Often, when an analyst reviews his or her draft, it is typically ahead of the season about to be played. That makes sense! We are planning for 2021, not 2020. It might behoove us, however, to review how drafts actually went. I’m guilty of doing the former and not the latter! With the dawn of the second annual Razzball RazzSlam best ball tournament upon us, I figured now is as good a time as any to rectify this.

Last year, I entered the inaugural RazzSlam having played, and subsequently bombed, in a couple of best ball drafts on Fantrax. I wanted to dip my toe in, get my feet wet, and other joint-aquatic/podiatric idioms, so I entered a couple of low-stakes leagues, figuring I could wing it. As foreshadowed, I fared poorly. I, in fact, could not wing it.

Having failed somewhat spectacularly for a guy who fancies himself at least somewhat knowledgeable and/or adept at fantasy baseball, I wanted to right my wrong by taking my preparation for RazzSlam seriously. I finished 15th out of 216 participants (18 leagues of 12 teams each), somehow not winning my league but ending up one of the highest 2nd-place finishers above some league winners. I’m proud! Because I expected another unmitigated disaster.

Hence, I figure it might be worth reviewing, with hindsight, one of my rare successful drafts. We played out the season already, so instead of trying to outline tips and tricks up front, it might be easiest to simply show you the draft results, each player’s stats, and the clear takeaways from my strategy — some intentional, some not.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2019, Brad Johnson and I published a weekly series in which we, each on a semiweekly basis, identified three or four or five players in the Minor Leagues who (1) had not appeared on previous top-prospect lists and (2) appeared to us to be capable of producing admirably, perhaps significantly, at the big-league level at some point for fantasy purposes.

Because of an actual force majeure (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic), Peripheral Prospects was rendered temporarily null as the Minor League Baseball season was cancelled. Alas, we published nothing about peripheral prospects. But that does not mean peripheral prospects did not thrive! Peripheral prospects indeed thrived.

I figured it would behoove me to not only review my favorite peripheral prospects from the end of 2019 but also highlight my favorite (existing) peripheral prospects heading into 2021, before a whole new batch of peripheral prospects is anointed. Yesterday, I revisited my 10 favorites from 2019; today, I’ll highlight another 10 eight whose progress I’m eager to monitor in 2021.

Presented in chronological order (and not by favoritism):

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2019, Brad Johnson and I published a weekly series in which we, each on a semiweekly basis, identified three or four or five players in the Minor Leagues who (1) had not appeared on previous top-prospect lists and (2) appeared to us to be capable of producing admirably, perhaps significantly, at the big-league level at some point for fantasy purposes.

Because of an actual force majeure (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic), Peripheral Prospects was rendered temporarily null as the Minor League Baseball season was cancelled. Alas, we published nothing about peripheral prospects. But that does not mean peripheral prospects did not thrive! Peripheral prospects indeed thrived.

I figured it would behoove me to not only review my favorite peripheral prospects from the end of 2019 but also highlight my favorite (existing) peripheral prospects heading into 2021, before a whole new batch of peripheral prospects is anointed. Here, I’ll revisit my 10 favorites from 2019; next time, I’ll highlight another 10 whose progress I’m eager to monitor in 2021.

Read the rest of this entry »

At this point, when it comes to bold predictions, you should know the drill. Yet it feels increasingly cliché to lead with, “you know the drill.” Nevertheless: you know the drill. We make bold predictions before the season and we review them after the season.

One thing I make a point of highlighting I try to make my predictions sufficiently bold while also actionable. “David Fletcher will hit 50 home runs” is a certifiably insane prediction, but it is not actionable because what do you do with this information? You over-draft him, sure, but by how much?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ominous title, I know, but in all fairness: Jose Altuve sports a paltry .207/.267/.322 (65 wRC+) line. The former consensus 2nd-overall pick who hit .298 with a career-high 31 home runs last year may seem like an unlikely collapse candidate on the surface.

Unfortunately, the cracks began to show last year. For one, Altuve all but stopped running; when he did run, he fared poorly, succeeding in only six of 11 attempts. Moreover, his .298 average, while excellent, was a far cry from his best (.346) and post-breakout five-year peak from 2014 through 2018 (.331). These are the obvious signs of wear.

A lightly critical evaluation might have concluded Altuve would still be a valuable commodity in 2020. Average draft position (ADP) data confirms this suspicion; a post-pandemic-onset ADP of 40.12 (37th overall), per the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC), ain’t nothing to sneeze at.

Yet my work on launch angle tightness in December, while illuminating and fun to research, shone a spotlight on an interesting and very specific data point: Altuve.

