Archive for Billy Hamilton

Playing time can make or break a baseball player’s fantasy value. An elite player may not finish above replacement level if he suffers an injury and plays only half the season, and a lackluster player could finish above replacement level simply by playing every single day. This is all intuitive, and the fantasy community generally approaches these kinds of things rationally. In other words, most players are appropriately valued, outside of the market inefficiencies that inevitably warp player values.

One-dimensional speedsters — dudes who steal a bunch of bases and do little else — are much harder to peg. Their value is tied up primarily in one category, as stolen bases (SBs) do not directly correlate with other categories the way home runs would with runs and RBI, for example. The issue becomes all the more confounding when one considers the contemporaneous scarcity of SBs relative to home runs. There’s more to value than just SBs and plate appearances (PAs), but the fact of the matter is the two statistics by themselves correlate very strongly with a player’s end-of-season (EOS) value (which, here, are informed by Razzball’s Player Rater).

In the last five years, baseball has seen 75 player-seasons of 30-plus SBs — 15 steals a year on average, a trend that didn’t fundamentally change in 2016 (although that doesn’t mean SBs aren’t scarce). A simple linear regression of SBs and PAs, the latter of which serves as a proxy for other counting stats such as runs and RBI, against EOS value produces a remarkable 0.71 adjusted R²:

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Baseball, in all its glorious history, bears as its fruit some remarkable encounters between legends of the game. Allow me to recount a charming, wholly undocumented, 100%-real encounter between some of baseball’s greats:

…And then Billy Hamilton, to whom his colleagues and comrades affectionately referred as “Billy Hams,” appealed to the Baseball Gods:

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Last year, I hit .300 on my Bold Predictions, which is about what I aim for. That feels like the boldness sweet spot. This year, not so much. It saddens me to report that I was overly bold this year, getting just one Bold Prediction right. However, one other was incredibly close, so I’ll say that I hit .150 this season. Still, I can and will do better next year.

I have failed you, dear readers.

1. Jorge Soler is a top-ten outfielder.

Well, he was a top-100 outfielder, slotting in at No. 99 on the season. Soler battled his fair share of injuries this year, but even when he was healthy enough to play, he hit just .262/.324/.399, with 10 home runs in 404 plate appearances. For the year, he registered a 0.0 WAR. Here’s hoping he turns it around next season.

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Episode 105

The latest episode of The Sleeper and the Bust is now live! Jason Collette and Eno Sarris talk about the candidates for the 2014 Tuffy Rhodes award, the Billy Hamilton concern-o-meter, the ever-changing closer situations, the Matt Moore situation, and some surprising starts from old veterans to start the season.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Thanks to Ian Miller aka Teen Archer, for the new intro music Approximately 38 min of joyous analysis.

Yes, I’m late to the Bold Predictions party. What else is new? I’m going to be late for my own funeral, guaranteed.

Anyway, last year’s bold predictions didn’t fare entirely well, as discussed here, but the author feels that .400 is within the realm of possibility this time around.

10. Khris Davis will hit 25 homers and steal 15 bases.
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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 »

Billy Hamilton is fast. We get it. He swiped 103 bases at Low-A Dayton in 2011. In 2012, he stole 155 bases between High-A Bakersfield and Double-A Pensacola and then kicked in another 10 during a 17-game stint at the Arizona Fall League. Last season, he put another 75 notches in his belt at Triple-A Louisville, and when he was given his cup of coffee in the bigs, he swiped another 13 bases over the team’s final 13 games. Yeah, he’s pretty darn fast. But while he’s bathing in quickness rivaled only by the Flash, the Roman god Mercury and that little kid from The Incredibles, Hamilton may not be the 2014 fantasy goldmine that everybody seems to think. Read the rest of this entry »

Like some of the other newer writers here at RotoGraphs, this is my first entry in the Bold Predictions.

Here’s to hoping .300 is still good enough for the Hall of Fame.

Feast up commenters!

10. Despite injury, Adam Eaton will still steal 40+ bases.

Not exactly BOLD, I know. Trying to ease y’all into this. But if Eaton returns by mid-May or earlier as advertised, he’ll still have enough time to wreak havoc on the basepaths.

9. Andrelton Simmons will score 80 runs, swipe 25 bags.

The Braves shortstop is more known for his leather, but with a full-season leading off in front of Heyward and the Upton brothers, Simmons should really flourish. In addition to the 80 runs and 25 swipes, Simmons could chip in a .275 or better batting average, giving those a nice return who selected him in the late-rounds of their fantasy drafts.

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While the corners remain the same, the Cincinnati Reds made a big change in center field with a major three-team trade with the Diamondbacks and Indians during the offseason. They gave up a fine, defensive shortstop prospect, but obtained an outstanding 20-20 outfielder to cover center and possibly opened the door a little wider for one of their most-hyped prospects down the road. There’s some interesting flexibility that the team has right now, so let’s take a quick look… Read the rest of this entry »

Damn you, internet! Damn you, hordes of fantasy sports writers churning out an over-abundance of content! It used to be so easy; so much fun. I would dominate my fantasy baseball league year after year and there was no greater ego boost than sitting there on draft day, listening to the chorus of “Who’s?” after making what I knew to be a tremendous and pretty sneaky pick in the later rounds and knowing that the player I just grabbed was going to impress all year and be a heavy trade target for my competition in no time. They used to be called sleepers. Now, thanks to all of you, they’re the trendiest picks in the draft and are losing their value year after year. Read the rest of this entry »