Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
Adam Forster looks at the Top 100 Prospect lists from Baseball America, ESPN, Mound Talk and his own website and compares them, looking for analytical trends. No real conclusions can be drawn, I think you’d have to look at a few years worth of lists to get a fair appraisal of tendencies, but he shines a very bright light on the issues that go into the making of one of these lists.
He’ll share data, too, if you ask.
These are random notes on the Peter Kreutzer entry in this year’s Tout Wars NL. The idea is to give some context for the picks, why I made the final bid and when, plus any other tidbits along the way.
The big issue in this draft was that prices were generally right on. Only a few players (Chris Snyder, Ty Wigginton, Yunel Escobar, Lastings Milledge) ended up more than a few dollars off my bid prices. So in most cases the bidding quickly got to the area of the price, and then it just depended if two guys wanted to swap bids or not at that point.
Before Tout I make up a list of players I’d like at my prices that add up to the $260 budget, and I try to work from that. In the NL in recent years there are lots of stars but very little depth among hitters. I targetted Troy Tulowitzki and Brandon Phillips and held out some hope to pick up David Wright, though my $41 target was not aggressive.
Wright was nominated first and almost immediately went to $42 and I opted not to go past my budget. I did pick up Tulowitzky for $27 and could have made a bid on Phillips at $30, but I flinched and he went for $29. As I didn’t make that bid it ran through my mind I had him elsewhere, and I didn’t really want to make commitment bets in two leagues on him, though I think he’s no fluke.
On the pitching side I wanted to take many mid-teen potential aces with some level of injury discount. The odd thing is that the first one I bought was Carlos Zambrano. I have injury built into his projection and bid price, which is unusual, yet when I was price enforcing at $20 he became mine. Okay.
Enough prelude, here’s the team in position order.
Catchers: Dave Ross $3 and Eric Munson $2. The good catchers went for decent prices (Martin $26, McCann $18, both to Mike Lombardo, current champ), while the riskier mediocre hitters (Carlos Ruiz $11, Michael Barrett $9) went for too much. Ross and Munson went for too much but at that point I had the cash and the pickins were awfully thin. One hopes for just enough AB to get some positive power numbers.
Corners: Todd Helton $19, Chad Tracy $5, Ian Stewart $1. Helton was a good price early, I thought. Tracy will start the year on the DL, but at that price he can miss some time and I’ll be okay. The collapse of talent at 3B was a problem. Mark Reynolds and Nomar went cheaply ($8 and $4 respectively) but I let them go, and Kouzmanoff ($19) and Wigginton and Yunel Escobar went for a lot, so I let them go.
Middle: Tulowitzky went for his price. I like Miguel Tejada for $19, like I like Helton. Tad Iguchi for $8 is a good price, those his power will be neutralized a bit in that ballpark. Reyes went for $44, Ramirez for $40, and Rollins for $36.
Outfield: Juan Pierre at $16 wasn’t a buy I ever expected to make, but the price is good enough, I needed speed, and we get to keep his stats if he were to end up in the AL. Brad Hawpe at $23 is a fair enough price for another guy I have no shine for. I did like that he was a Rockie. Adam Dunn at $23 is a good price for a big power hitter, especially since I seemed to be compiling a team that didn’t value batting average much. Corey Patterson at $15 is the speed version of Dunn and one hopes that they don’t crash into each other chasing a short pop up. Final outielder, as it were, was Cody Ross, who should end up the regular center fielder in Miami. A regular (or close to it) for $3 can’t be bad, even though Ross isn’t all that good.
Utility: I had $4 and one slot left and it was my turn to nominated. Scott Podsednick has been having a good spring, and like so many of my players is a Rockie. It’s a shot.
Starters: Zambrano is joined by Pedro Martinez ($14) and Ben Sheets ($15), who are both having strong springs. The injury risk is high, which is why I could afford the three of them. If two play most of the season I should be okay. Noah Lowry $1 and Ryan Dempster $1 were crickets. I didn’t expect to get Lowry. He’s hurt and his WHIP may be especially painful coupled with Zambrano’s when he ‘s healthy. Dempster is having an excellent spring adjusting to starting. Final two slots went to Chuck James $3, also hurting but talented and supposedly coming back, and Carlos Villanueva $6, who has been very good the last two years, but has been squeezed this spring, perhaps it turns out all the way to Triple-A because he has an option. But with Capuano’s injury and I hope not Sheets’ he’ll see plenty of time Milwaukee.
