Mixing Fantasy & Reality: Trades, ADP, & Projections

Minor Trades

The Royals traded Jarrod Dyson to the Mariners for Nate Karns

The trade’s current winner is Jarrod Dyson’s playing time. While I wasn’t able to grab our playing time projections before the trade, Dyson’s playing time was likely projected at a half season of at bats. In the Baseball HQ Forecaster, they projected 259 at-bats and now we have him slotted in for 441 at bats. The additional playing time could help to push up his stolen base numbers into the forties.

I’m worried the Mariners may limit Dyson attempts. Last season, the Mariners were 24th in stolen base attempts. I tried several ways to see if team philosophy or talent controlled stolen base attempts.

A key factor I found was success rate which helped ease my concerns. A .44 r-squared exists between stolen base attempts and success rate. While the correlation isn’t perfect and some survivor bias exists in it, if players are successful, they continue to get the green light. Dyson had a sky-high 85% success rate over the past four seasons. If he can keep up the rate, he should be able to keep running.

As for Nate Karns, he is sleeper in all formats. My love for him exists because of his 9.3 K/9 as a starter. The strikeout rate places him in the company of Danny Duffy, Francisco Liriano, Chris Sale, and Kenta Maeda. Karns mixes three average pitches (fastball, change, and curve) to get the swings-and-misses.

Of the listed comps. Liriano compares to Karns as both walk too many batters. Karns posted a 4.3 BB/9 last season and a 3.8 BB/9 career rate. His value could skyrocket if the brings the walks down. There are no guarantees it will happen but late round picks are based off flawed players.

 

The Orioles traded Yovani Gallardo to the Mariners for Seth Smith

The move keeps Smith playing against righties in a better hitter park. Because Smith is usually platooned, his value is limited in weekly lineup leagues.

I can’t see how a fantasy team can roster Gallardo. With his low strikeout rate (6.5 K/9) and high walk rate (4.6 BB/9), I would rather start a stud non-closer and get similar strikeout numbers and not have my ERA and WHIP balloon.

Everything I read on the trade puts him in the rotation. His usefulness may jump with a move to the bullpen.

 

Notes

Henry Druschel at Beyond the Boxscore determined the success rate for ZiPS, Steamer, PECOTA, and Marcels and found the following:

The “Average” row in the above table is exactly what you would expect: the accuracy of the average of all four systems. It beats all four systems in four of the five categories, and fell short of only Steamer in the fifth. One would expect that an average would rarely be egregiously wrong; it’s surprising to see that the average also tended to be closer to right than each individual projection. This could be a quirk of a single season of projections, but at the very least, it seems to say that the brute-force method of resolving differences between the projection systems is credible.

I will always recommend owners average at least three projections to get a player’s value.

Rob Parker at Fake Teams figured out the biggest NFBC average draft position changes from 2016 to 2017.

The rest of the big gainers are veterans returning to former glory (Verlander, Darvish, Gattis, Lucroy, HanRam, Trumbo, Gattis), guys coming out of nowhere with huge breakout seasons (Kyle Hendricks, Daniel Murphy, Jean Segura, Jonathan Villar, and Jose Ramirez), and then guys like Wil Myers that just reached their potential for the first time.

• I keep seeing and hearing Michael Brantley love but I will just stay away for now. Here is the latest underwhelming update.

“We’re working through his tolerance,” Indians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said on Thursday. “He’s continuing to progress. As each day goes by, we’ll hopefully continue to get more and more information and continue to see him make more progress.”

Brantley began non-contact swings over the holidays, and he’s now back in Cleveland continuing his rehab from right biceps tendinitis surgery in August. Antonetti noted that it is difficult to have specific dates for the next steps in Brantley’s hitting progression, as the schedule is dictated on how the outfielder responds to the increased level of activity.

That was the same issue that the Indians dealt with last season when Brantley was limited to only 11 games while working through a rehab schedule that stalled multiple times. Last year’s comeback bid came after Brantley underwent surgery on his right shoulder in November of ’15. The hope this time around is that the earlier surgery will have Brantley feeling strong come Spring Training.

I am not going to pay Brantley’s current prices (49th overall outfielder at NFBC). I would probably pick him up around the 90th outfielder off the board.

• A pitcher I am keeping my eye on is the Twins Adalberto Mejia. No one has reported any of the lefties pitches as plus but he may have four average pitches with above average control. He throws his lowest rated pitch, the curve, hard. Hard curves (80 mph plus) are more successful than slow curves so even his worst pitch can be useful. If he continues to post good minor league strikeout and walk numbers, he could move into a bad Twins rotation quickly.





Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.

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Anonymous
7 years ago

“I will always recommend owners average at least three projections to get a player’s value.”

So… can we get that option on the Auction Calculator?