We like baseball. We might even love baseball. But we love fantasy baseball more.
If you read this site at all, this should not be news to you. We do not pretend to be a general baseball site. We do not pretend to write like general baseball writers or general baseball fans. Our focus and point of view has been irrevocably bastardized through the tainted prism of fantasy baseball fanaticism (and the fact that we are smart asses).
Much like you, the vast majority of our baseball-related surfing is focused on day-to-day management of our fantasy baseball teams. Over the years, I shudder to think how much time that Grey and I pored through player news, game logs, player stats, etc. trying to find information that could help our teams.
Over the past year, about the time I started fiddling with Stream-o-Nator and the Player Rater, there has been something gnawing at me as I pored through all these pages – particularly all the player pages.
I could do better.
Not in the sense of creating a better ‘general baseball’ player page. There are plenty of great baseball player pages out there. But at the end of the day, most of these player pages are all from the ‘general baseball’ perspective. They are for education and reference versus making day-to-day fantasy baseball decisions. (There are some fantasy baseball sites with player pages but none of those have caught my fancy either)
So this offseason, I kicked off a project to create the ultimate fantasy baseball player page. A player page whose sole purpose would be to help fantasy baseball fanatics make their day-to-day decisions. A player page that fantasy baseball fanatics can look at and say, “Wow, this was made with me in mind.”
I suppose time will tell whether I succeeded or not in my goal of making the best fantasy baseball player page. I certainly hope I did because it required a significant investment in time, tech/design help and data feeds. And we have no desire right now to create a subscription model to try and bilk the subset of you who are uber-fanatics.
So if you like the Player Pages, I have just one ask (besides use the pages early and often): Pass it on in some way. If you are writing a comment on Facebook or Twitter about a player, link to his Razzball Fantasy Baseball Player Page. If you are commenting on another site and you are making an argument gleaned from our data, link to his Razzball Fantasy Baseball Player Page. Even hitting the ‘Like’ button helps a little.
Okay, enough frigin’ setup. Here are some highlights on what we’re launching…
Player Pages
- Accessible by clicking on player names throughout site and the site search (top right of page)
- Available for all players on MLB 40-man rosters
- For hitters (example: Ryan Braun)
- RHP vs. LHP – Figure out instantly whether a hitter has great success or trouble against an RHP or LHP. All hitters have $ values and projected stats based on projecting 650 PAs vs. RHP and vs. LHP. This data is based on leverage 3-years of data and a big dollop of regression.
- Projections for Next 7 Days (aka Hitter-tron) – Identify hitters worth a short-term pickup or optimize your bench hitters.
- Rest of Season Projections / $ Values – Coming very soon
- Game Logs – Last 10 and 30 day game log with Points per game (based on H2H)
- Positional/Total Ranks, $ values, and Stats for: Season to Date, Pre-Season, Last 7 Days, Last 30 days, Month, and 2010-2012. For Season-to-Date, there are $ values for many different roster formats including those using OBP and OPS.
- Career major/minor league stats – Available courtesy of a pop-up grid courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com
- Expected In-Season AVG – Easily identify what a player’s AVG would be if his BABIP was as projected in the pre-season.
- Menu to navigate to other players based on their eligible position(s)
- For pitchers (example: Justin Verlander)
- Starter Projections for Next 7 Days (aka Stream-o-Nator) – Evaluate streaming candidates, 2 start pitchers in weekly leagues and make decisions on when to start/sit rostered pitchers
- Rest of Season Projections / $ Values – Coming very soon
- Game Logs – All games started for the year (with $ values) and Last 30 days for relief appearances
- Positional/Total Ranks, $ values, and Stats for: Season to Date, Pre-Season, Last 7 Days, Last 30 days, Month, and 2010-2012. For Season-to-Date, there are $ values for many different roster formats including those using QS and Holds.
- Career major/minor league stats – Available courtesy of a pop-up grid courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com
- Menu to navigate to other players based on their eligible position(s)
- This tool is designed to identify attractive short-term hitter pickups and to determine when to start/sit hitters on your roster. The higher the $ value, the more attractive the start.
- Hitter-Tron projections rely on Steamer projections as a foundation and then adjust based on several game-specific factors that include quality of opposing starting pitcher, hitter’s performance vs. the handedness of opposing starting pitcher, park factors, whether the game is home or away, and predicted batting order spot (for Runs, RBIs, and Plate Appearances).
- Available for up to the next 7 days as well as a ‘next 7 day’ total suited for weekly league roster decisions
- Sort or filter by any statistic – including greater than (>) and less than (<) requests
- Will be adding a ‘% Start’ predictor soon (currently set at 100% for all rostered hitters not on the DL)
Rest of Season Projections & Player Rater (available in next couple days)
- Projections brought to you by Steamer
- Playing time projections + Saves + Holds + QS produced by Razzball
- Leverages previous season and current season data to make the best predictions on player value for rest of year.
- Will have Rest of Season rankings available on a near-daily basis.
- Uses the same $ methodology as the Season-to-Date Player Rater
- Will be leveraged for Stream-o-Nator and Hitter-Tron upon release
Other Notables
- In-Season Stats – Available for Hitters and Pitchers. Includes 12-team MLB $ values + RCL Ownership %
- FIP vs. ERA – Identify which pitchers are getting ‘lucky’ vs. ‘unlucky’
- Best 100 Starts of 2013 – See who had the most valuable fantasy baseball starts of the year
