Mr. Cheatsheet | Fantasy Baseball Draft Tools and Research

2012 Fantasy Cheatsheets | Late February Update

2012-02-22T19:15:00.000-05:00

Another round of fantasy baseball cheatsheet updates is here today! The three available 2012 cheatsheets are powerful Excel files made for your roto draft, roto auction or point-based league drafts. They each pull in data from projection systems, expert rankings and ADP sites and let you choose what you want to display so you can make the cheetsheet unique to you. For roto leagues, the spreadsheet also has the neat feature of showing you the expected roto points gained (WERTH value) in each stat based on your individual league settings and the projections you select.

The following blog posts about the initial release of the cheatsheet have much more of the basic information about what to expect out of these: Point Leagues, Roto Draft, Roto Auction. When opening up the spreadsheet, you may be asked to enable macros... Please enable macros as that is the only way this spreadsheet can work!

The latest updates to the cheatsheets contain eight new roto categories for the roto sheets and include new ADP data (from Yahoo), expert rankings and projections (ZiPS). For hitters, the new roto categories are Total Bases, Total Bases + Walks, Doubles, and Triples. For pitchers, the new roto categories are Innings Pitched, Strikeouts - Walks, Hits Allowed, and Walks Allowed. Aside from those big updates, the most important change here is getting the ZiPS projections and Yahoo ADP added into the sheets. At this point, we're just waiting on the Marcel and Steamer projections before I can add in the Combined projections for the final release.

In addition to those features, any ADP or projection data that was previously in the cheatsheets has been updated with whatever updates were available.

Download the 2012 Roto Draft Cheatsheet or
Download the 2012 Roto Auction Cheatsheet or
Download the 2012 H2H Points League Cheatsheet

Data included for this release:

CAIRO projections
RotoChamp projections
Fangraphs Fan projections
ZiPS projections
MockDraftCentral ADP data
Yahoo! ADP data
ESPN staff rankings
ESPN (T. Cockcroft) rankings
RotoChamp rankings
Roto Summit rankings
Yahoo! rankings
Clubhouse GM rankings
Combined rankings (average of available rankings)

New features for 2012 version compared to 2011:

Team Summary tab added (as explained above)
Live Standings now only based on team's starters as opposed to all drafted players
Draft Central tab is redesigned to be easier to read and follow
Customize button added to have more control over what is shown and not shown
Ability to sort by position now added so you can more easily target a specific position when needed

New features in this version compared to last:

Four new roto categories for batters and four for pitchers
Added ZiPS projections to the available projections to choose from
Added Yahoo! ADP data and rankings
Updated Fangraphs Fan projections and MockDraftCentral ADP data
Updated any expert rankings that have changed
Added 3 new expert rankings and updated combined rankings
Added a few extra players to the default draft pool

So, that's the latest update to the sheets. There will be additional updates in the near future as additional projections become available. Any major updates to the cheatsheets may be tougher to do at this point but let me know if there any features that might be worth adding. I still haven't addressed problems for Mac users or those with Excel 2003 or earlier. I'm going to look into the possibility of doing AL and NL only versions of the cheatsheet as well, if the demand is large enough.

Also, be sure to check out my Twitter feed to know when any minor updates are made to the cheatsheets.

2011 Projections Flashback - Predicting Hitter Stats

2012-02-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

Your fantasy baseball draft preparation will only be as good as the projections that you are working from because good input equals good output. There are a multitude of great projection systems out there right now but which one should you choose? Let's look at last year's results to help answer that question.

Disclaimer: For my casual baseball fans, this is going to be a lengthy data-heavy article so feel free to sit this one out. For my analytical friends, keep in mind that I'm not a statistician and there are likely better methods to use than I chose here. For the people in between, enjoy!

Step 1
I gathered data from 7 different 2011 projections and eliminated the players that weren't shared by all of them. I also averaged the projections from the 4 free options (Marcel, Steamer, ZiPS, and Cairo) to create an 8th projection as well. The systems were:

Marcel: The most basic forecasting system around - it takes three years of player data, weights the most recent years heaviest and regresses the players towards a mean (age factor included)
Oliver: Similar concept to Marcel with a few wrinkles about how minor league stats are calculated (park/league factors included)
PECOTA: A bit more complicated in that it finds comparable players to each projected player and bases the projections on the history of those comparable players
Roto Value: Projects a stat, does age regression and then historical skill regression
Steamer: I haven't found a full explanation of their current model but historically it takes three years of player data and regresses certain stats more heavily than others without an aging factor
ZiPS: Does a little of the weighted regression like Marcel but for four years and does a bit of the comparable player regression based on aging trends
Cairo: It's like Marcel but with more bells and whistles (stat-specific regression and position-specific regression for instance)
MSZC: Averaging the four free projections for a player into one projection

For fantasy purposes, I eliminated players who ended up with less than 300 AB in 2011 as a majority of them would be part-time players that weren’t necessarily relevant to projecting for fantasy baseball. There were 214 players left over at this point.

Step 2
From those 8 projections and actual 2011 stats, I only included the 5 stats that are most commonly used for fantasy baseball hitters: AVG, HR, R, RBI and SB. As a separate sixth stat, I converted each of those stats for a player to a z-score and then added the five z-scores to create a “total 5x5 value” which gave us 6 points of comparison between the projections and the results.

Step 3
I threw all of the projections into a magical machine, which spat out the correlation to 2011 results (r-value) and the root mean squared error (RMSE). The correlation value helps us see how well the systems ranked the players in each statistic. RMSE will show us badly the projections missed the mark on their projections (with larger errors receiving extra punishment). Basically, in this instance, larger correlation values are better while smaller error values (RMSE) are ideal.

Results – Actual 2011 Stats vs. 2011 Projections (300+ AB)

Correlation	AVG	Rk	HR	Rk	Runs	Rk	RBI	Rk	SB	Rk	5x5	Rk
Marcel	0.42	6	0.71	7	0.50	7	0.57	7	0.78	6	0.51	8
Oliver	0.47	4	0.73	5	0.53	5	0.64	3	0.81	2	0.57	3
PECOTA	0.49	2	0.73	4	0.49	8	0.61	6	0.80	5	0.57	4
RotoValue	0.41	8	0.69	8	0.51	6	0.57	8	0.70	7	0.53	7
Steamer	0.45	5	0.74	3	0.59	2	0.67	1	0.81	1	0.60	1
ZiPS	0.49	1	0.75	1	0.57	3	0.63	4	0.63	8	0.56	5
Cairo	0.42	7	0.72	6	0.55	4	0.61	5	0.81	4	0.55	6
MSZC	0.47	3	0.74	2	0.61	1	0.66	2	0.81	3	0.58	2

RMSE	AVG	Rk	HR	Rk	Runs	Rk	RBI	Rk	SB	Rk	5x5	Rk
Marcel	.026	6	6.94	6	19.1	4	20.5	6	7.1	5	3.38	7
Oliver	.026	4	7.04	7	19.8	6	20.7	7	6.8	3	3.26	4
PECOTA	.025	1	6.82	4	19.9	7	19.8	4	7.1	4	3.26	3
RotoValue	.030	8	7.61	8	22.8	8	24.1	8	8.4	7	3.39	8
Steamer	.026	5	6.72	3	19.0	3	19.4	2	6.7	1	3.16	1
ZiPS	.025	2	6.50	1	18.7	2	19.5	3	11.4	8	3.26	5
Cairo	.027	7	6.88	5	19.2	5	20.2	5	6.7	2	3.30	6
MSZC	.026	3	6.50	2	17.3	1	18.5	1	7.1	6	3.16	2

In terms of correlation, Steamer did quite well across the board here while RotoValue, Cairo and Marcel lagged behind. ZiPS did great with the exception of stolen bases which were so bad that they also hurt the correlation to the 5x5 total roto value stat.

When factoring in the frequency and size of the errors, Steamer and the combination of free projections seem to be kicking the most butt thus far. Towards the end here, we’ll come up with a definitive ranking. But, first, there’s more work to do…

Step 4
Comparing projections to actual results brings back some good information. However, it should be noted that forecasters tend to start by projecting base stats and then adjusting for playing time at the end. We've already compared to that final result but I also want to know how well each system does before playing time is factored in. So, I took all of the projections and actual stats for each player and adjusted them onto the same 500 AB scale (though it could be any amount and the results would be the same). Would the projections change? Are some projections good at predicting player output but not as good with getting playing time correct?

Results – Adjusted 2011 Stats vs. Adj. 2011 Projections (300+ AB)

Correlation	AVG	Rk	HR	Rk	Runs	Rk	RBI	Rk	SB	Rk	5x5	Rk
Marcel	0.42	6	0.77	6	0.59	3	0.65	7	0.82	6	0.58	5
Oliver	0.47	3	0.78	3	0.61	2	0.70	2	0.83	5	0.63	1
PECOTA	0.49	2	0.78	4	0.46	8	0.68	4	0.83	4	0.62	3
RotoValue	0.41	8	0.74	8	0.56	7	0.61	8	0.79	7	0.58	6
Steamer	0.45	5	0.78	1	0.58	5	0.71	1	0.84	2	0.62	2
ZiPS	0.49	1	0.78	5	0.59	4	0.67	5	0.66	8	0.57	7
Cairo	0.42	7	0.77	7	0.57	6	0.66	6	0.84	1	0.57	8
MSZC	0.47	4	0.78	2	0.63	1	0.69	3	0.84	3	0.61	4

RMSE	AVG	Rk	HR	Rk	Runs	Rk	RBI	Rk	SB	Rk	5x5	Rk
Marcel	.026	6	5.65	4	11.3	3	14.6	5	6.1	4	2.71	5
Oliver	.026	4	5.73	7	11.0	1	14.0	4	6.2	5	2.71	4
PECOTA	.025	1	5.65	5	12.4	8	14.0	3	6.1	3	2.71	3
RotoValue	.030	8	6.05	8	12.2	7	16.0	8	6.7	7	2.79	7
Steamer	.026	5	5.51	2	11.8	5	13.5	1	6.0	2	2.65	1
ZiPS	.025	2	5.63	3	11.8	4	14.8	6	11.1	8	2.74	6
Cairo	.027	7	5.70	6	12.2	6	14.8	7	5.8	1	2.82	8
MSZC	.026	3	5.51	1	11.2	2	13.9	2	6.4	6	2.65	2

The results are somewhat similar to what we saw from the results with playing time included except it seems that Oliver seems to improve quite a bit in this scenario. But, let's break this down and see who the actual winners are...

