Archive for Joc Pederson

Maybe it’s shiny-new-toy syndrome. Perhaps it’s the poor batting average (.246 last year and .224 through 1,099 plate appearances in the Majors). It could also be a sizable platoon split that’s resulted in limited opportunities to date against southpaws. Whatever the reason or reasons, Joc Pederson’s ADP in NFBC drafts is just outside of pick 200 (201.95), and he’s barely cracking the top-50 outfielders selected (47th).

At his current cost, the soon-to-be 25-year-old outfielder has to merely repeat his 2016 production to deliver on his ADP after ranking as the 44th most valuable outfielder last year. It seems crazy that his ADP doesn’t bake in any potential improvement, and there are reasons beyond his youth to buy into major gains being made by the center fielder in 2017. Read the rest of this entry »

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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Kyle Schwarber gets double-duty this week. Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer discussed Kyle Schwarber’s 2016 potential. He mentions he read a post in which the author allegedly considered Schwarber in the second round of a 2016 mock draft.

I found the whole thing intriguing, primarily because we’re working with a small sample — slightly more than 150 plate appearances. I tried to draw meaningful conclusions on a comparably small sample size for Carlos Gonzalez, and now I’m pretty sure hired assassins are tracking me. Alas, what follows is not a disagreement with Pod (because his analysis is excellent) but an unauthorized biography extension of his post.

In June, I compared Joc Pederson to George Springer, two blossoming young stars to each of whom I alluded as “evolving juggernauts.” In fact, I think Schwarber is not particularly dissimilar from Pederson. With another two months of baseball in the rear-view mirror, that comparison is especially illuminating, given we’ve seen just how tumultuous Pederson’s rookie campaign has been.

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The economics of keeper and dynasty leagues intrigue me because no two owners value the future equally. Given my primary league is of the keeper taxonomy, I am always thinking about the future. Given the especially miserable state of my team in said league, I’ll soon reach a point where I am only thinking about the future.

A segue of remarkably poor quality: Joc Pederson is good at baseball.

Another segue of questionably better quality: he reminds me of George Springer for reasons not entirely surprising.

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I have never thought much about, or given much attention to, FanGraphs’ fan projections. It’s primarily a matter of stubbornness: I run my own projections, and I develop my own strategy, so why should I listen to you? At least there’s a trace of rationale behind it: I know how I created my projections (whether or not they’re any good is a topic for another day), but I have no idea how you created yours. Thus, I am more likely to blindly trust a computer-generated projection system such as Steamer instead of random fan projections.

Still, there is a sort of bizarre, secondhand wisdom to fan projections. For every person who is high on a particular player, there could be another person who is equally-and-oppositely down on him. Solicit and aggregate enough fan projections and you could produce a very reasonable prediction of a player’s performance by sheer chance.

Which is why fan projections intrigue me. If, for example, Steamer predicts the most likely outcome from a wide range of possible outcomes for a player, then the fans convey the anticipated outcome for a player. The difference between them, you could say, is what amounts to a market inefficiency (aka a price distortion). The larger the difference, the greater the inefficiency. We see these inefficiencies arise every year — 2014’s most prevalent example is probably Corey Kluber — and they typically manifest because of a lack of information about certain players.

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