Before I lose everybody to the football side (where Jay and crew are doing some killer stuff BTW) I’d like to give you a sneak peek at the offseason prospect lists coming your way this offseason. While writing up the top ten prospect lists for each organization last year, I found myself frustrated by how the traditional top ten prospect list doesn’t really do it for me as a fantasy player. What if a team has 12 prospects I need to know? What if another one only has 8? How do I know which ones are going to help me in my redraft league versus which ones are going to be sitting on my farm for three-plus years? I know I’m not supposed to scout the stat lines, but which stats are important to include anyway? If you haven’t noticed by now, I like to sit around by myself and ask a lot of questions. Sometimes an idea bubble floats up from the ether…and other times I just pass out in my Frosted Flakes. In both scenarios I’m wearing a bathrobe. It’s the official uniform of the fantasy writer. Back to business. Here are some of the changes I’m planning on making during the 2015-2016 offseason…
Tiers Over Numbered Lists
I think this is going to be the biggest change and hopefully the most helpful. Rather than ranking ten specs against each other, I’m going to break the organization’s farm into three chunks. The first chunk will be your consensus top 100 prospects. These are players who have high ceilings and some minor league numbers to support their saucy scouting reports. The second tier will be guys with lower ceilings, but high floors and imminent ETAs. This group should be the most helpful for redrafters (especially in some of the deeper formats). The third tier would be your teenagers and recent draftees. Regardless of ceiling, they are just so far away that they are more interesting in deeper dynasty formats. These are players you might see “breaking out” in High-A ball and by midseason they are popping up on lists. I need snazzy names for the tiers, so if you have any ideas feel free to post them in the comments. By tiering the specs and then ranking within each tier, I’m hoping to make it easier for fantasy players to find the “type” of spec they are looking for and then make decisions on who to take from within each group. “I need a prospect that can help me now” versus ” I need a stash in my dynasty where we already have 200+ prospects owned”.
New Stat Lines
I included stats in last year’s lists, and I think it was helpful. At the same time, minor league stats can be really misleading, so I want to provide the ones that are the most “telling” or give the best snapshot of a prospect regardless of their minor league level. Here’s what I came up with…if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them too. For hitters, I’d like to give each prospect’s age, minor league levels, plate appearances, batting average, BABIP, on base percentage, slugging percentage, strikeout rate, walk rate, stolen bases, and caught stealing. Basically I’m taking runs and runs batted in out of the equation and focusing more on the stats that go along with the tools I’ll be talking about in their blurbs. For pitchers, we’d be looking at age, minor league levels, innings pitched, K/9, BB/9, ERA, and FIP. I’m working on finding accurate velocity too, but the key word there is accurate. All in all, I’m excited about the change. I think the stats I give this offseason will be more meaningful after weeding out the ones that aren’t really necessary.
With the minor league seasons winding down this week, I’m excited to start looking ahead to next year. The baseball floor at Razzball Towers gets kinda lonely during the winter, so don’t forget to stop by my cubicle and talk some prospects.