A tight launch angle (small standard deviation) is not always good, and a loose launch angle (large) is not always bad, but by and large the overall trend holds. Perhaps a more effective way to use tightness is to compare it historically for each player. While Altuve never had elite tightness, it was consistent, and he was an elite hitter, and that’s all that mattered. So it alarmed me to see his launch angle loosen up in 2019:

Read the rest of this entry »

These hallowed pages have borne (bore? beared? how am I even a writer?) witness to many bold predictions — some good, most bad. Last year’s hits and near-hits include Kirby Yates, Jeff McNeil, Mike Tauchman, and Domingo German; previous hits include Jose Ramirez, Madison Bumgarner (not being an ace), Matt Chapman, and Miles Mikolas, among others, as well as other near-hits not worth repeating.

Sometimes, bold predictions aren’t entirely so. I try to make my predictions legitimately bold (bordering on impossible), actionable, and strategic. It’s not helpful for someone to boldly predict Giancarlo Stanton will hit 25 homers in a 60-game season, however fun a prediction that may be.

It’s (less than) half a season, so you get half the predictions, although I’ll include some less-bold low-hanging fruit at the end, for posterity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I posted the first 15 out of 30 of My Dudes who I have been drafting at each “round” of 12-team drafts, per National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) between March 16 and April 8. Here are the last 15! Plus! As a bonus, I’ll briefly chronicle 10 players I’ve been targeting for my bench depth in 15-team leagues as well. Enjoy!

Thirty of My Dudes (One for Every Round), Part 2

Round 16: Christian Vázquez, BOS C (ADP 192.11)

I came away from my deep dive on Vázquez surprised by how impressed I was with his profile. He’s not an elite hitter or anything, but I’ll take a catcher who can hit 20 homers with an average that won’t kill you. (All of the projection systems have taken the hard under on his power this year, by the way. I’ll smash the over, but I don’t expect another 25-homer pace or anything.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I highlighted my 20 favorite mortal locks for 2020. Effectively, I compiled a list of 20 hitters and pitchers (primarily hitters) who have historically out-performed their current average draft position (ADP), such that, barring injury or unforeseen decline, they should do so again with ease.

Here, I will highlight one, and only one, player in each round (assuming a 12-team format) who (1) is not a mortal lock and (2) I found myself targeting frequently in drafts this year. Again, given draft season has mostly come and gone — and given that this season may never play out — I figure I could do this this one time. Granted, I still have two home leagues to draft, so it’s possible this could backfire. Oh well!

This doesn’t need a substantial prologue. Here are the first 15 of 30 players I have found myself strongly considering at their National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) data from March 16 through April 9 (130 drafts).

Thirty of My Dudes (One for Every Round), Part 1

Read the rest of this entry »

The season may not happen, and nearly all of my industry and high-stakes drafts are complete (not my home leagues, though), so I feel like it’s as good a time as any to publish My Guys — or, not My Guys, exactly, but The Guys I Absolutely Can’t Ignore at Their Prices. I’ll call this latter group, for short, my mortal locks. Incidentally and hardly coincidentally, the overlapping portion of the Venn Diagram of My Guys and my mortal locks is quite large.

My mortal locks (a term my uncle uses that I absolutely love): the guys who I can nearly guarantee will turn a profit at their National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP). The average draft produces a 65% return on investment (ROI). In other words, that’s a 35% loss, or roughly $90 of a $260 auction budget poorly spent. If you can at least break even, let alone turn a profit, on every player on your roster, you are already setting yourself up for success. It’s nearly impossible, but it doesn’t make it a bad goal.

If you Google “mortal lock,” the first result is a website called waywordradio.org, in which it defines mortal lock as “a cinch, an odds-on favorite, a guaranteed thing or event.” The next result, though, is Urban Dictionary — far more reputable — which defines mortal lock as “a bet that is virtually guaranteed winner, but in reality it is just a coin flip.”

This post embraces both definitions. My mortal locks are mortal locks precisely because they have proven to be as close to guaranteed as anything or anyone else. In reality, nothing is guaranteed. But I’ll convince myself something must be.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to not write too many draft recaps this preseason. I didn’t want draft recaps to simply stand in for analysis. Turns out we might not have baseball until June or July or maybe ever. Draft recaps might be all we have in this pandemic hellscape. (I’m being dramatic, I know. But, also, maybe I’m not!)

I did recap my first-ever Tout Wars draft last year. Honestly, it went poorly. I didn’t click through the link to read what I wrote, but if I try to make it seem like I did well… I promise you, I didn’t. I ended the SiriusXM stream chastising myself for drafting so poorly. It’s true!

I did, however, recover nicely in-season once I finally learned how to use OnRoto and I got a handle on what seemed to me like the optimal roster-building strategy. My year-end roster looked nothing like my drafted roster, and I was able to navigate FAAB effectively enough to wiggle my way into a semi-finals matchup. (I was a benched Kole Calhoun home run away from beating Clay Link and heading to the finals to face Ian Kahn, where he would have annihilated me unceremoniously.)

This year, I’d like to think I fared much better. I actually calculated projecwhatevted points this time! I’m sad we all couldn’t draft in person, but I’m more than happy to draft online at Fantrax in the name of social distancing.

Read the rest of this entry »