Step 5
We have a ton of funky numbers on all sorts of different scales and we still don't have an answer on which system does the best for fantasy baseball hitters. If I were to add up the rankings for each projection, we would have an answer but it wouldn't recognize those times when 1st, 2nd and 3rd were a virtual tie and when last place was far, far behind the others. To account for that, I converted the rankings to standardized z-scores to show how far above or below average each projection was for each stat. So, in comparison to the actual 2011 statistics (playing time included), here are the overall results for correlation, RMSE and the combination of the two:

Correlate	AVG	HR	Runs	RBI	SB	5x5	Corr. Total
MSZC	0.5	0.8	1.5	1.0	0.6	1.0	5.3
Steamer	-0.1	0.7	1.2	1.3	0.7	1.3	5.1
PECOTA	1.1	0.3	-1.1	-0.2	0.4	0.4	1.0
Oliver	0.5	0.3	-0.3	0.5	0.7	0.5	2.2
ZiPS	1.2	1.1	0.5	0.4	-2.1	-0.1	1.1
Cairo	-1.0	-0.5	0.1	-0.2	0.6	-0.5	-1.5
Marcel	-0.9	-1.0	-1.0	-1.4	0.2	-1.6	-5.7
RotoValue	-1.3	-1.8	-0.8	-1.4	-1.0	-1.0	-7.5

RMSE	AVG	HR	Runs	RBI	SB	5x5	RMSE Total
MSZC	0.5	1.1	1.4	1.1	0.3	1.2	4.4
Steamer	0.2	0.4	0.3	0.6	0.6	1.3	2.1
PECOTA	0.8	0.2	-0.3	0.3	0.4	0.2	1.3
Oliver	0.3	-0.5	-0.2	-0.2	0.5	0.2	.0
ZiPS	0.8	1.1	0.5	0.5	-2.3	0.2	0.5
Cairo	-0.2	.0	0.2	0.1	0.6	-0.4	0.7
Marcel	-0.1	-0.2	0.3	-0.1	0.3	-1.3	0.3
RotoValue	-2.3	-2.1	-2.1	-2.3	-0.5	-1.4	-9.2

	All
MSZC	9.7
Steamer	7.2
PECOTA	2.3
Oliver	2.2
ZiPS	1.6
Cairo	-0.8
Marcel	-5.4
RotoValue	-16.7

The combination of the free projections is the winner here mainly because of how much better those projections are at minimizing the size of the errors as seen by that great RMSE z-score. That shouldn't be all too surprising since any extreme projection is brought closer to normal when projections are combined with each other. It takes some of the crazier data and brings it all closer to a safe middle ground.

Now, when we look at the results that remove playing time from the equation, the rankings end up shifting around quite a bit with Oliver and Marcel taking huge leaps while ZiPS takes a huge drop:

300 Adj.	Corr. Total	RMSE Total	All
MSZC	4.0	3.5	7.5
Oliver	4.3	2.3	6.6
Steamer	3.5	2.6	6.2
PECOTA	0.9	0.7	1.7
Marcel	-2.0	1.1	-0.9
ZiPS	-1.5	-1.9	-3.4
Cairo	-2.5	-1.1	-3.6
RotoValue	-6.8	-7.4	-14.2

When all is said and done, Steamer handily wins when it comes to actual results yet Oliver narrowly wins when playing time isn't factored in. However, neither can beat the power of a simple combined projection system in this experiment.

Step 6
Maybe I picked the wrong amount of AB’s to use as my filter though. Perhaps, if I included players with less playing time then the results would shift around. Well, let's see! I ran the same experiment to include all shared players above 100 AB in 2011 (321 of them). Here is what the final z-score rankings were in that case:

100 Actual	Corr. Total	RMSE Total	All
MSZC	5.5	4.0	9.6
Steamer	5.0	2.0	7.0
PECOTA	1.7	2.4	4.1
Oliver	2.9	0.8	3.7
Marcel	-0.6	3.5	3.0
Cairo	-1.5	-1.3	-2.8
ZiPS	-1.7	-3.1	-4.7
Roto Value	-11.3	-8.5	-19.8

100 Adj.	Corr. Total	RMSE Total	All
MSZC	3.8	2.5	6.2
Oliver	3.6	2.1	5.8
PECOTA	2.0	2.9	4.9
Steamer	2.7	2.1	4.7
Cairo	0.4	0.3	0.7
Marcel	-0.9	1.0	0.1
ZiPS	-1.4	-2.4	-3.7
RotoValue	-10.2	-8.5	-18.7

The gaps aren't quite as wide but the standings are similar with Steamer doing well when it comes to actual results but Oliver doing better when playing time isn't a factor. However, it should be noted that Marcel does markedly better here when taking into account these players who got less playing time.
When it comes to 2011 forecasts for hitters for fantasy baseball purposes, Steamer gets the gold medal with Oliver and PECOTA getting silver and bronzes. Despite that, I still bow down to the power of combining projections to help reduce the size of any projection errors.

How Players Changing Teams Affects Fantasy Value

2012-02-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

When free agents move to new teams or leagues in an offseason, baseball commentators will rant and rave about how this affects a player's value and, really, it's a lot of posturing and guessing. Now there has been some actual research done to show what those changes in scenery really mean. It started with a piece within The Hardball Times 2012 Annual by Matt Swartz (which I haven't read because, well, it costs money) about what happens to free agents after they sign those contracts. Tom Tango dug a little further into it yesterday in his own way to analyze the results and now I'm here to show you how to apply this information towards your fantasy baseball preperations. So, yes, this is an article about an article about an article. That's meta!

The researched players were broken down into three categories for both pitchers and hitters: free agents who stayed with the same team, free agents who went to a new team in the same league and free agents who went to a new team and switched leagues.

Tango compared these free agents to the standard type of age regression that each player should experience in a three-year window based on his previous research. He found a number of interesting things starting with the simple fact that players who were kept by their original team in free agency were mostly found to follow standard aging regression patterns. He also found that hitters regressed worse than normal in their first year if they changed teams and then they regressed even worse than that in their second year. If they changed leagues when changing teams, the effect was even more harsh (likely because of seeing a whole new league of pitchers).

For pitchers changing teams in the same league, they were worse than usual in their first year with a new team and experienced horrendous regression compared to normal in their second year. If they changed leagues, their first year was actually better than average (likely due to the benefit of hitters not having seen them before) but they regressed more than expected in their second year.

There could be a number of reasons for this effect and it's hard to really pinpoint without a lot of guessing. The authors of the original article assume that teams let players go when they have specific knowledge about the player regarding health issues or skill problems. Regardless of the reasons behind the effect, it does seem to exist.

Here are some of the players that I could come up with who have changed teams in the past few years via free agency (let me know if I missed anyone):

Jason Bay – 2010 – New Team, New League
Chone Figgins – 2010 – New Team, Same League
John Lackey – 2010 – New Team, Same League

Adrian Beltre – 2011 – New Team, Same League
Carl Crawford – 2011 – New Team, Same League
Adam Dunn – 2011 – New Team, New League
Cliff Lee – 2011 – New Team, New League
Victor Martinez – 2011 – New Team, Same League
Carlos Pena – 2011 – New Team, New League
Jayson Werth – 2011 – New Team, Same League

Hiroki Kuroda – 2012 – New Team, New League
Prince Fielder – 2012 – New Team, New League
Albert Pujols – 2012 – New Team, New League
C.J. Wilson – 2012 – New Team, Same League

The 2010 players all bring up bad emotions when you see their names. The same can mostly be said for the 2011 players aside from Cliff Lee (a pitcher who changed leagues). Yet, the 2012 players are ones that many of us are excited about so perhaps a little bit of caution should be exercised with them.

First and foremost, the research tells us that these 2012 players will likely regress a bit more than expected this year (except for Hiroki Kuroda perhaps since he's a pitcher in a new league). The hitters (Pujols and Fielder) are going to new leagues and could suffer a bigger regression than expected. Also, keep in mind that the 2011 players may continue to regress more than expected so you should consider avoiding them too, including Cliff Lee. As the research showed for pitchers, the first year in a new league can deliver better than expected results but the regression in the second year is a bit more harsh so he might take a step backward this year.

Since the media shines the spotlight on big names who change teams and leagues, it's easy to think that additional headlines means that they deserve special attention in your drafts. You must avoid that hype. Much like their original teams knew something about these players, you have some inside information on them and now you can also use that to your advantage.

Bud Norris - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-02-20T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Bud Norris will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected using my sabermetrically-inclined methodology which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 231.13 (Round 20 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: HOU #3 SP

2011 Production: 6-11 W/L, 3.77 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 176 K in 186 IP

My 2012 Prediction: 8-10 W/L, 3.75 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 190 K

Bud Norris has always been a bit of a strikeout artist. In 355 minor league innings, Norris struck out 375 batters. He continued that success with a 9.15 K/9 rate in the majors heading into the 2011 season. Despite those gaudy strikeout numbers, his Achilles' Heel had been his flirtation with walks as evidenced by his 4.40 BB/9 rate heading into last year. In 2011, he registered a much improved walk rate by dropping it down to 3.39 per 9. By having those 20-or-so less baserunners, it helped lower his WHIP and ERA to career lows.

In crunching the numbers, the best comparable in my eyes for what Norris could be in 2011 is C.J. Wilson. In 2011, Wilson had a K/9 of 8.30 which Norris should be able to match and he had a 2.98 BB/9 after years of it being above 4.00. Norris is certainly not the same exact pitcher since Wilson is more of a groundball pitcher so Norris will let up a few more HR's along the way. But, regardless, Norris has the potential to deliver a low ERA, high strikeout total and a respectable WHIP. However, you should not expect Wins from Norris as the Astros may even be worse than last year. If he played for a team where he could register 10 or more wins then he likely would be a hotter commodity this year. Your best hope is that he can get traded to a contender and get some wins that way.

The worst case scenario would be a serious regression in his control that would force his walk rate to rise again. But if he can maintain his walk rate from last year or improve upon it even more then Norris is a great late-round value as he helps you in a few areas while only hurting you in the Wins department.

Sleeper Verdict: Sleepy. He has great potential but also represents a risk as he hasn't yet shown us he is completely able to deliver upon that potential. But, in the 20th round of your draft, why not take a chance?

How To Evaluate Pitcher Strikeout Totals

2012-02-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

After previously talking about evaluating ERA, it's time to turn our eyes to the always sexy strikeouts. For fantasy purposes, you'll rarely make a huge investment in a pitcher unless he can strike people out early and often. Being able to accurately predict whether a pitcher will repeat his strikeout totals is an important part of being a good fantasy baseball manager. Unlike ERA or WHIP, there is nobody else behind the pitcher that plays a role in the strikeout so we need to really evaluate the pitcher's skillset in order to evaluate his strikeouts.

