Archive for Starling Marte

If I had a dollar for every time I used this lede, I’d have, what, like, four dollars? I can’t help myself. Blind résumés are my jam because so much of how we value players is tied up in our biases and preconceived notions. Alas, Starling Marte and, of all people, Hernan Perez make for excellent comparisons when prorating their 2016 stat lines. Per usual, I won’t tell you who’s who:

Did you figure it out? The home run column gives it away, given Perez (Player B) has hit more home runs than Marte (Player A) in about half as many plate appearances. Outside of that, we’re looking at mirror-image power, stolen base rates, and plate discipline, the latter of which is most fascinating to me. We’ll dig into the weeds in a bit here — Perez has some faults we ought to acknowledge — but for all intents and purposes, Marte and Perez are nearly-identical, very-elite options through the end of September. (Last week I mentioned this — that Perez could be a top-flight outfielder from here on out — and, frankly, I’m surprised I got virtually no push-back from readers.)

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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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You’ll hear a lot about strikeout rates stabilizing sometime in April, anywhere from about 60 plate appearances to 110 depending on who you trust and who you reference. It makes sense we talk about this, of course, what with the small sample size police on patrol across Fangraphs. From a fantasy perspective, we try to be patient, but there’s nothing worse than holding a turd any longer than you really have to. Because, well, gross.

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We’re making bold predictions this week. My ten will be guys currently not being drafted as “starters” in ten-team mixed leagues that I think should and will be. In other words, I’ll be picking a guy going outside the top ten at each infield position, two guys going outside the top 50 in the outfield, and three guys going outside the top 60 starters. All ADP numbers are from ESPN.

1) Jonathan Lucroy, currently the 14th catcher being selected, will be a top ten catcher. Lucroy was well on his way to being a top ten catcher last season had he not missed two months in the middle of the year with a broken hand. Check out how he compared to other catchers with 300+ PA last year in the five roto categories on a per plate appearance basis:

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The Pittsburgh Pirates enter 2013 with higher expectations than what we’re probably used to. They are, after all, the same Pirates that haven’t had a winning record since before there was anything called the National League Central division (1992) and their 79 wins in 2012 matched their best season in fifteen years. So the bar might not be set terribly high. But after starting the season 47-38, there is residual optimism left over, and much of it is wrapped up in some of the great young talent they will feature in 2013. And the Pirate outfield happens to be one of the bright spots.

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Damn you, internet! Damn you, hordes of fantasy sports writers churning out an over-abundance of content! It used to be so easy; so much fun. I would dominate my fantasy baseball league year after year and there was no greater ego boost than sitting there on draft day, listening to the chorus of “Who’s?” after making what I knew to be a tremendous and pretty sneaky pick in the later rounds and knowing that the player I just grabbed was going to impress all year and be a heavy trade target for my competition in no time. They used to be called sleepers. Now, thanks to all of you, they’re the trendiest picks in the draft and are losing their value year after year. Read the rest of this entry »

With a fair amount of attention paid to my Michael Bourn man-crush piece and so many of you saying how you prefer to grab power early and wait on speed, I decided to put your methodology into action and see where it took me. In another industry mock draft that took place just last night, I painfully resisted the urge to take Bourn, picked around the available speed and made a few different choices. While I cannot divulge the full results of the mock draft out of respect for the site that will be using it as part of its upcoming draft kit, I can discuss a few things in relation to my selections and this particular topic. Read the rest of this entry »