White Sox don’t look like they’ll be very good. In fact, they figure to be downright unwatchable most of the time. That is, except for roughly 30 games.

The ones Chris Sale starts, specifically.

Chicago finished last season with the second worst record in the American League, ahead of only the lowly Astros. The team’s record (63-99) was barely worse than its Pythagorean record (67-95). It has also recently concluded an offseason in which its big acquisitions were Jose Abreu (a slugging Cuban import who may or may not be awesome) and Adam Eaton (a solid outfield prospect who has played exactly 88 games in the major leagues, for which he has accrued exactly 0.2 wins above replacement).

So, yeah, Chris Sale. Let’s start with him as we consider expectations for the White Sox rotation in 2014.

*I swear this will be the only terrible Sale-related pun in this post. Honest.

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