Strikeouts

A pitcher's strikeout rate is actually a relatively stable statistic. Unlike ERA which can vary quite a bit from year to year, a pitcher who strikes people out usually will continue to do it each year. However, there are always some cases which are worthy of further investigation. For instance, Zack Greinke had a 7.40 K/9 rate in 2010 but then a 10.54 K/9 in 2011 so you may wonder who the real Greinke is which would require a deeper look at his skills. Our best friend in evaluating strikeout potential comes via the PitchFX data that is available through a variety of sources but originates from Brooks Baseball. This data allows us to evaluate a multitude of things from pitch speed, pitch angle to pitch location and also shows us how often pitch were hit or not. In evaluating strikeouts, we're mainly interested in how often a pitcher can make a batter miss the pitch.

Swinging Strike Percentage (Sw-Str%) is a good starting place for that. As the name suggests, this looks at the percentage of pitches that the batter swings at but misses from the pitcher. Pitchers who are more skilled at striking batters out will have a higher Sw-Str%. For reference, the league average is generally between 8% to 9%. So, if you see a pitcher well above or below that mark then you can expect his strikeout totals to also be above or below that mark. If you see these rates going up or down over a pitcher's career then it may be cause for further investigation.

Contact Percentage (Contact%) is where my eyes would wander to after Sw-Str%. Once again, the name is pretty self explanatory but it is the percentage of swings that a batter makes contact with the pitch. Along the same lines, Zone Contact Percentage (Z-Contact%) tells an interesting story in this regard too as it is the percentage of swings at pitches in the strike zone that are made contact with. An average pitcher will have a Contact% around 80% or Z-Contact% in the high-80's. When a pitcher is able to create a lower Contact% then he is showing evidence of being a better strikeout pitcher.

These three numbers above correlate well with strikeout rates in a given year. So, if you see a pitcher early in the year with a great strikeout rate but low Sw-Str% and/or high Contact% then you can make the assumption that his great strikeout rate will not continue.

As another check for strikeout prowess, looking at a pitcher's Velocity can be handy as well. This becomes especially important when you see a drop in strikeout numbers because a drop in velocity as well can mean that the pitcher is suffering through a physical injury (or perhaps showing signs of age).

If you really want to dig deep into a pitcher's ability and mindset, there's even data available on the value of his pitch types (curveball, slider, fastball) and how often the pitcher is throwing each and that might tip you off to a change in a pitcher's strategy. A strikeout rate could suddenly bloom when a pitcher stops throwing one of his bad pitches and starts throwing his better pitches more often, for instance.

One thing to keep in mind that can affect strikeouts in an unexpected way is Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). When a pitcher has a very high BABIP, he is getting unlucky as more balls are falling in for hits. This affects strikeouts because that means that he gets another chance for a strikeout instead of that ball hit into play becoming an out like it possibly should have. A pitcher with a lower BABIP may end up showing a reduced strikeout total for the opposite reasons.

All of this data is available on the player pages at Fangraphs, if you scroll down far enough. So, there you have it! You can officially make a solid evaluation of a pitcher's strikeout rates to have an idea of whether they'll remain stable or not. You go, you!

Lucas Duda - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-02-14T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Lucas Duda will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected based on my simple selection process which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 227.28 (Round 19/20 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: Starting OF

2011 Production: .292 AVG, 10 HR, 38 R, 50 RBI, 1 SB in 347 PA

My 2012 Prediction: .285 AVG, 30 HR, 85 R, 95 RBI, 0 SB if he starts

Lucas Duda had previously shown quite a bit of power before his two trips up to the majors over 2010 and 2011. In 2010, he hit 23 HR over 115 minor league games before only adding 4 more in 29 MLB games. In 2011, he hit a whopping 10 HR in 38 minor league games but only added 10 more over 100 MLB games. Playing in Citi Field certainly did not help his case as only two of his HR's came at home. However, that home field lull should likely come to an end in 2012.

The Mets are moving the fences in at Citi Field which should give a slight boost to his power numbers at home. As a left-handed hitter, the new dimensions should provide a boost for him with one of the right field fences moving in by 17 feet. A study by the Mets indicated that the changes should provide an extra homer every three games for the Mets there. Duda is likely to be the beneficiary of some of those extra home runs.

He's very much a fly ball power hitter but suffered from a pedestrian HR/FB rate last year (9.3%) despite his 44% FB rate. If he can bring his HR/FB rate up to 13% (his 2010 numbers) then he would project to hit almost 29 HR over 600 AB by keeping the same FB rate. Aside from hitting for power, he has the added benefit of not hurting you in the batting average department as he hit .284 in his minor league career (he got better as he went along which is evidenced by his AVG of .292 over 2009 and 2010).

As I write this, I get flashbacks to Michael Morse from last year who I also projected for similar numbers and he went on to hit 31 HR with a gaudy batting average. Duda also has the potential to deliver power, batting average and good RBI numbers in 2012. Finding someone who can contribute in those three areas late in the draft is a rarity.

Sleeper Verdict: Certified narco candidate. He's very undervalued as he's being drafted towards the end of drafts and has potential to deliver a ton of unexpected value. Make sure to get Duda on your team as a backup outfielder with the chance to deliver a lot more.

MockDraftCentral: Analyzing Rankings & ADP

2012-02-13T07:30:00.000-05:00

For better or worse, MockDraftCentral is the fantasy baseball industry standard for average draft position data. If you read my Twitter, you may have seen me recently rant a bit about how the data is very skewed there and doesn't really tell us much of anything. The reason I say that is because their ADP data almost exactly mirrors their default site rankings which are presented to mock drafters. Since their site presents rankings to the drafters, their own bias influences the results as I touched upon last year.

In looking at the Top 150 players in their ADP at the moment, there is a 0.99 correlation to their site's default rankings. What that means is that if a player’s default ranking on MockDraftCentral (MDC) were to increase by one standard deviation (about 44 spots here), it's expected that their ADP on their site would increase by 0.99 standard deviations (43.7 spots on the ADP here). Which is why it's not a surprise to see Jered Weaver have a ranking of 32 at MDC (which is ranked one standard deviation away from the average ranking of 76 in our sample) and also have an ADP of 33.9. The link is extremely strong between the site rankings and the ADP data.

It's hard to really learn anything when you look at Chase Utley’s ADP of 77.12 versus their ranking of 76 for him. It gets especially confusing when you look at another mock draft site, CouchManagers, and see his ADP is 49.8 there (where he is ranked at 47 coincidentally). Looking at MockDraftCentral's data, you don't learn what the public thinks of a player like Utley -- you learn what MockDraftCentral thinks of him.

To go back to the statistics, the r-squared value is 0.98 when comparing the rank and ADP which means that a player's ranking at MDC is 98% of what goes into their resulting ADP. That does leave open a small 2% window that isn't explained by their rankings and could be explained by the actual preferences of the mock drafters. So, yes, there is a sliver of valuable information to be found.

For instance, there are some players whose ADP varies quite a bit from their ranking which makes them quite interesting. If we’re really trying to gauge how the public perceives a player then this is the information we can gain from looking at MockDraftCentral. When you see that MDC has Brett Lawrie ranked at 63 but his ADP is 54.04 (17% increase from rank) then this shows that the public is reaching for Lawrie in their drafts. On the flipside, Jayson Werth is ranked at 90 by MDC but has an ADP of 99.42 (9% decrease from rank) which shows that the public is choosing to pass on him at that spot because they think it's too high.

So, let's take a gander at the guys that public has seemingly strong opinions on. When looking at the players that the public is drafting ahead of their expected spot, there are quite a few pitchers on the list. It could mean that MDC ranked pitchers a bit too high or it could mean that the general public would rather pass on pitching in the early rounds this year. Regardless, here are some of the top names that the public is choosing to pass on:

Name	Pos	ADP	MDC Rank	Diff
Justin Upton	OF	9.09	7	-23%
Justin Verlander	SP	9.28	6	-35%
Roy Halladay	SP	15.38	13	-15%
Cliff Lee	SP	20.71	17	-18%
Tim Lincecum	SP	24.79	22	-11%
Felix Hernandez	SP	27.26	23	-16%
Cole Hamels	SP	32.01	27	-16%
David Price	SP	39.25	34	-13%
Dan Haren	SP	43.37	39	-10%
Elvis Andrus	SS	45.08	41	-9%
Yovani Gallardo	SP	51.59	45	-13%
Jon Lester	SP	52.2	47	-10%
Craig Kimbrel	RP	59.14	53	-10%
Shin-Soo Choo	OF	65.02	59	-9%
Mat Latos	SP	72.29	64	-11%
Drew Stubbs	OF	81.46	74	-9%
Drew Storen	RP	82.39	72	-13%
Daniel Hudson	SP	86.83	78	-10%
John Axford	RP	91.25	83	-9%
Josh Beckett	SP	92.98	84	-10%
Jayson Werth	OF	99.42	90	-9%
Cameron Maybin	OF	103.49	93	-10%
Johnny Cueto	SP	116.32	104	-11%

If you're at the end of the first round and are hoping for Justin Upton, there's still hope for you as the public isn't buying into MDC's #6 ranking for him. Also, some other names like Drew Stubbs may not need to be reached for because it seems that the public would rather pass on him at his current ranking.

Now, let's look at some of those that the public is choosing to reach for ahead of their rankings:

Name	Pos	ADP	MDC Rank	Diff
Robinson Cano	2B	9.6	11	15%
Prince Fielder	1B	13.87	16	15%
Hanley Ramirez	SS	18.83	21	12%
Mike Stanton	OF	22.61	26	15%
Ian Kinsler	2B	23.55	28	19%
Mark Teixeira	1B	27.1	30	11%
Adrian Beltre	3B	31.04	35	13%
Mike Napoli	C	45.62	51	12%
Brett Lawrie	3B	54.04	63	17%
Stephen Strasburg	SP	62.33	68	9%
Pablo Sandoval	3B	68.9	81	18%
Asdrubal Cabrera	SS	71.72	80	12%
Michael Morse	1B	77.56	96	24%
Jimmy Rollins	SS	86.12	92	7%
Lance Berkman	OF	90.87	100	10%
Josh Johnson	SP	97.53	108	11%
Matt Moore	SP	100.85	111	10%
Adam Wainwright	SP	103.84	113	9%
Yu Darvish	SP	117.59	137	17%
Dee Gordon	SS	144.93	158	9%
Ryan Howard	1B	145.59	173	19%

Despite their ranking of 96 for Mike Morse, the public is grabbing him nearly two rounds ahead of that. If you want Morse, he will likely go earlier than expected because the public seems to be hot for him. There are a number of names here that you will likely want to reach for if you are hoping to get them on your roster for this year.

It's quite valuable to have an idea on what the general public may be thinking as you head into drafts. By being able to predict the moves of your leaguemates, you can better plan your own moves in the chess match that is draft day. ADP data is certainly one part of that puzzle. And, while MockDraftCentral doesn't really warrant being considered the industry standard for ADP data, there is still a bit of valuable information to be found if you dig deep enough.

