Archive for J.D. Martinez

For each of the previous installments of this series, where I have compared the 2019 seasons of two players on different trajectories who achieved similar Roto value, I have run a poll. The assumption behind the polls is that the two players could be similarly valued for 2020. I’ve used the polls to get a pulse on which player would be viewed as the better fantasy performer — the one on the upswing or the one who just had a “down” year?

In comparing Jorge Soler and J.D. Martinez, whose 5×5 Roto values were separated by one-tenth of a dollar, there is no mystery as to which player will be targeted earlier on draft day. In the #2EarlyMocks, Martinez ranked seventh among outfielders with an 18.6 ADP, while Soler ranked 30th with a 97.3 ADP. In the recently-completed Pitcher List Experts Mock that I participated in, Martinez was the 20th player chosen overall, and Soler stayed on the board until the 73rd pick. Soler may have slightly outearned Martinez this year, but the Red Sox outfielder/DH has had success for so much longer that it is not at all surprising that fantasy owners would not view them as equivalent.
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Coming into 2015, baseball fans everywhere had the same question on their collective minds: “Is J.D. Martinez sustainable?” The question was more than fair, as there were plenty of indicators that the now-28-year-old’s 2014 breakout could be a fluke.

It was all too easy to point at Martinez’s batting average on balls in play (.389 in 2014) and write off a good portion of his .315/.358/.553 slash. His power spike — from a .120 isolated power in 2013 all the way up to a .238 ISO the next year — was impossible to ignore, but naysayers still had avenues through which to dismiss it.

Martinez may have hit 23 homers in 480 plate appearances in 2014 — with another ten in just 71 PA in Triple-A before his promotion — but had never hit more than 19 in any season, at any level. Moreover, he hit just 19 total homers in the 864 PA he compiled in 2012-2013. Now all of a sudden, he hits 33 of them in one year? This was another area that was relatively simple to disregard as flukish.

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It has begun! May your leagues bring you much joy. What follows is one approach to auctions that should bring you future joy.

I participated in two auction drafts. In both, I decided to spend little on pitching. In The Fake Baseball’s Friends and Family League (TFBFFL), I spent almost the minimum on our (co-own the free team with Zach Sanders) rotation and bench. I spent $16.00 on 12 pitchers ($2 max), but the results were not horrible: Drew Hutchison, Homer Bailey, Carlos Martinez, Henderson Alvarez, Shelby Miller, John Lackey, Sean Doolittle, Carlos Rodon and Rafael Montero. I dropped Chad Qualls already for Zach McAllister. We have enough bats to upgrade.

In my next auction, I wanted two better pitchers, but I still gave myself a $40 cap. I wound up spending $45 on the following:

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You have seen some Tout and LABR reviews for the past few weeks here on the site. We all can’t be so lucky to participate in such glorious leagues. On the other hand, we can all take part in NFBC leagues.

NFBC’s $150 NFBC Draft Champions leagues are a perfect format for me:

a) I have impending time constraints including my first child in June!

b) I didn’t have to ask my wife for permission to use our mutual bank account.

c) I was able to dwell on each pick if/when needed (8 hours to make a pick) and

d) There are no trades or free agent pick-ups once the draft is complete. This feature is my wife’s favorite, and I appreciate the preventative collusion measures. I am also much more interested in draft strategy and player projections/rankings/draft position than I am jumping on small sample sizes in-season.

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As I write this, Mike Trout is sporting a .556 batting average in Spring Training. I also had the pleasure of drafting him first overall in my NFBC Draft Champions league. To celebrate his feat and my luck, I am shooting for at least five of nine of the following bold predictions.

Here goes (extra ballsy right from the start):

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I’m a dweller in general. In slow drafts, I am the ultimate dweller. In the past, I would have ten+ tabs open at a given time when my draft slots were approaching: FanGraphs player profiles; RotoGraphs consensus rankings; Brooks Baseball Player Cards; BP’s PITCHf/x leaderboard; Rotoworld player news; the list goes on.

Then, prior to draft season, Jeff, Eno and I worked on these Arsenal Scores so that you can compare pitcher repertoires. You now have a go-to pitcher matrix if you’re dwelling on a cluster of pitchers.

Last week, Jeff Zimmerman furnished this glorious Hitter Analytics post, which provided us with a go-to hitter matrix when we’re dwelling on a cluster of hitters.

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Mike Podhorzer and Chad Young embarked on a journey–quest to find an offensive expected (x)HR/FB rate.

Based on batted ball distance and angle, you can go to Baseball Heatmaps (BHM) and find expected versus actual homers or verify HR/FB ratios through HR+FB average distance.

Here’s an uber simple descriptive balls-in-play (BIP) expected homer (xHR) formula:

xHR = PA*Contact%*OFFB%*HR/FB. Looking at the outcomes from last year we have the following list first ordered by the most likely regressions:

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What is most valuable in any category depends on how “valuable” is defined. It’s one of those things that has criteria which would seem to lend neutrality to the determination of what is “most,” and yet there is really no defining, objective attribute that completely defuses subjectivity. Consensus must do. What is most valuable, then, is a poll of popular opinion, informally. Formally, it’s a ballot of popular opinion among those considered most credible or deemed most qualified to opine. There’s, potentially, a whole other debate.

According to the indubitable Wikipedia, Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players” might be the most valuable painting, having been sold for the greatest amount of money, adjusted for inflation, in history. Many works may never see the auction floor, of course, making them, essentially, priceless. One of those types is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” which is supposed to have the greatest insurance value on record.

I don’t know art, but I know what I like. You saw that coming.

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Whether you like it or not, it’s time again for me to throw a tantrum reminiscent of a nine-year old sore loser, stomp my feet, and threaten to take my ball home as the real baseball world, once again, ignores my fantasy needs this season. It is the savvy fantasy player that does the necessary research and scouting to put together a strong list of potential September call-ups to supplement their fantasy roster in an effort to either stave off challengers for first place or to make a strong late-season push for a championship run. You not only look for talent but opportunity as well and assuming it’s the MLB bottom-feeders that will likely turn to their youth late in the year, you select a strong group of young up-and-comers. But apparently an organization’s desire to win a minor-league championship trumps their desire to see their youth face big-league competition and now my bench is littered with promising names that may never see any action at the major league level this year, thus rendering my list of September stashes useless to me in a fight for a title. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last week or so we’ve done plenty of articles discussing the impending move of the Houston Astros to the American League and how it will impact those in the fantasy baseball community.  But no matter how many times we attempt to look on the bright side and find the silver lining in it all, there’s one common thing that seems to come through in every piece.  It’s like that early montage in the movie Major League where the Indians’ fan base is looking at their 40 man roster in disbelief — from some guy asking who Mitchell Friedman is to the groundskeepers’ claims that “these guys are sh*tty”.  There’s almost no love for the 2012 Astros and very little hope for the club moving forward.  However, just like the old fantasy adage (is there such a thing?) that states that even closers on bad teams can be good and helpful, the same can be said about everyday players from Houston.  Just because the team is in relative shambles, doesn’t mean that you can’t find some helpful players at a bargain cost.

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