Perhaps your league is just forming, or has been around a few years and has an established core of owners, and you may be mulling some changes in rules. I’d like to suggest adding Quality Starts (QS) + Wins (W) over the simple Wins category in pitching. There are a few reasons for this, but first I would say the “Quality Start” is far from perfect, as it may devalue young pitching that would dominate a game, and the organization is looking to protect the young asset, then pulls the young phenom after 5 and 2/3 innings (a Quality Start requires 6 IP or more with 3 ER or less). There are also times when a pitcher is shelled and bailed out by errors. The “Wins” category can be less reflective of the pitcher’s effort in a positive or negative way depending on if his team scores two or more earned runs a night than league average, or has a bullpen like the 2014 Chicago White Sox. With the flaws in both categories (although I suggest QS as the better of the two on its own), combining the two makes for a more realistic category in my opinion, and let me show you why.
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Applying Spring Training Stats To Fantasy Baseball
March 6, 2015 | Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy | 243 Commentsby: Grey
For my annual Spring Training trip, Sky and JayWrong are joining me in Arizona. Road trip! I leave today and return on Sunday. Of course, JayWrong’s already committed us to a Padres game, and standing outside the stadium to get Padres autographs, and standing outside their hotel to help them with their luggage, and sneaking in to pretend to be chefs at their favorite hibachi restaurant so we can flip a shrimp tail at Kemp. Don’t pull your latissimus dorsi reaching for that crustacean! I believe that was how Flipper injured itself. Any hoo! Baseball, like a flower, blooms in the spring. They also share equally effusive PR people. Just the other day I read about how a petunia’s branches gained 15 pounds and was in the best shape of its life. Sure, it’s always good to look at spring training numbers to give you an idea what you can expect from guys during the season — can I draft Kolten Wong yet?! Players in spring training are facing the top pitchers who are all displaying their best stuff. No one needs time to get warmed up. No one’s trying new pitches or getting a feel for the ball. They are at the height of their game in March. Our former commissioner, Bud, once doffed his toupee and tried to have the World Series played in March. Since these spring training numbers mean so much, I decided to look at some players stats so far:
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For the 4th straight year, Razzball is competing in CBSSports.com’s AL-only league (we also compete in NL-only – here’s Grey’s draft post). We won AL-only in 2012 but have struggled the past two years (8th and 9th). The big change for 2015 is that this will be my team exclusively where we co-managed in 2012-2014.
I enjoy the CBSSports leagues for two reasons: 1) We are in the mixed league versions of LABR and Tout Wars so this league lets us compete in an expert AL-only league and 2) There are daily pick-ups in this league with a $0 FAAB option – this hugely favors maniacal daily players like me.
Below is the team I drafted on Tuesday, February 24th. Here is the complete CBSSports AL-only draft. Notes below.
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The Numbers Game: Power and Discipline
March 5, 2015 | 2023 Fantasy Baseball | 39 Commentsby: Big Magoo
I should probably start off by apologizing to some of you as the title of this post might be somewhat misleading. This is not a Fifty Shades of Grey movie review. For those of you who arrived here with those expectations, I’m sorry. I’m not sure how it could have happened. Nothing in this post references BDSM, dominant/submissive tendencies, or bondage at any time. It’s all very confusing.
What this post does intend to cover is the MLB hitters who displayed above average power and plate discipline during the 2013 and 2014 seasons. The main idea behind this exercise is to identify players who are power assets without being liabilities in the batting average category.