Closers: Takashi Saito $22 was at the top end of the top prices for closers, as I had him rated. But I had him for $27, so he seemed like a bargain until all the other closers sold for similar prices. The closer game is kind of like a draft. We each take one really good one, one risky one, and perhaps a CIW. My risky closer is Kerry Wood $10, who has looked good this spring, but like so much of this team, comes with upside and injury potential intertwined.
Reserves: I got Mike Hampton (injury prone, having a nice spring) in the first round, shoring up one of my problem areas. In later rounds I got Yusmiero Petit, having a breakout kind of spring, Jonathan Meloan, in Triple-A but will end up in the bullpen at some point behind Saito, Joe Koshansky, as some overreaching Helton insurance, and Chris Sampson and Victor Diaz, late in the game, just because you can’t too many pitchers or outfielders.
After the draft Corey Schwartz told me that my team finished, based on his projections, in a three way tie for second. There is a lot of work to do, and injuries will be an issue (hopefully a manageable one), but this is the start.
Baseball Digest Daily :: Voros
I’m a big Brian Bannister fan, because it looks to me like he gets better results out of his stuff than other pitchers do. It turns out he’s a bit of a stathead and knows who Voros is, and can maybe actually even explain DIPS (though he doesn’t in this story).
Now I’m a bigger Brian Bannister fan, and I think maybe he gets better results out of his stuff because he’s thoughtful. That would be so excellent.
Jason Collette found me in the lobby of a hotel that says it’s in Times Square but is actually between Bryant Park and Herald Square, and got me to the right floor, for which I’m thankful. He’s also the only Tout NLer to post a draft summary so far, which gives him dibs on the narrative.
You can find the whole results at the Tout Wars site.
I’ll explain my team here tomorrow.
A 12 team AL only league auctions players. It should be straight forward, no? But it isn’t. The link takes you to the TOUT WARS AL results. You can decide who shone and who sucked. Feel free to comment if the mood fits.
On Monday I’ll post the NL results, which I was involved in. That is, as a team, scrapping for advantage.
The one thing I know for sure is that your league will vary.
Cheers.
I have to admit, I was giddy. I wrote up who I was going to buy and why the night before the 2002 Tout Wars draft, and then submitted commentary later about why things changed.
They changed mostly because Albert Pujols went for $28. We have to adapt.
Still, even with a $28 Pujols my askrotoman.com squad finished fifth, as it had in 2001 and 2000. For some reason revealing who I was going to buy before the auction didn’t get me a better team. It got me a mediocre one.
Revisiting the 2002 draft story reminds me that we inevitably spout all kinds of booshwah because we’re excited and interested and we can. And we know stuff. The future careers of baseball players is in their hands. We get to judge, but they get to gloriously prove us wrong.
Those are the moments we should live for.
Supposedly the only photo of Willie Mays’ willie is for sale on eBay, and Deadspin has the story. The seller has placed a Giants logo over the sensitive area, perhaps a bit of subliminal seduction. Thanks, baseballmusings.com.
This is a tricky one, because a lot has happened in the last couple of days.
What was a Battle Royale (think Pulp Fiction) has suddenly become a Media Noche (think Memories of Underdevelopment). Alexei Ramirez is suddenly catapulted into the White Sox starting job because yesterday the team waived Juan Uribe and today Danny Richar discovered a stress fracture in his ribs. Or is he?
Just so you know, I hadn’t projected (in Patton$onDisk08) Ramirez yet because absent a role and absent context it’s really hard to do any work at all. He’s been a very good player in Cuba and could be a major leaguer, or not. There’s really no way we can know with anything but the certainty that comes from saying that he’s a good athlete, he can hit but his defensive rep is weak, and we’ll see.
I had Richar down for 400 at bats, with three homers and three steals. He was a placeholder, at best, if he ended up getting that playing time. The reason he might have…
Is because Juan Uribe, who can hit a little, also can’t resist swinging. So he makes plenty of outs while occasionally whacking the ball. I had him down for 375 at bats, too many for the two of them combined, but again, each probably with fewer than one of them would have. If one hadn’t been released and the other injured.
