Archive for Justin Upton

The fantasy community is down on Justin Upton. I get it, but it’s a little strange to me given our collective penchant for recency bias. Upton had a monster second half and finished the season an almost-perfect replica of his usual self. (The operative qualifier being “almost.” We’ll get to that in a second.) Sure, it was a rocky year, but hey, Joey Votto had one, too. Dude was batting .213 with a 27 percent strikeout rate (K%) through May…

Right, so Upton was an almost-perfect replica of himself. In a vacuum, his production looks nearly identical to his typical annual accomplishment, down to nearly every statistic except for his batting average on balls in play (BABIP). In my investigation of his woes, I noticed his uncharacteristically low infield hit rate (IFH%). Here’s a list of hitters with higher infield hit rates than Justin Upton in 2016:

• Salvador Perez
• Kendrys Morales
• Albert Pujols
• One hundred and thirty five other players not surnamed Ortiz, Mauer, Seager, Granderson, Cabrera, Votto or Kemp

Yes, Upton ranked among the bottom 6 percent of hitters in terms of infield hits. If there’s a single bone to pick about Upton’s season — well, aside from the insane volatility — it’s that his BABIP failed to get back on track, continuing to linger at a league-average mark. It seems a trend has emerged; accordingly, it’s easy to accept said trend as a new normal, as a resignation of Upton’s fifth tool.

I’m here to make the classic* Infield Hit Rate Defense, or IHRD, as it’s known in the infield hit community.**

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In fantasy baseball we talk a lot about five-category players or performances but we don’t usually define what that actually means. In its most liberal application, the term is a shorthand for a productive player whose worst performance in any one category is still palatable. Sometimes we’ll talk about someone with sneaky five-category potential when describing breadth of upside.

I suspect that most use the term when describing players who provide a positive value in all five standard roto categories. But in most cases, we use the descriptor when “power-speed threat” might be more appropriate. Or that given the dichotomous relationship between the two skills, we lower our standards in one category because a player stands out in the other. If we use the most literal definition, that a five-category player provides at least positive contributions across all five categories, we’re really talking about just seven players, six of whom were drafted in first five rounds.

Playing Ottoneu typically requires an adjustment. Many fantasy leagues have some form of keeper/dynasty component, but having a player’s “keepability” be tied directly to his salary can add a wrinkle many owners are not familiar with. Sometimes this can be daunting. How do you value players when salaries come into play? Where is the line between talent and salary and how much weight do both of these factors hold? What do you do with a highly paid player who is under performing? How do I account for the salary cap? What if I have no financial flexibility? How am I supposed to make free-agent pickups or gain cap space?

These are several questions that spawn out of the specific salary structure within Ottoneu. While I certainly can’t answer all these questions at once, I want to take some time to focus on the last one. Specifically, how Ottoneu is different than other fantasy formats for free-agent pickups and how you can use this format to help gain an advantage on your league-mates?

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Average Draft Position or ADP is very valuable. I weighed NFBC’s ADP into my personal NFBC Draft Champion rankings equally to my position-adjusted composite projections (Baseball HQ combined with RotoChamp composites (Steamer, ZIP’s, etc.)) and the results were great. I used this, our pitcher arsenal scores and these hitter analytics  as my three main draft tools.

I wanted to take evaluating draft position one step further. I want to understand how consistent each player is drafted near their ADP.

Howard Bender, who manages Mock Draft Army provided me with the raw draft results of 19 expert drafts (NFBC format: 2c-1b-2b-3b-ss-ci-mi-5of-9p). It’s not the largest sample, but they are expert drafts, and the drafts that I have taken part in definitely provided great references.

The Approach:

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I ran the 2015 Steamer projections through Zach Sanders’ Fantasy Value Above Replacement system and compared the results to early ADP data. Below I’ve got a player at each position that the Steamer projections think are unlikely to live up to their draft day price.

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Justin Upton finished the season as the 21st most valuable outfielder according to our valuations. But I can almost guarantee that he’ll be drafted higher than 21st among outfielders next year. The main reason I’m so confident in that is because he finished 2012 as the 19th most valuable outfielder according to ESPN’s player rater, and he was drafted as the seventh outfielder on average on that site in 2013. Someone in your league is sure to believe he has another 2009 or 2011 in him.

Despite finishing consecutive seasons as the 20th best outfielder give or take a spot, Upton got there in very different ways. The long and short of it is that last year his batting average fell in large part due to a big increase in his strikeout rate, his steal total fell almost 60% from where it sat in the previous four years, and a 50 point jump in ISO boosted his homer total and offset the decline in the other areas. Is there a chance those factors change and Upton realizes his upside? Or should you assume the sum of all the parts will continue to equal the 20th best outfielder one way or another? Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I’ve taken a look at early season changes in contact rate and fly ball rate because of Russell Carleton’s research showing we’ve reached the point in the season where the sample for those statistics has become ‘reliable.’ There has been some debate in the comments about what reliable means and how much the small season sample can help us in predicting what a player will do the rest of the season.

I look at it like this. For the statistics that have crossed that reliability threshold,  we can look at the players who have seen the biggest changes in either direction and feel safe that their skill has improved or decreased to some degree. That doesn’t mean regression isn’t coming. It just means that at the end of the year it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a player with an improvement or decline from their career mark in a particular category. Although the improvement or decline at the end of the year is not likely to be as extreme as it is at this point in the season.

Today I want to look at the hitters who have seen the biggest changes in ISO because a fair number of players have now crossed the 160 AB threshhold shown in Carleton’s research. Below are the guys who have seen the biggest increase in ISO. After that, we’ll examine whether some other statistics back up the power surge. And a little bit later we’ll see if we can’t figure out how much regression to expect. 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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Is there an outfield more exciting than that of the Braves right now? I think not. Sure, maybe the Angels come close now that they’ve added Hamilton, but overall, I don’t see a better starting three that has as much proven talent with still plenty of upside waiting to emerge than the Braves have right now. You’ve got strong power, excellent speed and each one of them plays strong enough defense that Fredi Gonzalez won’t ever hesitate to keep running the same three guys out there so long as everyone is healthy. In the fantasy world, that’s just pure gold. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you were trapped in a coal mine or under a rock somewhere and hadn’t heard the news, Justin Upton was traded from Arizona to the Atlanta Braves on Thursday morning. Articles and opinions have wallpapered the internet discussing things like Upton’s home/road splits, his expected performance now that he’s playing side by side with brother B.J., and where he is now ranked amongst baseball’s outfielders in both real life and in fantasy. To me, it seems redundant to perpetuate the conversation. He’s a highly-regarded player with immense talent, is just 25 years old, and is heading to a competitive organization that has shown a commitment to winning. Is he suddenly going to suck? No. So long as he stays healthy, an issue that he has dealt with in his relatively young but seemingly long career, Upton is going to continue to be a highly-regarded player with immense talent, has youth on his side, and is playing for a winning ball club. If you own him in your fantasy league, you’re psyched, and if you need reassurances and your hand held any further on the matter, consider it done. But we’ve got a bigger fish to fry here. Read the rest of this entry »