Let’s take a look at the search criteria that were used to identify these players:
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Looking over Shortstop in OBP leagues is not pretty. Even the top-5 gets ugly quick; Troy Tulowitzki (.432), Hanley Ramirez (.369), Ben Zobrist (.354), Danny Santana (.353), and Starlin Castro (.339) round out the top-5. The top guys tend to have good OBP numbers and will be a plus at the position while there are a few guys throughout the rankings that will kill your OBP…
Please, blog, may I have some more?I swear to you, they’re gonna drive me nuts. All of them. Mookie and Rusney and Victorino and Hanley and everyone in that dugout that gets a preseason talk from Schilling about all the good PR you can get from ketchup on a sock. I’m gonna go stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign that reads, “Will work for clarity on the Red Sox outfield situation.” Hey, H&R Block, can I write off clarity on my taxes? The Red Sox said early this week that Mookie Betts and Rusney Castillo will split time in center to see who will win the job. I originally placed Betts at a 10 to 1 long shot to win the job, pun intended and noted. Then Castillo strained his oblique. Oblique with no clarity is just perfect. As I mentioned in our first podcast of the year, the Red Sox are gonna be a mess for fantasy value vs. playing time. There’s so many scenarios that could happen — Hanley can’t play outfield, goes to short and Bogaerts goes to the bench; Rusney and Betts platoon; Betts looks great and Rusney gets benched; Rusney looks great and Betts goes to the minors; Rusney and Betts both look just okay and Nava plays well; Victorino gets hurt and Rusney and Betts both play; Allen Craig looks good and Betts and Rusney are benched. Okay, the last one has no chance, but you get the idea. Rusney’s health should be fine by Opening Day, but the oblique injury obviously puts him behind Mookie now. I’ve lowered Rusney into my top 60 outfielders and changed his projections. I’m sure this will change again by tomorrow. Brucely, I think the only one guaranteed playing time in the outfield is Hanley (assuming he can handle it, and doesn’t Hanley it), unless there’s injuries, which there likely will be. It’s a shituation of Old Testament, swarm of locust proportions. Anyway, here’s what else I saw in spring training for fantasy baseball:
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When Grey and Jay first approached me about doing some preseason posts about Two Start Pitchers “Strategy” I thought “uhhhh, play the best guy”. Problem is that doesn’t really make for intriguing content, now does it? So instead, I’m going to do 1500 words about soccer! Naw, I’m joking…if you wanted to be inundated with my footie ramblings, you’d be reading our soccer site…(shameless plug alert). So instead I’ll focus my post on the very things I look for when ranking my two-start pitchers from week-to-week. An overview of what to look for when scouring the wire for that pick up to tip the scales of your counting stats in your weekly head-to-head match-up. So we’ll break everything into sections; home vs. road splits, opposing lineup righty vs. lefty splits, K/BB ratio, and HR/9. To illustrate this we’ll use an example player to discuss each when appropriate. Sound good? Just say yes, I don’t care what you think! Muhahahaha!
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Per the usual, I have to drop a caveat when it comes to Deep League Thoughts about pitchers: there’s no such thing as a deep league pitcher. Unless you’re talking 20 team leagues and then you’re calling some relievers deep league pitchers. I ain’t going there so let’s realize upfront before you feel affronted. Now that we have that settled, when does a young pitcher settle? Two years? Four years? Do they ever? It’s all hard to predict. As we’ve seen through our years as fantasy baseballers, growth isn’t a promise from a young kid, it’s a possibility. How many rookies came and went on your rosters in 2014 alone? I’m not asking you, Grey. You’d add and drop the same player five times in one day so you don’t count, you chronic rosterbator. That said, I’m sure Trevor Bauer hit your roster more than once. He had some good with some bad in 2014. Maybe you got the bad from him and won’t go near him again. Maybe you had more of the good like I did and you’re willing to look into him a bit further. If so, trudge on with me. We’re about to go deep inside the enigma that is Bauer and what he can do for you for the 2015 Fantasy Baseball season…
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2015 Minor League Preview: Texas Rangers
March 4, 2015 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 26 Commentsby: Mike
Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2014 (9) | 2013 (3) | 2012 (2) | 2011 (15) | 2010 (2)
2014 Affiliate Records
MLB: [67-95] AL West
AAA: [70-74] Pacific Coast League – Round Rock
AA: [80-59] Texas League – Frisco
A+: [82-56] Carolina League – Myrtle Beach (2015: High Desert)
A: [80-59] South Atlantic League – Hickory
A(ss): [40-36] Northwest League – Spokane
Graduated Prospects
Rougned Odor, 2B | Nick Martinez, RHP | Michael Choice, OF
The Gist
This system is full of risk/reward prospects with big ceilings. It’s also deep, and I had a hard time narrowing it down to just 10 to be honest. Fringe top ten guys like Keone Kela could help the major league bullpen as soon as 2016, and Kela’s triple-digit heater looks like the stuff of a closer. Then there’s Delino DeShields Jr. who was a Rule 5 selection from the Astros. DeShields hit 11 homers and stole 54 bases in Double-A last season. You can’t throw a stone without hitting a fantasy relevant prospect on this farm. Heading into 2015, Rougned Odor will get another extended look at second base while Jurickson Profar continues to battle shoulder issues. For what it’s worth, I still like Profar in dynasty leagues and at just 22 years old he still has plenty of time to get things back on track.