So what do we do with Alexei Ramirez? Let’s look at some depth charts.
Rotowire.com has Ramirez as the White Sox starting 2B, with Pablo Ozuna as the backup. Danny Richar? Is out.
BaseballHQ.com gives Ramirez 40 percent of the playing time, with Richar and Uribe splitting the other 60 percent.
Over at sandlotshrink.com they like Richar, but note his injury, backed up by Ramirez.
ESPN.com has Uribe down as the starter, followed by Richar and Ozuna (they have Ramirez as the backup at shortstop behind Orlando Cabrera and Juan Uribe).
The usual quirky Rototimes.com has Uribe as the starter, Richar as the sub and Ramirez as the sub sub.
Rotoworld.com has Danny Richar alone at second base, with Ramirez listed as the third string center fielder.
Yahoo.com lists Uribe, then Ramirez.
The comprehensive Sportsline.com goes with Uribe, then Ramirez, then Richar, then Ozuna, then out of left field, literally, Jason Bourgeois.
So, how to sum it up? The Richar injury gets the obvious guy to fail out of the way. But does it mean the job is Ramirez’s? Indications are that the waivers on Uribe are revocable, so let’s leave the last word to Ozzie Guillen, who deserves it:
“Why have we not named Uribe the second baseman? I mean, he’s a great spring-training player, then all of a sudden spring training is over and we see a different player. If the season starts tomorrow, who pitches for Cleveland? Sabathia? Well, then the starting second baseman will be Pablo Ozuna. The next day? We’ll see.”
I’ve cut Richar’s projected time in half, left Uribe the same, and given a slight bump to Ozuna, who apparently will play against lefties. Alexei Ramirez? I’m leaving him blank. He may well earn a role this summer, probably as a utility player, but there seem to be too many bodies ahead of him right now to project him for playing time.
If he’s on the White Sox on opening day he’ll be worth a bid in the end game, unless he emerges from the scrum with the job. Then bump him to $6.
When Alex told me he was going to write about the XFL, a league a bunch of us oldtimers play in with oddball rules but rigorous discipline, I was skeptical.
Let me conclude, however, before you’ve read this, because no one wants me to go on too long, that Alex is the master of the roto narrative. I dare say that there isn’t anyone else in the world you might want to read about a fantasy baseball season. Especially when you’re not involved. But it’s hard to stop reading Alex.
If you play in a mixed league, you’ll want to read this story, which somehow finds all the suppleness of the game in the decidedly unsupple details of our rosters.
3/21 Fixed the link.
These guys sent me an email today and asked me (and I’m sure everyone else they could think of) to write about them. The site is brand new and a little thin. The two big news stories are the launch of the new design, which is more exciting for them than us, and their season preview, which isn’t yet available. It’s also one of those widgeted together CMS jobs, not unattractive (at all) but distractingly overwhelming with information on the front page. And, I would suggest, not terribly helpful steering me toward what I should be reading.
But I looked around some more and found a nice simple story in the articles section about contact rates and batting average that will be very useful if true for fantasy players, and made me want to put together my own study.
There’s also a piece, linked to here, about the very varying ADP for some fellas with similar stats last year. I like this sort of thing and thought it might be of interest for me to post my projections for the five guys (rather than the writer’s use of last year’s stats).
Player A Â 550 Â 116 Â 45 Â Â 133 Â 2 Â Â .306
Player B Â 600Â Â 91 Â 32 Â 121 Â Â 5 Â .323
Player C Â 550 Â Â 91Â 35 Â Â 110 Â Â 5 Â Â .296
Player D Â 550 Â Â 83 Â Â 33 Â 109 Â 1 Â .300
Player E Â 450 Â Â 89 Â 26 Â Â 88 Â 5 Â Â .321
I think my projections explain why Player E is being drafted 66th (I have him rated a little lower, as the 50th best hitter) this year. He’s old and he’s been hurt recently. But as the writer says in this useful piece, when the perception runs ahead of the player’s decline (one hopes) there’s a chance to find some real value. (Actually, he ends the story with a rather wishy-washy conclusion, which suggests he thinks taking Player E with the 66th pick is pushing it a little, too. Good for him!)
Good luck to MLB Front Office. Or as my intellectual property attorney, Confucius, might say, May the legal team at MLB and MLBAM not hear about their site for a long time.