Archive for Brandon Moss

In ottoneu, most owners will implement some form of platoon among their outfield spots. While platooning in fantasy baseball is hardly sage advice, ottoneu is a little bit different in that the format specifically lends itself to platooning more than other fantasy platforms. First, you have 40 roster spots. Second, you have 5 OF spots and a 810 game cap at the position. Third, it’s a point format. Because of the 810 cap, you almost need to start a full slate of OF in nearly every game you can, as scheduled off days can make it very difficult to meet the 162 game cap at each of the 5 outfield spots. On top of that, the roster, because of it’s size, allows you to stash prospects or players you plan to use only in specific situations. However, you want to make sure you don’t depend on them too heavily, as scheduling can easily leave you below the cap.

Granted, if you’ve played ottoneu for any amount of time, you already know this. You know that platooning can be an extremely effective strategy. You probably know that strong side platoons are really what you want to acquire (more plate appearances) and you probably have a good idea of a couple names who fit this bill. You are looking for hitters who are likely to get 400+ plate appearance in their platoon role, so as not to be left missing starts with regularity. Today, I want to look at 3 (it’s a new year and I’m feeling generous) players who fit the bill of effective RHP mashers, but at varying costs.

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If you are new to Ottoneu, one of the first things you’ll realize is that the list of rostered players is deep. One strategy that these larger rosters allow for is the ability to platoon players. While this strategy isn’t too useful with 25 man rosters, it’s perfect for the 40 man rosters of Ottoneu.  Many teams utilize it in some capacity, but it can also lead to certain pitfalls. Let’s review a couple guidelines to platooning

1.) Target good home parks and left handed hitters

The goal in using a player in a platoon situation is to maximize your Points Per Game (P/G) by starting them in favorable situations. Unlike a major league team, you do not need to pair hitters who kill left and right handed pitching respectively. Instead, focus on platoons which are likely to yield a high number of usable games.  (This is very important as meeting the game cap greatly increases your chances of success.) The two most common splits I find myself building platoons off of are home/road splits and left/right splits. In these scenarios, I am targeting players who play in favorable home parks or perform well against righties.

A couple players who I plan to use in these types of platoons in 2016 include (vRHP) Chris Coghlan, Brandon Moss, Josh Reddick, and (@Home) Ben Paulsen.  There are plenty of other options as well! Coghlan, Moss, and Reddick all hit righties well, while Paulsen plays in Coors field. In each of these scenarios, those mentioned are likely to put up better production than their overall lines may suggest, and is likely to cost something similar to a 5^th OF or bench player.  As you look for players who perform well in these types of situations, you’ll stumble upon a few players you really like. Feel free to post some of your favorites in the comments. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

The Cardinals starters — and even their reserves — are mostly set. Jedd Gyorko was acquired in return for Jon Jay and should serve as the primary backup to Matt Carpenter at third base, Jhonny Peralta at shortstop and Kolten Wong at second base. None of the starters ahead of Gyorko are in danger of losing their starting jobs, but should any of them suffer an injury, the former Padre could have modest deep-league value as a middle infielder with average to above average power (.158 ISO and 49 homers in 1,426 career plate appearances), albeit with an ugly average (.247 last year and .236 for his career). That said, there’s no playing time battle at second base, shortstop or third base. There is, however, a fierce battle to be waged at first base. The outfield is essentially settled, but there is one position worth monitoring during the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Steamer isn’t entirely to blame. I doubt he hurt them on purpose. I’m sure he’s a nice guy. He’s smart. He knows a lot about buckets of baseball players and learns more about them every year. I apologize, in fact, because I shouldn’t assume that Steamer is male. Based on Steamer’s intelligence and propensity to learn, it’s likelier to be a dudette.

Steamer projections are good and can save you a ton of time. What they can’t be is perfect, or even close to it. That’s good, because if they or other projections systems could be, then fantasy baseball leagues would probably be very boring. As a result, though, especially if you use Steamer projections for your rankings, you have to figure out which players about whom Steamer isn’t closer to 100% informed.

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This past season was a pretty productive one for Brandon Moss. The Oakland Athletics’ outfielder-first baseman hit a subpar .234, but his 25 dingers helped to place him in the top 40 outfielders by Zach Sanders’ standards. His $12-plus in earnings would make him a top-15 first baseman, in case he went that way for fantasy baseball players. The recession on offense made Moss’ numbers more valuable in rotisserie leagues.