The Search for Narco | 2012 Sleeper Pitchers

2012-02-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Throughout the brief three year history of this fantasy baseball site, I've used my wacky non-scientific method to point out various hitters as potential sleeper candidates. Meanwhile, the pitchers have been left neglected and, frankly, the time has come to right that wrong.

In starting this search, it became apparent that the level of "sleeper" we try to find for pitchers is much different than it is for batters. Given that each fantasy team starts four to six SP's, you're only really going to start and rely on the best of the best. This is why you don't reminisce about the time you picked up Ian Snell off the waiver wire even if he did do better than expected. With ten or more starting hitters, you're often relying on lower level talent to save your season so sleepers are easier to come by. Pitchers? Not so much.

There's seemingly an infinite number of ways to go about about finding an undervalued pitcher. There are a few key statistics for pitchers in fantasy baseball but there are also so many unreliable factors that influence those categories. An unlucky BABIP can make a pitcher's WHIP swell up while an unlucky HR/FB rate can inflate their ERA. Meanwhile, wins aren't even at the complete control of the pitcher so we can't can't even worry about trying to predict that. As I've talked about before, pitchers can control strikeouts and walks but homeruns and hits are a different story.

With that knowledge in hand, I set out on a spiritual statistical journey. I reasoned that pitchers are far too complicated to make an unscientific model like I did when I created my methodology for finding sleeper hitters. I started to look at a ton of variables to see what could accurately predict walks or strikeouts in an upcoming year and found a few that hold up well, even if they may be a bit nontraditional.

Swinging Strike Percentage comes from the PitchFx stats offered at Fangraphs. It measures how well a pitcher is able to make a batter swing and miss, which it turns out is a good predictor of current and future strikeout rates.
Contact Percentage also is a PitchFx stat and measures how often hitters make contact with a pitcher's pitches. This stat also predicts current and future strikeout rates quite well.
Strikes/Balls Ratio isn't exactly offered anywhere but you can calculate it on your own by dividing total strikes by total balls that were pitched by a pitcher in a season (which is available at Fangraphs). This correlates well with walk rates for a pitcher.
Strikeout-Walk Differential is a pitcher's BB% subtracted from K% (also manually calculated). While the other stats show us how well a pitcher controls a single at-bat, this shows us how the pitcher has actually performed. Some people like using K/BB ratio but I like prefer this statistic because a 3.0 K/B ratio could mean 3.0 K/9 with 1.0 BB/9 or 9.0 K/9 with 3.0 BB/9. The differential shows us that gap better.

In glancing over years of data with these statistics, I was able to determine some good baselines for each that allow us to either put a pitcher in the "great" category or the "not-as-great" category. The baselines resulted in about 20-25 pitchers showing up in the "great" category each year. Many of those pitchers are the elite pitchers that you know and love but others are the guys who are drafted later on in drafts but poised for future success. The baselines ended up being:

SwStr% Above 8.5
Contact% Under 80%
S/B Above 1.70
K-BB Diff Above 12%

I try not to be so stringent on these baselines that I don't allow a player with a 80.1% contact rate to not be considered so I make sure to try to locate the close calls as well. By punching those numbers into the fun machine, a beautiful list of pitchers is created. Comparing those pitchers to their ADP in that upcoming year allows us to see who is being undervalued despite having a good skill set. I try to look at those that have an ADP of greater than 125 as that is usually a good starting point to show pitchers that are not being drafted as top-of-the-rotation guys.

In 2009, it helped us identify sleepers such as Zack Greinke, Josh Johnson, Jered Weaver, Wandy Rodriguez, Javier Vazquez or Ricky Nolasco. In 2010, Jered Weaver was still being undervalued as well as Max Scherzer, Hiroki Kuroda and Ted Lilly. Last year, it was James Shields, Ian Kennedy and Daniel Hudson. Of course, there were some other names that didn't propel forward into stardom but they rarely took huge steps backwards.

So, that brings us to today and the year 2012. Perhaps pitchers are getting better because the list is longer this year than in the past with 36 total pitchers and 16 of them being drafted with an ADP greater than 125. The full list of names for this year and past years is found in this Google Doc.

Among the higher drafted players, there are some quasi-sleepers like Madison Bumgarner and Michael Pineda that you may want to keep an eye on. However, here's the list of 2012's 16 possible deeper sleepers that we're interested in examining:

Brandon Beachy (133.7)

Matt Garza (135.7)

Shaun Marcum (144.2)

Anibal Sanchez (150.2)

Max Scherzer (153.7)

Brandon Morrow (167.5)

Cory Luebke (172.4)

Jaime Garcia (187)

Hiroki Kuroda (208.9)

Ryan Dempster (249.2)

Scott Baker (257.7)

Bud Norris (267.5)

Homer Bailey (337.1)

Felipe Paulino (390.3)

Chris Capuano (394)

Philip Humber (Undrafted)

Some players like Hiroki Kuroda may not seem overly exciting but this group will certainly have some players that end up taking the next step towards fantasy greatness over 2012. To help pin down the best of the best here, I'll be doing individual posts about their worthiness of being considered a sleeper over the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, noodle over this list. Any big surprises here? I know Chris Capuano surprised me and I wonder if this Cory Luebke is actually for real now. More to come, my friends.

2012 H2H Cheatsheet (Point-Based Scoring) | Initial Release

2012-02-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

In lieu of any wonderful articles this week, the work here has been completely focused on getting the initial cheatsheets released and here's the last of them. This cheatsheet is for those that are in leagues for point-based scoring instead of roto leagues. You'll be able to set your scoring system, teams, required starters and all of that fun stuff that you've come to know and love.

Here's the basics info you need to know about these spreadsheets as I've gone over previously:

When opening up the spreadsheet, you may be asked to enable macros. Please enable macros as that is the only way this spreadsheet can work! You will then be presented with a form to fill out where you can enter all sorts of information about your unique league settings and what projection systems, expert rankings and ADP data that you want displayed. You can always change this info later! If you just want to look at the sheet, you can just close that form and start looking around.

Within the Draft Central tab, you have all of the draftable players and their project point values, points above average at their position, their projected stats and odds that the player will be available at various points in the draft. At this point, you can click on the Customize button to choose whether you want to hide certain data or hide players as they're drafted. During the draft, you can select who drafted each player by clicking on the box next to each player's name. This will update the Live Standings and Team Summary tabs. You can also choose how you want to sort the cheatsheet at any time on this page.

On the Live Standings tab, this will take into account the projected starters for each team based on your league settings then it will display the standings based on that info and it will also display the team budget. On the Team Summary tab, you can view who has been drafted by each team and see who is currently projected as a starter or bench player on those teams. Finally, you can view the Credits & Glossary tab to see where the data is coming from and to find out what the various parts of the spreadsheet may mean.

Download the 2012 H2H Points Cheatsheet

Data included for this release:

CAIRO projections
RotoChamp projections
Fangraphs Fan projections
MockDraftCentral ADP
ESPN rankings
RotoChamp rankings
Roto Summit rankings
Combined rankings (average of available rankings)

Unique features in the H2H cheatsheet compared to other cheatsheets:

Ability to set your league's scoring system and see the projected total points for each player
Ability to track standings based on projected total points for each team

For you pointy fans of point-based leagues, dive into this cheatsheet and test it out to make sure everything is there for you. Once March comes along, it will be hard to implement any changes or new features so request them now if you spot any possible improvements or bugs! Also, check my Twitter feed to see when minor updates are made that aren't posted on this site.

2012 Roto Auction Cheatsheet | Initial Release

2012-02-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

The cheatsheets keep on coming! Today, I introduce the first roto auction fantasy baseball cheatsheet from this here website. For all of you auctioneers out there, this handy little spreadsheet will serve you well. As opposed to just looking at ADP data and selecting who drafted who, you'll be looking at projected dollar values based on your league settings and selecting who picked who and what they paid for them. You'll be able to track your team and everyone's budgets within the spreadsheet as well. There's more information packed into this little spreadsheet than you can shake a metaphorical stick at!

Here's the basics info you need to know about these spreadsheets as I've gone over previously:

When opening up the spreadsheet, you may be asked to enable macros. Please enable macros as that is the only way this spreadsheet can work! You will then be presented with a form to fill out where you can enter all sorts of information about your unique league settings and what projection systems, expert rankings and expert dollar values you want displayed. You can always change this info later! If you just want to look at the sheet, you can just close that form and start looking around.

Within the Draft Central tab, you have all of the draftable players and their WERTH roto values (estimated points gained in standings for owning the player over average fantasy starter), their projected stats and what their auction value would be based on your settings and the current money in the total pool. At this point, you can click on the Customize button to choose whether you want to hide certain data or hide players as they're drafted. During the draft, you can select who drafted each player by clicking on the box next to each player's name and selecting the team and then putting the winning bid in as well. This will update the Live Standings and Team Summary tabs. You can also choose how you want to sort the cheatsheet at any time on this page.

On the Live Standings tab, this will take into account the projected starters for each team based on your league settings then it will display the standings based on that info and it will also display the team budget. On the Team Summary tab, you can view who has been drafted by each team and see who is currently projected as a starter or bench player on those teams. Finally, you can view the Credits & Glossary tab to see where the data is coming from and to find out what the various parts of the spreadsheet may mean.

Download the 2012 Roto Auction Cheatsheet

Data included for this release:

CAIRO projections
RotoChamp projections
Fangraphs Fan projections
CBS Sportsline auction values
RotoChamp auction values
ESPN rankings
RotoChamp rankings
Roto Summit rankings
Combined rankings (average of available rankings)

Unique features in the auction cheatsheet:

Auction values that change based on your league settings and update as your draft occurs (when someone overpays for a player, it drops the value for all other players because the total pool of money was reduced more than expected)
View expert auction values that are adjusted to your league settings and thus more relevant to you
Check team budgets throughout the draft with ease

This is unmarked territory for the cheatsheet so I want all of you auctioneers to test it out and let me know if something isn't working right. I'm admittedly not the best beta tester in the world and want to make sure everything is working perfectly come draft day.

Jason Kipnis - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-02-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Jason Kipnis will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected based on my simple selection process which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 164.18 (Round 14 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: Starting 2B

2011 Production: .272 AVG, 7 HR, 24 R, 19 RBI, 5 SB in 150 PA

My 2012 Prediction: .280 AVG, 20 HR, 90 R, 75 RBI, 15 SB if he starts

In his brief rookie stint last year, Kipnis filled up the roto stat sheet with some gaudy numbers. If his performance in 150 PA were stretched out to 600 PA, he would have had 28 HR's and 20 SB's to go along with nearly 100 runs and 80 RBI's. That's the type of numbers that gets a 2B drafted in the first few rounds of a draft as opposed to the 14th round where Kipnis is currently hiding. Let's slow our roll though because 150 little plate appearances is a very small sample size. So, what can we realistically expect out of the youngster?