I know how much you love draft strategy (do you? Yeah, of course you do!). Whether it’s snake draft or auction draft. You gobble this shizz up. Okay, I wasn’t speaking literally, take the corner of your computer monitor out of your mouth. Auction drafts are the best. They’re like that time you followed a man with a pony tail into the gym locker room only to realize his broad shoulders were that of a large lesbian and you were in the women’s locker room and had to run out. Happy accidents! So, lots of you know my fantasy baseball auction tips already, but some of you just joining us — Hey, close the door behind you! Were you raised in a barn? — may not. Lots of the strategy for my snake drafts also applies here. If you ask me — and you kinda did ask me by reading this shizz — auction drafts are where it’s at, yo! You get in a room with your best fantasy baseball buddies. The guys you haven’t seen since last year’s draft. The guys you don’t want to see until next year’s draft. One guy, and there’s always one, has to show you why the Droid is better than the iPhone. Then you have the guy who will go the extra dollar for (fill-in favorite player from his favorite team). You know that’s his favorite player because he’s wearing his jersey. There’s also the guy who wears a jersey of a player he would never draft from a team he hates just to throw you off his scent, only he points this out to show you how clever he thinks he is; he’s not. There’s the guy that makes you question why you’re even friends with him. There’s the guy who has a solar calculator and insists on sitting by the window. There’s the guy who is allergic to cats and, even though there’s no cat, insists someone’s clothes are ‘covered in dander.’ There’s the guy who brings healthy snacks and something with bean sprouts that he says is wrapped in a lavash just so no one will ask him for any of it. There’s the guy on Skype because he has to babysit, which makes for a crying baby in the background of the entire draft. And, of course, you have the guy who brings only Cheetos and turns everything he touches orange, and, if he touches something that was already orange, he makes it oranger. Through all of this, it always turns out, this day is the best day of the year. As for online auction drafts, they’re just a’ight. Anyway, here’s some tried and true tips to help you through your auction fantasy baseball draft:
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A Fantasy Baseball Bot Basic Coding Introduction
March 3, 2015 | Our Leagues, Y to Z | 31 Commentsby: paul
I thought a fair amount about what the topic should be of my second article, and while I would have been happy to continue waxing theoretically about what a fantasy baseball bot might look like, I figure people probably want to see some actual code or at the very least pseudo-code. You’ll settle for some pseudo-code, right? Great.
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RCL Update: Drafts Are Coming (Actually, Some Have Already Happened)
March 3, 2015 | Our Leagues | 26 Commentsby: Jay
We are almost there folks. Where is there? Draft time. BUT EVERYONE JUST HOLD UP FOR A SECOND. Remember that one time when I set 100 RCL’s as my personal goal, and therefore, by mitosis, or photosynthesis, or osmosis, or dry-humping, it became your personal goal? Yeah. In this regard, we are not almost there. I mean, technically we are, only 25 more leagues… but drafts are right around the corner. It’s gonna be close. WE’RE TOO CLOSE MAN. Just 25 more commissioners… look, how about this… if you go commish a league right now (yes, we can totally have more than 100, in fact, I prefer it), I promise to go over some of the leagues that have drafted already. Sure, that’s something I was going to do anyways, but this comes with free shipping and handling. Because boy do I know how to handle it. Whatever that means. But sure, even if you don’t commish a league, you can still continue reading after the jump… I can’t stop you, per say. But I promise you there will be guilt. I WILL MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A CATHOLIC. If you’re already Catholic, well, you have enough guilt to deal with, so yeah. Take that, I guess.
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