The 2014 campaign could have been better, perhaps notably so, for Moss, in fact. The slugger went yard for the 23^rd time this season on July 24, yet he finished with a total that tied him for 21^st in the majors in that category. He much more resembled the hitter he was in 2013 (.267 ISO) prior to the All-Star break this year (.268/.349/.530, 21 jacks, and a .262 ISO in 364 PAs) than he did after it (.173/.310/.274, 4 HR, and a .101 ISO in 216 PAs). Moss wasn’t the same by the end of July.

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*Updated 10/23/2014 with Position Tiers ($5.00 USD).

The 2015 Steamer projections are up on FanGraphs! “Steamer” uses playing time projections from our depth charts, but right now there are important players (Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester for examples) missing actual projected playing time. I therefore went into mensch-mode and manually updated Plate Appearance and Innings Pitched projections – very manually, but at least somewhat rational. What I did for these players was go into their “Steamer 600” projections and took their HR, R, RBI and SB per Plate Appearance projected rates (W, SV, SO per Inning Pitched for pitchers) and outputted associated counting stats connected to the quantity of Plate Appearances/Innings Pitched.

*To see which players I manipulated, go into the “P” and “H” tabs in the below embedded file: click on the “…” tab to the left of the current depicted tab. I highlighted all names and counting stats per plate appearance or innings pitched that I edited in Yellow so that I can associate some accountability with the end-rankings. I edited a few catchers’ PA totals even though Steamer already had totals for them (Lucroy, Mesoraco, etc.). I also edited Troy Tulowitzki‘s and Carlos Gonzalez’s PA totals, because…well, you know. I could spend all month editing the PA totals, but I’m not that much of a mensch.

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Earlier this week, Jeff Zimmerman presented Early 2015 Hitter Projections using Steamer and/or ZIPS averaged ROS projections. The main contingency at this time: all values are set to 600 plate appearances. If I had all the time in the world, I would go through the list and manually adjust the PA based on lineup position, career PA/G, etc, but I’m not that much of a Mensch.

The next day, Mike Podhorzer highlighted some of the surprises ranked in the top 30. Again the 600 PA contingency is clear as Rajai Davis, Jarrod Dyson and Corey Dickerson make the list although if Dickerson doesn’t get platooned, I (and Mike) think he’ll surpass expectations. His splits page tells us there is no good reason to platoon him.

In Mike’s intro, he also referenced that there is no adjustment for position in Jeff’s SGP rankings. That’s where this post comes in.

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Last week I took a look at the three hitters who were not included in the initial Steamer preseason projections who are now projected to be above average fantasy players for the rest of the year. Today I want to look at the hitters who were included in the preseason projections who have seen their projected value increase the most one month into the season. I explained the methodology in the last post, but the short version is that each player is assigned a standardized score for each roto category (using z-scores) and when those are added up and an adjustment is made for positional scarcity we get a number called fantasy value above replacement (FVARz). Full disclosure: I’m using the numbers I calculated using the rest-of-season projections on April 29. I didn’t have time to re-run the numbers for this post, but that shouldn’t have a huge effect. Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s any tool on this site I truly love, it’s the “last calendar year” sort on the leaderboards. For example, if you head over to the batting leaders and sort by wOBA over the last calendar year, you’ll get Miguel Cabrera & Chris Davis at the top, as you’d expect… but you’ll also see a pretty surprising name crack the top 20 hitters with at least 500 plate appearances: Brandon Moss. In the top 20!

Just look at the names behind him to see how impressive that is, because he’s beating out Jose Bautista, Evan Longoria, Prince Fielder, and Carlos Beltran, among others. But Moss is only owned in about half of ESPN leagues, and barely more than a quarter in Yahoo. Have we all missed something?

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Why is Alex Wood only the 15th most expensive pitcher today? With a price tag of only $11,219, he represents a nice value today for several reasons, the first of which is that he is good. And we’ll discuss that more in a moment. But there is also the fact that he will be facing the Nationals who have the 4th worst wRC+ against left-handed pitching like Wood. And the weather conditions in Atlanta will be favorable for pitchers. Game time temperature is projected to be fairly low at 70, and the wind will be blowing in from right at 7 mph.

But Wood being good is the most important factor. Kevin Correia has a good match up and favorable weather conditions today, but that isn’t enough to make you ignore his below average ERA and strikeout rate. The quality of the pitcher is obviously still a factor. Read the rest of this entry »