In 254 minor league games, he hit 29 HR's, stole 24 bases and hit .297 to go along with 180 runs and 148 RBI's. His power started to develop as he went along and it seems like it quickly transitioned into the majors so expecting him to hit 20 HR's next season isn't a stretch. He doesn't steal a ton of bases but has a good enough percentage of success that the Indians should continue to run him as well. The .272 AVG he had in the majors actually may rise a bit based on his minor league profile.

So, despite the 150 plate appearances being such a small sample size, there might be reason to believe in Kipnis next year as a very valuable middle infielder. He's projected to his 2nd for the Indians next season which would give him the chance to produce a fair share of runs to go along with his decent speed. Add in the fact that 2B is the weakest fantasy position and you've got yourself a definitely sleeper candidate.

Sleeper Verdict: Sleeptastic. It seems extremely plausible that Kipnis could be a 20/20 player next year at the weakest fantasy position yet he's being drafted in the 14th round. Low risk, high reward... where do I sign up?

2012 Roto Draft Cheatsheet | First Update

2012-02-03T14:36:00.000-05:00

Due to some requests for some handy new features, I'm releasing an update to the fantasy baseball cheatsheet. This cheatsheet is a powerful Excel file made specifically for rotisserie drafts that pulls in data from projection systems, expert rankings and ADP systems (other versions are yet to come for point-based leagues or auction drafts). The spreadsheet also has the neat feature of showing you the expected roto points gained (WERTH value) in each category based on your individual league settings and the projections chosen.

For more information on the basics of the cheatsheet, check out the initial release post. When opening up the spreadsheet, you may be asked to enable macros. Please enable macros as that is the only way this spreadsheet can work!

This week has some awesome updates that I'm really excited about. In the comments last week, Smitty suggested adding a couple of features. So, the cheatsheet now includes a couple of extra roto categories (walks, hits, holds, holds + saves), the ability to set outfield positions for your league (LF, CF, RF) and a new maximum of 24 teams. In addition to those features, any ADP or projection data has been updated where updates were available. A bunch of small bugs were addressed that might have affected certain league settings. And, finally, I'm excited to say that I found a way to make the cheatsheet populate much quicker when adjusting your league settings (it should be almost instantaneous now instead of waiting 10-15 seconds after clicking "create my cheatsheet" and it's more responsive when changing those settings each time).

Download the 2012 Roto Cheatsheet

Data included for this release:

CAIRO projections
RotoChamp projections
Fangraphs Fan projections
MockDraftCentral ADP data
ESPN rankings
RotoChamp rankings
Roto Summit rankings
Combined rankings (average of available rankings)

New features for 2012 version compared to 2011:

Team Summary tab added (as explained above)
Live Standings now only based on team's starters as opposed to all drafted players
Draft Central tab is redesigned to be easier to read and follow
Customize button added to have more control over what is shown and not shown
Ability to sort by position now added so you can more easily target a specific position when needed

New features in v3.1 compared to v3.0:

Two new roto categories for batters (walks, hits) and two for pitchers (holds, holds+saves)
Ability to use specific outfield positions (LF, CF, RF)
Maximum teams increased from 16 to 24
Updated Fangraphs projections, ESPN and RotoChamp rankings and MockDraftCentral ADP data
Cheatsheet creation when choosing Settings is a million times faster

Next up will be an auction-based version of the cheatsheet as well as the non-roto version for those in point-based leagues. Stay tuned for that. For those using Macs, I'm still trying to figure out how this might work for you lovely people. Either way, make sure to play around with the cheatsheet to test it out so that I can make any other changes you might come up with before draft season comes around!

Alex Presley - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-02-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Alex Presley will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected based on my simple selection process which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 217.38 (Round 19 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: Starting OF

2011 Production: .298 AVG, 4 HR, 27 R, 20 RBI, 9 SB in 231 PA

My 2012 Prediction: .290 AVG, 10 HR, 80 R, 60 RBI, 25 SB if he starts

Presley didn't set the world on fire in his 231 plate appearances last year but he showed decent enough potential in each of the five main roto categories to make him a sexy sleeper candidate. He doesn't have quite enough power to be a 20/20 candidate nor is he fast enough to steal 40 bases nor can he hit well enough to hit above .300 nor is his team good enough to get him 100 runs. But, just because he's not going to be a superstar doesn't make him completely worthless as a sleeper candidate. So, it begs the question, what does he have going for him?

Well, to start, he has enough power to not kill you in that category as he hit 44 minor league HR's and projects to hit about 10 HR if given 600 PA. However, his two best attributes are his stolen bases and his batting average as he hit .290 in the minors and stole his fair share of bases. If he were to be made a starter in 2012 then he has the potential to deliver very nice value as a 4th or 5th outfielder. He won't set the world on fire by any means but you could do much worse in the 19th round of your draft.

Sleeper Verdict: Yawny. He's not a super sleeper that's going to bring home a championship for you but he's got the potential to deliver a bit more value than your typical 19th round pick.

2012 Overvalued Players | xAVG vs AVG

2012-01-30T07:30:00.001-05:00

In the past couple of weeks here, I talked to you a bit how BABIP and xBABIP can help identify lucky hitters and particularly how xAVG is a meaningful way of evaluating batting averages. In addition, I previously identified potential comeback players for 2012 which inevitably leads to the flip side of that coin where we look at potentially overvalued players for 2012 that you may want to take caution with. I present that flip side to you here.

If you want to look at a more complete listing of xAVG's from 2011 to make your own judgments, you can view the spreadsheet I created that lists them all out by clicking here. While this post will highlight some of the bigger differences in xAVG and actual AVG, some players are excluded because their batting average is merely projected to drop from the range of "excellent" to "great" so you shouldn't steer completely clear of them. Some examples are Adrian Gonzalez (.338 AVG to .300 xAVG), Jose Reyes (.337 AVG to .305 xAVG) and Miguel Cabrera (.344 AVG to .322 xAVG). The following players here are ones that seem to have inflated draft status simply due to their inconsistently high AVG from last year.

In the past, Hunter Pence has typically been a nice option for a 3rd outfielder that you could find in the 7th or 8th round of drafts. It seemed like a lock for him to hit 25 HR with 10+ SB and a .280 AVG. Last year, he got traded to the Phillies and responded with a plump .314 AVG on the season which added a ton of previously unseen value to his fantasy status. As a result, he now has an ADP of 44.7 according to MockDraftCentral which makes him a 4th round pick and potential 1st or 2nd outfielder for teams. In both 2009 and 2010, he hit .282 but them jumped up 32 points last year. However, his xAVG last year was actually .281 so it seems very plausible that he should return to that .280 range in 2012. He's still a fine player but not a 4th round draft pick by any means.

Alex Avila burst onto the scene with good overall numbers in his first full year of catcher duties. He had decent power numbers, decent RBI totals and a very good .295 AVG. Out of the catcher position, this is very valuable and has resulted in him being drafted in the 9th or 10th round of 12 team leagues. Is he a potential Joe Mauer in the making perhaps? Nay, my friends. Looking at the xAVG, it seems that he's more likely to hit around .269 (which makes more sense considering his past history). That makes him a much more ordinary player that is really no different than a catcher you can find at the end of your drafts.

Justin Upton has progressed nicely thus far in his young career. Last year, he took a huge leap forward with a 30 HR, 20 SB and 100 R season to go along with a .289 AVG. While there are many reasons to be excited about Upton's future considering he gave you great production in all five categories last year, there is one cause for concern as his xAVG was .267 last year which would be below league average and something that would hurt your team. Considering he has a first-round price tag this year, that may be reason to pass on him for a more proven commodity.

In 221 career minor league games, Jemile Weeks hit .286 with 41 SB's. In his 97 MLB games last year, he hit .303 with 22 SB's which makes him a hot commodity for this year as owners think they be able to grab a .300 hitter in the middle rounds who can steal 40+ SB's. In this case, his xAVG of .288 seems to mirror his minor league AVG. That still is a decent average if he can get a boatload of stolen bases to go along with it. However, potential owners should take into account that he only had a 66% success rate last year for his stolen base attempts which is poor. If he's going to be a reliable speedster, he'll need to improve that. These red flags might him a risky pick even for someone being taken in the 13th round or so at the moment.

For the first time since 2008, Alex Gordon stayed healthy for a full season and it resulted in him delivering above average production in all five roto categories (.303 AVG, 23 HR, 101 R, 87 RBI, 17 SB). For someone who came into 2011 with a .244 career AVG, the .303 AVG already seems suspicious and his .284 xAVG backs up that suspicion. While it is still a good AVG, it makes him a little bit more normal and 12 less hits likely means a bit lower RBI and Run totals. In the 6th round of drafts, I would still feel decent about him if he was still eligible at 3B in any leagues for whatever reason. But as a starting OF, it's a bit riskier to use that early of a pick on him given his injury history as well.

Jose Bautista has become a reliable source for HR's out of the blue in recent years but he added a new dimension to his fantasy game by hitting .302 last year. Going into 2011, he was a .244 career hitter which was a big negative for any potential Bautsita owners. Did he suddenly take a dramatic shift that catapulted his AVG by 60 points much like his HR totals suddenly jumped by 40 from one year to the next? Well, kinda. His xAVG says he should have hit closer to .286 last year which is a still a big jump and definitely makes him a more valuable hitter. But, it shifts him from having four very positive roto categories to three positive categories, one average category and one slightly negative category. It's still very, very good but is it worthy of the 4th overall pick at a position such as OF? It's a tough call and should be a potential risk factor to be aware of for drafters with early picks this year.

2012 Roto Draft Cheatsheet | Initial Release

2012-01-27T08:52:00.000-05:00

Today marks the initial release of the 2012 version of my rotisserie fantasy baseball cheatsheet. For those unfamiliar with these, they are powerful Excel spreadsheets which are designed to give you more information than anyone else at your draft in an easy format.

When opening up the spreadsheet, you may be asked to enable macros. Please enable macros as that is the only way this spreadsheet can work! You will then be presented with a form to fill out where you can enter the number of teams and team names for your league. In addition, you must enter what positions you use in your league, what roto categories then finally choose what ADP information, projection systems and expert rankings you want displayed. You can always change this info later! If you just want to look at the sheet, you can just close that form and start looking around.

Within the Draft Central tab, you have all of the draftable players, their basic info, their WERTH roto values (estimated points gained in standings for owning the player over average fantasy starter), their projected stats and then the odds that they'll be available at various points in the draft based on your chosen ADP data. At this point, you can click on the Customize button to choose whether you want to hide certain data or hide players as they're drafted. During the draft, you can select who drafted each player by clicking on the box next to each player's name and selecting the team. This will update the Live Standings and Team Summary tabs. You can also choose how you want to sort the cheatsheet at any time on this page.

