And that might be conservative. I've seen people projecting him to steal 60, 70, or even 80 bases since that's what recent league leaders have done. However, I see no reason to try to project Hamilton’s steals by comparing him to recent league leaders. He is not any of those other players and has demonstrated that he is clearly an anomaly in terms of speed, which means that it makes sense to treat him as an individual case. Anyway, here’s my thinking, assumptions, and the [player]Billy Hamilton[/player] steal calculation:
500 at bats x .295 OBP x running 80% of time x successful 85% of time = 100 SBs
So yeah, I promised a time and place where I would eat crow on my
11 Bold Predictions for 2013 (you can refresh your memory here with
Part I and
Part II), and this is where we landed. Right smack dab in the off-season where hopefully none of you will read this. Obviously that means my predictions were a smashing success, right? Totally. That's exactly what it means. I'm lying. But hey, these weren't rational predictions, so there's that. Follow me after the jump for the official tally...
This is a two part series looking back at the top 20 seasons since 1903 by retired hitters not currently in the Hall of Fame. You will see a number of familiar names here and some that even the most knowledgeable baseball fan has never heard of. To see, the top fantasy baseball seasons, please see our
Historical Fantasy Baseball Player Rater. MVFH is an award we made up that stands for Most Valuable Fantasy Hitter. You can see the full list of retroactive award winners
here.
Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2013 (26) | 2012 (15) | 2011 (2) | 2010 (9) | 2009 (6)
2012 Affiliate Records
MLB: [96-66] NL East
AAA: [60-84] International League – Gwinnett
AA: [76-63] Southern League – Mississippi
A+: [69-70] Carolina League – Lynchburg
A: [73-66] South Atlantic League – Rome
Arizona Fall League Players — Scottsdale Scorpions
John Cornerly (RHP); Juan Jaime (RHP); Aaron Northcraft (RHP); Shae Simmons (RHP); Kyle Kubitza (3B); Tommy La Stella (2B); Elmer Reyes (SS); Robby Hefflinger (OF)
Graduated Prospects
Evan Gattis (C/OF); Julio Teheran (RHP); Alex Wood (LHP); Anthony Varvaro (RHP); Luis Avilan (LHP); Cory Gearrin (RHP);
The Run Down
The high-impact fantasy potential on this list starts and ends with Lucas Sims. Still, I view this Braves farm system as an underrated group, in that, there are a number of intriguing college arms here, and Atlanta, as an organization, has proven itself in recent years to be quite adept at developing college pitchers into MLB assets. (See [player]Mike Minor[/player] and [player]Alex Wood[/player].) On the offensive side of things, there's far less appeal. Hitting prospects like Bethancourt, La Stella, and Salcedo could all be spending time with the big club in 2014, and they each bring a glimmer of fantasy upside, but it's the variety of upside that barely garners consideration in mixed leagues. With a decent amount of talent pushing through the upper levels, this is a group worth monitoring early on next season, but there's truly nothing here to get too excited over until Sims makes his way to Turner Field.
For those not infected by the baseball stat virus, I imagine it is hard to determine what is a bigger waste of time - people spending countless hours obsessing over fantasy baseball versus those that pore through historical baseball statistics and debate things like Hall of Fame worthiness. It must be like a nutritionist determining the relative unhealthiness of fried foods vs. processed snacks.
With that, I give you the
fried Oreo that is the
Historical Fantasy Baseball Player Rater.
Some quick basics:
- It includes every hitter and pitcher season since 1903.
- Based on 12-team MLB (C/1B/2B/SS/3B/5 OF/CI/MI/UTIL/9 P) with a $260 budget and 5x5 categories (R/HR/RBI/SB/AVG, W/SV/ERA/WHIP/K)
- All players are given a total $ value as well as a $ value per category (we will likely change all player raters to this going forward vs. showing Point Shares)
- Please check out the extensive FAQ document for any methodological questions (and post there with similar questions).
Below are the various reports you can pore through. Our data table allows for some cool filtering/sorting that will be familiar to anyone who uses our tools such as
Player Rater,
Stream-o-nator, or
Hitter-tron. There are quick instructions at the top of the table and more in-depth instructions below the report grid.
The below serves as a Frequently Asked Questions section for Razzball's
Historical Fantasy Baseball Player Rater. See
here for a less comprehensive introduction. If you have a question not answered below, please post it in the comments.
1.
General Info
2.
Methodology
3.
Use of The Data
General Info
What is the Historical Fantasy Baseball Player Rater?
A trivial exercise to determine the fantasy baseball dollar value for every player season since 1903.
SAGNOF refers to "saves/steals ain't got no face". In other words, they can come from unlikely sources throughout the season and us fantasy baseball folk shouldn't sell the farm for them on draft day. Let me tell you, 2013 was no exception. When I received my series assignment from Grey earlier this year, I was excited to explore steals as a topic for my column, if only because I knew it would help a lot of people out there do better in the category. I also couldn't recall many other fantasy sites hitting steals as a primary topic week-in and week out, so hats off to Razzball for being ahead of the game yet again.
It was fascinating to follow along as players rose and fell in value based on steals alone, and even more fascinating to watch match-ups against certain teams yield steals in bunches. This offseason, I'll be posting every other week and sticking with the stolen base as my focus. We'll start by taking a look back, but then we'll shift our gaze forward to 2014 and see if we can get a leg up on the competition prior to our drafts next spring. Let's get started with a look at the big picture when it comes to steals over the last five years...
We're gonna try something different today. We're not going to talk about a lot of extraneous shizz. We're gonna talk about [player]Yordano Ventura[/player]. We're not going to talk about Ruben Studdard on The Biggest Loser and how his rolls have rolls while wishing he had a Rolls. We're not going to talk about the newest season of The Voice and how Christina's coaching style is to sing the songs better than the singtestants, how Blake and C. Lo can't sing worth a lick and how Adam just purses his lips like Zoolander. We're not going to talk about the new Drake album and how I've listened to it on repeat for the last three weeks. The Language is my jammie jam! No, we're not going to talk about any of that. We're especially not gonna talk about how I'm getting married tomorrow. HOLY EFFIN EFF ARE WE NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT! Can we never talk about that? Is it too late to run off to Miami and be with Giancarlo forever and ever amen? We're not gonna talk about any of that. We're going to talk about Yordano Ventura or YoVe, which sounds like a black Jew kvetching. "Do you have to throw the no-look pass so hard? YoVe!" Did you know Sammy Davis Jr.'s favorite expression was YoVe? Of course, you didn't know that because I just made it up. So, with all of that said about Yordano Ventura, what can we expect from him for 2014 fantasy baseball?
