Archive for Fantasy Baseball Projections

Is Justin Upton going to bat second for the Tigers? Or sixth? What would happen to Addison Russell‘s value if he moved from ninth in the order to second? Is Corey Dickerson really going to hit cleanup for the Rays? How does Yoenis Cespedes‘ signing affect Michael Conforto’s projections?

When it comes to evaluating our typical fantasy baseball hitting categories, we know that home runs, batting average, and stolen bases are dependent upon some mix of skill and playing time (let’s say “skill-dependent”). Runs and RBI are a bit more difficult to assess. They have playing time and skill elements (getting on base and hitting for power), but they are also largely team-dependent. The projection systems, like Steamer, project R and RBI for us, but what if we want to make an adjustment? Or we want to take a gamble on a player winning a particular battle?

My goal with this post is to provide a simple framework that can be used to quickly answer questions like those above. I’m also not the first to attempt this task. So when I’m done displaying my method, I’ll share the other strong approaches I’ve been able to find. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Holiday time. Here is my Holiday present to you: 2016 Fantasy Baseball Rankings and $ Values using Steamer Projections and NFBC’s Format: (2)c,1b,2b,3b,ss,ci,mi,(5)of,u,(9)p and (17)bench spots.

For review, I’ll discuss the approach after the rankings, but you can check out Zach’s FVARz series of posts as well. Zach and I do a few things differently, but I use this template over others, such as SGP because I like how hands-on it allows you to be when ranking your projections. It allows for both pragmatism (drafting a certain number of players within a specific position for your league format) and objectivity (focusing on the Z-Sum/5×5 value of each player). I will describe below:

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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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