On the Live Standings tab, this will take into account the projected starters for each team based on your league settings then it will display the standings based on that info. It will display the total roto values (which should be relatively close to the projected standings as you go) and then the actual projected standings based on drafted players.

On the Team Summary tab, you can view who has been drafted by each team and see who is currently projected as a starter or bench player on those teams. Finally, you can view the Credits & Glossary tab to see where the data is coming from and to find out what various terms mean like ADP or WERTH.

Download the 2012 Roto Cheatsheet

Data included for this release:

CAIRO projections
RotoChamp projections
Fangraphs Fan projections
MockDraftCentral ADP data
ESPN rankings
RotoChamp rankings
Roto Summit rankings
Combined rankings (average of available rankings)

New features for 2012 version compared to 2011:

Team Summary tab added (as explained above)
Live Standings now only based on team's starters as opposed to all drafted players
Draft Central tab is redesigned to be easier to read and follow
Customize button added to have more control over what is shown and not shown
Ability to sort by position now added so you can more easily target a specific position when needed
Formulas behind the scenes were streamlined to speed up the processing time of the spreadsheet

Poke around, test it out and let me know if you encounter any possible fixes or upgrades before the final version comes out in March!

Brett Lawrie - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Brett Lawrie will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected based on my simple selection process which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 55.88 (Round 5 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: Starting 3B

2011 Production: .293 AVG, 9 HR, 26 R, 25 RBI, 7 SB in 171 PA

My 2012 Prediction: .285 AVG, 20 HR, 90 R, 90 RBI, 20 SB

The public continues to get smarter as Brett Lawrie's draft stock is already high for this year despite only 171 PA last year. His value is also helped out by the fact that third base is a weak position for this year. But, let's look at just what we can expect from Lawrie.

The kid hit .296 with 39 HR and 62 SB over 326 minor league games and seemed to get better at each level he played at. At 22, he already has the potential for a 25 HR/25 SB season to go along with a good batting average. That reason alone is precisely why he is being drafted ahead of Alex Rodriguez, Aramis Ramirez, Kevin Youkilis and Pablo Sandoval who are all fine major leaguers.

After hitting 21 HR in his first 1085 minor league PA, his power suddenly bloomed as he hit 27 HR's over his 500 PA last year between the minors and majors. Because the spike is so sudden, I struggle to think that he can keep up that exact rate (a 17% HR/FB rate is almost Albert Pujols territory). Couple that with the fact that his huge minor league numbers came in the very hitter-friendly Pioneer League and it's hard to feel the power is completely legit but he still has shown he can hit the long ball regardless and 20-25 HR in 2012 is a safe bet.

His stolen bases are the factor that make him like a mini David Wright. In his first two minor league seasons, he was caught stealing 26 times (an ugly 65% success rate). In his first year in the Blue Jay organization last year, he was only caught stealing 3 times (a lovely 87% success rate). Perhaps they've shown him the error in his ways. It seems like the youngster should be able to easily swipe 20 or more SB's as well in 2012.

And as far as batting average, he may not exactly be a potential .300 hitter based on past history but he shouldn't hurt you in that department either. All in all, he seems like at least a 20/20 hitter at a weaker fantasy position and there's some great value to that.

Sleeper Verdict: Sleepy. He has the potential to deliver 30/30 production but it may not come just yet.

How To Evaluate Pitcher ERA (FIP, xFIP, SIERA)

2012-01-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

It all starts with a pitch. The lonely pitcher sits on his mound and throws a ball towards a hitter. That pitch could turn into any number of things and whatever happens will be pinned on the pitcher. For roto purposes, we're interested in a few statistics which come out of a pitchers performance on the mound: ERA, WHIP, K's, Wins and Saves. A pitcher throws a lot of pitches in a year and sample sizes help reduce the influence of luck but it still plays a major factor in anything beyond a strikeout or a walk from a pitcher. Identifying luck and evaluating past statistics helps us better predict a pitcher's future performance which makes us smarter fantasy baseballers.

ERA is a fickle mistress that is much more cruel than any other statistic because a pitcher can pitch like a champion but his ERA may still stink (see Zack Greinke 2011). If more batted balls become hits than expected or if more flyballs become home runs than expected then the pitcher's ERA is going to be affected. In Part 1 of my series of posts on how to evaluate pitcher statistics, we're going to focus on how to evaluate a pitcher's ERA in a given season.

Earned Run Average

ERA has been constantly poked and prodded by sabermatricians as they have tried to figure out how to better be able to predict a pitcher's future ERA. Because a perfect solution hasn't been found, we've been left with a cornucopia of choices that, when combined, give us a clearer picture of a pitcher's performance in a season. In the journey of being able to evaluate ERA, Voros McCracken came out with the DIPS (Defense-Independent Pitching Statistics) theory that set out to "evaluate a pitcher base[d] strictly on the statistics his defense has no ability to affect" which would be strikeouts and walks and home runs. It has developed more over time to include batted ball types (groundballs, flyballs, etc) as well. But based on the initial theory, one potential ERA estimator came into the world eventually courtesy of Tom Tango and it was called FIP.

FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) only looks at strikeouts, walks and home runs allowed in order to estimate what a pitcher's ERA should have been in a given time frame. For some, the simplicity of that turns them off but others can get totally behind how easy it is. When the outcome isn't a HR, BB of K (in other words, the ball is hit into play), the pitcher doesn't have as much control over the outcome and it becomes dependent on the defense. Balls hit into play are thus ignored and the FIP formula accounts for the three controllable outcomes (HR, BB, K) to generate a stat that looks like ERA but gives an indication on if a pitcher has been better or worse than his actual ERA.

xFIP (Expected FIP) was the next step in ERA estimation as research started to show that perhaps a pitcher doesn't have complete control over HR totals. Researchers believed that HR rates were not reliable from year-to-year for a pitcher so the standard FIP formula was adjusted to use a standard league-average HR rate instead of the actual rate of HR's allowed by a pitcher. This one simple change ended up making xFIP one of the most accurate predictors of future ERA.

tERA (True ERA) then came into the picture because there was thought that FIP shouldn't ignore all batted balls except for homers. So this formula was designed to include batted ball types allowed by the pitcher (groundballs, flyballs, etc) by putting a different run value on each and using them in the formula. While not as predictive as xFIP, it utilizes a bit more data to generate an ERA estimation for a pitcher.

Because three estimations of a pitcher's correct ERA was not enough, SIERA (Skill Interactive ERA) came along in recent years. As you can tell, sabermatricians still were not satisfied with the metrics of evaluating ERA. In this case, SIERA is an improvement over tERA much like xFIP improved FIP. SIERA tweaked tERA by putting different weighting on the variables such as giving additional weight to strikeouts, walks and groundballs as research started to show that they each had a larger influence on ERA than originally thought.

Luckily, you don't need to break out your scientific calculators or look for one of my Google Doc spreadsheets to find all of these stats in one place. Fangraphs has these all hosted on their leaderboards under the Advanced tab. Go ahead and sort to your heart's delight to see which pitchers should be better or worse moving forward than their stupid ERA indicates.

Keep in mind that ERA is influenced greatly by BABIP and HR/FB, which are thought to be out of control of the pitcher himself as well. While the four ERA predictors above are helpful, don't overlook BABIP and HR/FB when you're evaluating a pitcher. If they had a really low HR/FB rate suddenly then that would bring down their ERA quite a bit (same goes with BABIP). When a pitcher has a few years of history to analyze, you can more easily spot when a BABIP or HR/FB rate does not seem to fit his career norms. Put special attention to those cases and recognize the effect that they have on a pitcher's actual ERA.

2012 Comeback Players | xAVG vs AVG

2012-01-20T07:30:00.000-05:00

A stat like BABIP can tell us about whether a hitter's batting average has been influenced by luck or not. But, as evidenced in my post about evaluating batting averages, xBABIP and xAVG are also vital tools in analyzing a player. When we're looking at potential comeback players for 2012 who might be undervalued, expected AVG (xAVG) really comes in handy for comparing to a player's actual AVG.

For the full listing of players, you can view the spreadsheet I created by clicking here. This post will highlight some of the more interesting names on the list of biggest differences between xAVG and AVG from 2011. These players represent great possible value as they're being undervalued due to circumstances beyond their control and could have a good comeback season potentially.

Ian Kinsler had a very nice year in 2011 as he returned to the 30/30 club while scoring 121 runs in the process. However, it should have been even better if you look at his .255 actual AVG compared to his .300 xAVG. If he had actually managed to his for .300 last year to go with his other stats, you could make a strong argument that he would be a top 5 draft pick being taken above Tulowitzki (who would have had lower totals in all categories except RBI's). Right now, Kinsler is being drafted at the top of the 3rd round and he holds a ton of value there if you can get him. Here's an oddity for you... Kinsler's AVG is .256 in odd-numbered years yet .299 in even-numbered years. 2012 is an even number! Get on the Kinsler train!

Ben Revere is looked at as being a defensive specialist with no offensive prowess. After hitting .267 with 0 HR in 481 PA, it's certainly understandable to make that case. However, he does have significant fantasy potential for 2012 given the fact that his xAVG was .329 last year. He's a speedster and he will be able to use that speed even more if he gets on base even more. He hit .326 in his minor league career over 380 games and never had a season below .300 (and he totaled 154 SB) so he has certainly shown that he has the potential to hit .300 while notching 50+ SB. At this point, he's being drafted late in drafts and is worth reaching for because of his speed and AVG potential.

From 2006-2008, Alex Rios had a batting average of .296 which was very nice to go with his 20/20 potential. However, things haven't been as rosy since then as he's had a .253 AVG from 2009-2011. Last year was his worst year yet as he hit .227 with 13 HR, 64 R, 44 RBI and 11 SB. Alex, wha happen? Well, it seems like bad luck happened as his xAVG for 2011 was still .275 which would have meant about 25 more hits which would have meant more RBI's and more Runs and maybe more SB's. Ah, the possibilities! Rios still has the potential to return to his 2010 former self which hit .284, 21 HR, 89 R, 88 RBI and 34 SB. However, he comes at the discounted price of being drafted in about the 20th round due to his craptastic year in 2011.

Evan Longoria brought back the power stroke in 2011 that took a break in 2010 by jacking 31 HR in 133 games. However, his batting average dropped to .244 mostly due to a terribly unlucky .239 BABIP. As you might expect based on the theme of this article, his xAVG was much higher (.301). If luck can go back onto his side in 2012 then you can expect a year that might exceed his great 2010 season where he hit .281 with 33 HR, 100 R, 113 RBI and 9 SB.

