As per tradition, I made some bold calls at the beginning of the season. Knowing that FanGraphs has built its reputation on reasoned and measured analysis, I used my preseason column as an opportunity to go out on a ledge that I would not usually walk out on during my regularly scheduled writing. A few of them actually came true. Here’s how I did:

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With the 2019 regular season in the books, now is a good time to look back and see which MLB teams provided fantasy owners with the most valuable hitters this year.

This chart looks at players currently ranked in the top twelve at each offensive position (and top fifty for outfield) based on Rotowire’s earned auction values (roto scoring), broken down by team. If you’re curious about which players where ranked where, a more detailed breakdown of the ranks are found here. If a player was traded, the team which they played the majority of their games with was given credit. I also did not include DH ranks. While there are many players that can provide value outside of the top-12 (or 50 in the case of outfield), this exercise is meant to look at which players are providing high-end value, what teams they are coming from, and a bit about the what the implications for 2020 might be.

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Down the stretch, we’ll be covering the probable starters and highlighting our favorites to stream as you chase down your fantasy titles. The pitcher in question must be available in 50% or more of leagues according to FantasyPros.com which combines ESPN and Yahoo! roster rates (sometimes exceptions just over 50% will be mentioned if they are really good and should have a much higher roster rate). I’ve listed the players in order of interest. Read the rest of this entry »

Down the stretch, we’ll be covering the probable starters and highlighting our favorites to stream as you chase down your fantasy titles. The pitcher in question must be available in 50% or more of leagues according to FantasyPros.com, which combines ESPN and Yahoo! roster rates (sometimes exceptions just over 50% will be mentioned if they are really good and should have a much higher roster rate). Read the rest of this entry »

Down the stretch, we’ll be covering the probable starters and highlighting our favorites to stream as you chase down your fantasy titles. The pitcher in question must be available in 50% or more of leagues according to FantasyPros.com which combines ESPN and Yahoo! roster rates (sometimes exceptions just over 50% will be mentioned if they are really good and should have a much higher roster rate). Read the rest of this entry »

Down the stretch, we’ll be covering the probable starters and highlighting our favorites to stream as you chase down your fantasy titles. The pitcher in question must be available in 50% or more of leagues according to FantasyPros.com which combines ESPN and Yahoo! roster rates (sometimes exceptions just over 50% will be mentioned if they are really good and should have a much higher roster rate). Read the rest of this entry »

From a fantasy perspective, 2019 has not gone how we hoped for Andrew Benintendi. The Red Sox outfielder was being selected in the top-30 this spring: 30^th overall in NFBC drafts and 29^th at Fantasy Pros.

Benintendi continues to do things well in his third full big-league season. He hits for average, and walks often enough. While he is pacing for his lowest full-season stolen base output to date, he still can contribute in steals. But 450 games into his Major League career, Benintendi hasn’t been able to hit for the power that many anticipated. His 20-home run season in 2017 and current ISO of .181 being his high-water marks.

Benintendi’s solid, but underwhelming 2019 season may see him enter 2020 as a bit of a forgotten man in drafts. This could be a mistake if he is able to make the same power gains his teammate  Xander Bogaerts has made over the past two seasons – and Benintendi does share a significant amount of offensive traits with Boston’s star shortstop.

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With so many new and predictive statistics available to people that follow baseball, we sometimes forget to look at some of our old staples. Often times, this is with good reason. Things like xwOBA, batted ball data and wRC+ are more predictive than counting stats of yesteryear.

But one old school stat that we shouldn’t overlook is platoon splits. If a player is performing significantly different than their career norm against pitching of a certain handedness, this could suggest a regression (either positively or negatively) is coming.

Platoon splits are not an exact science. Just because a player has posted a wRC+ of 140 against left-handed pitching doesn’t necessarily mean their true talent level is 40 percent better than league average. And as many have noted in far more thoughtful and extensive work, they also take more time to normalize than we typically think. It’s possible that the trends I’m observing aren’t quite as relevant as they appear. However, the hitters listed below have significantly under performed their career norms to one degree or another and could see a bump in their production if it does revert to their typical level of performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Manny Machado and Adalberto Mondesi, two shortstops drafted inside the top-50 this spring, have had very different seasons to date.

Since signing with the Padres in the offseason, Machado has struggled (.261/.342/.451) to produce at his usual elite level. A level that made him worthy of a 10-year, $300-million contract. Mondesi meanwhile, has picked up where he left off in 2018, hitting for modest power (30 extra base hits) and batting average (.277), to go along with his league-leading 26 stolen bases.

But some of the underlying peripherals suggest that these two shortstops could see their performance trend in opposite directions during the second half of the season.

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Corey Seager was a polarizing fantasy player heading into the 2019 season. Baseball’s fifth most valuable player in 2016-17 (12.9 WAR) spent most of 2018 on the disabled list recovering from Tommy John surgery. While Seager’s overall contributions to the Dodgers are obvious, his fantasy value has been up for debate given the increasingly high replacement level at the shortstop position and Seager’s somewhat limited power output.

Entering the 2019 season, Seager had slugged .494 with 54 home runs in 355 career games played. No one would confuse him with Billy Hamilton, but he also wasn’t hitting for the elite power that many other top tier shortstops were.

So far in 2019, Seager has struggled, hitting .235/.329/.356 with just two home runs. But his batted ball profile suggests that he might be trying to do something that his fantasy critics were riding him about heading into the season. Read the rest of this entry »