From 2005 to 2009, Mark Teixeria had three seasons where he hit above .300 and only one season where he hit below .290 (which was still .282). However, in 2010 and 2011, luck has reared it's ugly head as his BABIP has been way below average both seasons and his AVG was .256 and .248 respectively. His xAVG in 2011 indicates that he should have hit around .288 without the bad luck. Due to the fact that his power still seems to be as good as ever, he should return to his old super-good-in-all-categories-except-stolen-bases self in 2012.

Remember that wacky Ichiro Suzuki guy? He used to lead the league in AVG, score some runs, steal those bases and do all sorts of fun stuff? Well, he stole 40 bases last year and came up to the plate 700+ times but his AVG was poor (.272) and he only scored 80 runs in that crappy Mariners lineup (least amount of Runs scored in 2011 despite being in the AL and having an extra batter!). The good news is that his xAVG was .310 but the bad news is that the Mariners should still struggle offensively. They have some young hitters that might allow for improvement but Ichiro scoring 100 runs like old times isn't expected. He should still be able to produce numbers somewhat close to his 2010 line of .315 AVG, 6 HR and 42 SB yet he's being drafted in about the 10th round at this point.

Jimmy Rollins is a bit of an odd duck in the fact that he's always been a bit of a speedster but has not always had a high BABIP to go with that. The amount of flyballs that he hits certainly doesn't help there. But what makes him even odder is that he has experienced three seemingly unlucky seasons in a row where he's had a BABIP of .251, .246 and .275. After three years of this, it makes you start to wonder if it's a product of who he is as opposed to luck. None of his statistics seem to jump out as causing this odd BABIP. But, regardless, he had an AVG of .268 in 2011 with an xAVG of .296 so we should expect his batting average to go higher which would be nice with his 15 HR and 30 SB potential. But, I really don't know what to make of this guy anymore. One year of poor BABIP is unlucky, two years is really unlucky but three years just seems like a trend.

Back in 2009, Adam Lind hit .305 with 35 HR's and all was well in the world. I know I'm living in the past but the past looks so much better than two years of bad baseball from this guy. He hit .251 last year but, as you may have guessed, his xAVG tells a different story and says he should have hit closer to .296. He only played in 125 games but did hit 25 HR's so we can hope that a luckier and healthier Adam Lind can hit .290 with 30 HR's in 2012. That doesn't seem like too far of a reach. He's being drafted 159th on average right now. A power hitter with a chance to hit for average at that point? Sure, I'll take it.

Drafters still like Elvis Andrus and have him pegged as an early draft pick despite him mainly being an SB guy. He hit .279 with 37 SB last year which is pretty cool but, of course, his xAVG says he should have hit a much better .325. However, take caution with this one as we seem to have another Jimmy Rollins situation. His BABIP has been between .305 and .317 in his first three MLB seasons and his AVG has been between .265 and .279 so it's hard to see a reason why this would suddenly change (his xBABIP calculates as .364). As a speedster who hits a long of ground balls, you'd expect a high BABIP and AVG but it hasn't translated yet. I'm not feeling Andrus as a definite comeback player until he proves otherwise, much like J-Roll earlier.

Desmond Jennings - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-01-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Desmond Jennings will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected based on my simple selection process which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 53.96 (Round 5 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: Starting OF

2011 Production: .259 AVG, 10 HR, 44 R, 25 RBI, 20 SB in 287 PA

My 2012 Prediction: .280 AVG, 15 HR, 100 R, 50 RBI, 50 SB

Despite only playing in half a season, Desmond Jennings is hardly a sleeper as he's projected to go in the 5th round of your drafts. Due to that fact, this particular post will be slightly different than the usual sleeper posts and will be more about whether he's going to give you even more value than a 5th round pick or not. I already touched upon my initial thoughts with Jennings in a post last week where I said something that went a little like this:

Former top prospect Desmond Jennings came into the league by stealing 20 bases while hitting 10 HR's in half a season last year. Now he's slotted to be about a 5th round pick it seems. One thing is for certain: the Rays like to steal bases as they're almost always among the leaders in SB attempts. While the stolen bases seem to be a sure thing, the power is a bit more of question mark and the answer to that question will determine if he's more of a Carl Crawford or Juan Pierre. In 2010, he hit only 3 HR over nearly 500 PA but then he jacked 22 HR's in 2011 between AAA and the majors. Looking at his full career and his PA/HR, we see that both years seem to be out of the ordinary. His power numbers might regress slightly based on that past history. I'd bank on him hitting closer to 15 HR over a full season as opposed to 25 but that's still pretty awesome to go with 40 to 60 SB.

Jennings has two roto categories in which he is far above average: SB's and Runs. In each of the other categories, he can give you league-average production and that's what separates him from guys like Brett Gardner and Coco Crisp who will hurt you in pretty much all other categories.

It should be noted that Joe Maddon loves to steal bases. Since taking over in 2006, the Rays have the most SB attempts by a large margin in the league. You may attribute some of that to Carl Crawford but they actually led the league in attempts last year even without him. Unless he is able to raise his batting average a bit more or his home run totals, Jennings will likely never be a 1st round fantasy pick. But he certainly has the potential to deliver 2nd or 3rd round value without the high price tag.

Sleeper Verdict: Sleeperific. You can draft for power and average in the first four rounds then get a well-rounded speedster like Jennings a bit later.

How To Evaluate Home Run Totals

2012-01-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

In the first post in this series, I explained how you can evaluate a hitter's batting average to see whether it will be repeated or not. Being a great fantasy baseball owner is all about being able to evaluate hitters and pitchers in order to figure out if they're due for a better or worse year in the future. This particular post is focused on evaluating a hitter's home run totals. If a player happens to hit 30 HR one year, he is not necessarily destined to do that every year. Finding out whether the HR's are repeatable are somewhat trickier than most statistics as we have to use some tricky methods.

Home Runs

While home runs can also be prone to luck, it is a bit harder to quantify how lucky or unlucky a player is in this department. One of the best thing we can do to evaluate whether HR totals will be replicated is to look at home run distances and fly ball rates.

Lucky and Just Enough Homers are two categories of HR's that are presented by the wonderful HitTracker tool which keeps track of HR angles, speed and distances (among other things). Based upon that data, each HR is put into one of a few categories (No Doubt, Plenty, Just Enough and Lucky). Lucky Homers are those that "wouldn't have cleared the fence if it has been struck on a 70-degree, calm day". Just Enough Homers either barely clear the fence or land just behind the fence. On average, 27% of HR's are of the Just Enough variety. When hitters have a larger than average percentage of Just Enough or Lucky HR's then we can assume they got a bit more lucky than usual.

In 2010, Casey McGehee hit 23 homers but 65% of them were Just Enough HR's which was way above the league average rate. So it wasn't a huge surprise when that number returned to average in 2011 and his total HR numbers dropped drastically. Also in 2010, 12% of Curtis Granderson's 24 homers were of the Just Enough variety which was far below the normal rate so he saw a big jump in HR numbers in 2011 when that corrected itself.

For that reason, you can see how this tool can be handy for seeing if HR numbers were a bit fluky in a particular season. Since this data isn't readily available in a sortable format, here's a spreadsheet which I drew up in order to list that info for 2011's hitters: Google Docs Link

HR/FB (Home Runs per Fly Ball) helps us do some comparisons for a player. It may not necessarily tell us if they've been lucky but we can see if something is amiss with the player. Normally, about 13-20% of flyballs for a power hitter become a HR while contact hitters typically have a HR/FB rate in the single digits. If we see a hitter suddenly jump from hitting a 20% to a 8% HR/FB rate then we can guess that something must be wrong. They could be suffering through a bad injury or just losing their strength. This statistic isn't really deemed meaningful until after 300 PA though so don't start throwing it around in April or May of a season.

Going hand-in-hand with that is the Fly Ball Rate (FB%) which is also used to see what's going on with a player. Maybe their HR/FB rate stayed as normal but they started hitting more groundballs or line drives instead of fly balls. This would certainly cause a drop in HR's because you can hit a HR without hitting FB's. The cause for this generally isn't a matter of luck but a conscious change of approach done by the player. For FB rates, they become reliable after 250 PA.

Another stat worth noting is ISO (Isolated Power) which is the measurement of extra bases per at-bat (or SLG% minus AVG). After 550 PA's, we would expect this number to become reliable for a player. While it may vary year to year, huge jumps in ISO that deviate from career norm may suggest that doing further analysis on the legitimacy of a player's power may be necessary.

And, finally, you may want to check out this article from Fangraphs where they talk about Ellsbury's homers from last year and mention that "an increase in home runs can usually attributed to hitting the ball further or hitting the ball into shorter corner OF porches."

You are now efficiently armed with a number of tools which should help you look at a player's home run totals and decide whether to buy into them or not. That player might have hit a few too many Just Enough homers or had a wacky HR/FB rate but now you can spot those things and react accordingly. Up next, I'll be looking at evaluating Runs, RBI's and SB's.

Nolan Reimold - 2012 Fantasy Sleeper Candidate

2012-01-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of fantasy baseball deep sleepers each year that can make the difference for your team. The following 2012 profile of Nolan Reimold will analyze the chances that he might be one of the next big sleepers. He was selected based on my simple selection process which is detailed in this introductory post.

ADP as of this posting: 275.04 (Round 23 in 12-team league)

Projected 2012 Role: Starting OF

2011 Production: .247 AVG, 13 HR, 40 R, 45 RBI, 7 SB in 305 PA

My 2012 Prediction: .280 AVG, 25 HR, 75 R, 80 RBI, 10 SB

After breaking out with a .279 AVG, 15 HR and 8 SB in half of a rookie year of 2009, Reimold became a darling sleeper candidate in 2010. Instead of playing baseball well, this sleeper chose to keep on sleeping and spent most of the year in the minors. Reimold owners grumbled and said they'd never speak to him again. In 2011, he played half a season of baseball again and did so quite well this time by hitting 13 HR and snatching 7 SB in 100 less PA's than 2009. Yet, like a tree falling in the forest with nobody around, fantasy owners didn't even seem to notice. That fact is evidenced by the idea that he's being projected as a 23rd round fantasy draft pick next year at this point.

One thing that might make fantasy owners ignore him is his poor batting average of .247 in 2011. A big dose of bad luck was the culprit there as his xAVG has him pegged at .281 for 2011 based on his low BABIP. Looking at his 2011 season, he started to really find his groove as the season went on. He posted a line of .281/5/16/17/6 in Sept/Oct which is pretty darn fantastic. So, the average should rise in 2012 and his power is still there with a small sprinkling of speed. If he can play a full season as starting OF in Baltimore, a dose of 25 HR and 10 SB is certainly not a reach at all based on his current career numbers in three incomplete seasons.

So, why was his ADP at 177 in 2010 after a nice half-year yet it is 275 in 2012 after a nice half-year? On the surface, the only difference seems to be that he burned a lot of owners and that does have an effect on his value. The only big negative on him at the moment is the fact that he is slotted as Baltimore's #8 hitter right now as that is not a great spot for producing runs. But if he plays well then they could be forced to move him up as the season goes on.

If you set aside bad feelings about his 2010 season and focus on the numbers, it becomes clear that there's still quite a bit of upside with Reimold. He is being drafted so late in drafts at the moment that it negates the risk involved with drafting him. You don't have to take him as a starting outfielder but taking him as one of your backups could pay dividends as he has the potential to deliver big value in 2012.

Sleeper Verdict: Very sleepy. He his high reward potential with very little risk.

2012's Early Mock Draft Results, Some Thoughts

2012-01-10T08:30:00.000-05:00

I have a love/hate relationship with Average Draft Position (ADP) data. I've attacked it previously for being blatantly skewed towards the rankings from the sites that host the drafts like MockDraftCentral yet I recognize that it at least gives us a tiny idea of what way the general public may be thinking as we enter draft season. Ultimately, it beckons the timeless question that philosophers have pondered: does the public influence the ADP or does the ADP influence the public? We may never know.

Regardless, in looking at a new year of mock draft data, it's always interesting to see how far players dropped after a bad season like Jayson Werth or Carl Crawford had. On the other hand, it's equally interesting to see how much of a boost is given to guys who had career years like a Curtis Granderson or Jacoby Ellsbury. It may be early January but let's go ahead and see how the early ADP data is shaking up:

The High Risers

Mike Stanton's stock his risen quite a bit and understandably so. He's a prolific power hitter that I hyped up a lot last year. He ended up with 34 HR in 2011 but he had relatively average production in the Runs, RBI's and AVG departments. His low RBI's may be due to the fact that 25 of 34 HR's came with bases empty. It was still a good season where he performed better than his draft spot but it wasn't an amazing fantasy season. Next season, he should continue to progress and if he hits 35 HR and hits them with more runners on base (Jose Reyes should help) then he should have a 100 RBI season to go with his decent batting average. According to MDC, he's being drafted around 26th (and is 35th in their rankings so people are jumping on him early) which would be at around the 3rd round in most leagues. He has the potential to deliver 1st or 2nd round value.
Right with Mike Stanton at the start of the 3rd round is Andrew McCutchen. In his third year, he showed a bit more power by hitting 23 HR to go along with his 23 SB. While his batting average was only .259, he was quite a bit unlucky as he had an xAVG of .292 (coincidentally that was exactly what his AVG was the previous two seasons). He should continue to give you above average production in all categories in 2012. The big question is whether he will hit 15 HR or 25 HR and the answer to that question will let us know whether he's worth taking in the 3rd round or not.
Currently Jay Bruce is slotted at the beginning of the 4th round. He actually didn't do much differently in 2011 than the first few years of his career other than the fact that he stayed healthy. In 664 PA's, he delivered 32 HR with nearly 100 RBI to go along with a poor batting average (.256). The batting average isn't going to change as that matches his career average and his xAVG was right around there as well. He's kinda like Mike Stanton except with a little less power and a much worse batting average. His draft slot seems about right considering those facts as power is harder to come by in later rounds.
Former top prospect Desmond Jennings came into the league by stealing 20 bases while hitting 10 HR's in half a season last year. Now he's slotted to be about a 5th round pick it seems. One thing is for certain: the Rays like to steal bases as they're almost always among the leaders in SB attempts. While the stolen bases seem to be a sure thing, the power is a bit more of question mark and the answer to that question will determine if he's more of a Carl Crawford or Juan Pierre. In 2010, he hit only 3 HR over nearly 500 PA but then he jacked 22 HR's in 2011 between AAA and the majors. Looking at his full career and his PA/HR, we see that both years seem to be out of the ordinary. His power numbers might regress slightly based on that past history. I'd bank on him hitting closer to 15 HR over a full season as opposed to 25 but that's still pretty awesome to go with 40 to 60 SB. Add a decent batting average to those numbers and that creates a valuable pick in the 5th round.
Right with Desmond Jennings is Eric Hosmer in the 5th round. He plays 1B which is the most offensively heavy position but he lacks premier power and hits in a weaker lineup. It doesn't necessarily add up to 5th round material. He should give you above average production for AVG (should hit around .300) but relatively average numbers elsewhere. That would be all fine and dandy if he was a catcher or SS but this isn't quite as enticing for your starting 1B.

The Big Fallers

In fantasy baseball, some people give up on older players like Alex Rodriguez too early while others hold on too long. For that reason, the 5th round seems like a fair spot for A-Rod even if he is surrounded by guys like Eric Hosmer here. It doesn't seem like he'll ever hit for .300 again but he still hits in a good lineup with decent power so a season with .280 avg, 25 HR, 90 R and 100 RBI isn't out of the question if he can stay healthy. Also, there's the issue of 3B being a very weak fantasy position again so that raises his value up a bit. It seems like A-Rod may still be worth the risk.
Hanley Ramirez had a down year last year due to only being able to play in 92 games while hitting for a terrible AVG. But, his xAVG shows that he should have hit closer to .269 last year if luck didn't hurt him. Aside from that, he was on pace for about 15-20 HR and 35-40 SB if he played a full season. If he stays healthy, there's no reason to think he can't return to being a 20/30 player who hits for .300 at a scarce position. That makes him have some nice value in the 2nd round.
In case you didn't know, Carl Crawford was doo-doo last year yet drafters are still giving him hope by making him a 3rd round pick for next year. There are signs that some things should turn around for him as his xAVG was .274 which was higher than his actual AVG. His power numbers were his normal 10-15 HR but the SB's are worrisome and those are the main source of his value. I don't see enough signs that he'll turn it around to make him worth the risk at this point.
Matt Holliday has now dropped down to become a 4th round pick and it may be because he had an injury plagued year in 2011 or it may be the Albert Pujols factor. The injuries hurt his overall numbers but he still was close to the Holliday of old minus a few points of batting average. A healthy 2012 should mean good production across the board even if the loss of Pujols does have a slight effect on his Runs and RBI totals.
A host of others dropped down a bit this year as well like Ryan Zimmerman (4th Rd), Chase Utley (6th Rd), Jayson Werth (8th Rd) and Jason Heyward (9th Rd) and they each deserve further evaluation on their own. Older players, injuries in the previous year and bad production scare away drafters quickly and sometimes that opens the door for value so it's worth doing your homework on these guys before moving forward with any of them.

It's definitely still early but it's time to start thinking about how far you want former stars to fall in your rankings based on age or injury and also how high you want to rank possible upcoming stars who may or may not have what it takes. In your mind, is the public going too far for guys like Eric Hosmer and are they being too hard on guys like Matt Holliday? That's for you to judge. Answering those questions will have a big impact on how you draft in 2012.

How To Evaluate Batting Averages (BABIP, xBABIP & xAVG)

2012-01-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

When it comes to evaluating hitters for your fantasy baseball leagues, there are generally five statistics that are focused on as they are the basic statistics of most roto leagues (AVG, HR, RBI, R and SB). In order to possibly predict what those numbers would be in an upcoming season, we have to rely on looking at past performances to see what those wacky stats tell us. Luckily, baseball has a lot of advanced statistics that are helpful in determining whether those five base numbers are going to maybe go up or go down in this next year.

A hitter has control over whether they hit a ball or not and how the ball is hit but there's a lot of luck involved after that point. When evaluating a hitter, we need to account for such luck when guessing about what will happen in the future. Unfortunately, the thing we can't account for is more good or bad luck in the upcoming season but we can still make a darned good evaluation of a hitter by using some of the more advanced metrics.

I will go over how to evaluate these statistics over this series of blog posts. This first one here is about evaluating a hitter's batting average.

Batting Average

Batting average is the statistic that can be most prone to some luck due to the fact that whether a batted ball lands in a player's glove or a few feet in front of it can be a bit random. When looking at a player's batting average, these statistics can be helpful for poking at a batting average to see how much luck was involved: BABIP, xBABIP and xAVG.

BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) is the entry level statistic for evaluating whether a hitter's batting average will be able to be reproduced in the future. BABIP measures the batting average only on plays where the ball is hit into the field (ignoring strikeouts, walks and homeruns for instance). Without luck or speed involved, the "normal" batting average for balls hit into play (BABIP) for a hitter is about .290. Sometimes a player has a BABIP well above .290 which usually indicates that they're getting lucky.

To understand why BABIP and luck go together like birds of a feather, let's think of flipping a coin. Statistically the coin should land on heads 50% of the time. You could flip that coin 100 times and, call it luck or whatever you want, but it could land on heads 65% of the time. Instead of looking at the 65% rate, you still realize that the expected rate is 50% and you'd put money on that coin landing on heads at less then 65% over the next 100 flips. In terms of BABIP, we expect 29% of balls hit into play to actually become hits just like expect 50% of coin flips to land on heads. But, sometimes it doesn't go that way and we need to recognize that and if 40% of balls that went into play became a hit (thus raising a player's AVG) then the smart money is to bet on that batting average dropping.

Example: Player A's AVG was .300 in 2011 but his BABIP was .340. The league average BABIP is .290 so Player A has been getting more hits on balls in play than expected and his AVG is inflated. Player A probably won't hit for .300 next year without more luck.

That's BABIP on the surface but it goes deeper than that. While .290 is the league average BABIP, each player is different. If a player hits a lot of line drives then his BABIP will be different than someone who hits a ton of groundballs because each batted ball type has a different likelihood of becoming a hit. A player like Ichiro Suzuki might always have a BABIP that is always around .330 because of how he hits and runs. Even though the average BABIP is .290, Ichiro is not getting lucky since he hits the ball in ways that are more likely to become hits. In order to account for that, there is a statistic called xBABIP.

xBABIP (Expected Batting Average on Balls in Play) is the advanced level statistic for evaluating batting average. It attempts to come up with an expected BABIP for a player (replacing that .290 figure from above). Keep in mind that there are a few variations of the formula for this stat out there and they each differ slightly. Currently the more recognized version was done at Beyond The Boxscore and it takes GB%, FB%, LD% as well as IFFB%, IFH% and HR/FB% to calculate the type of BABIP a player should have. A hitter who hit lots of line drives may be expected to have a .320 BABIP since line drives turn into hits more often and a fly ball hitter may have an xBABIP of .275. The formula takes those hit types into account and generates an xBABIP for each player based on their batted ball profile.

Example: Player A's AVG was .300 in 2011 but his BABIP was .340. His xBABIP was .330 so Player A has only been getting a few more hits on balls put into play than he should have. Player A's AVG may go down slightly in 2012 but not by much.

The beauty of this is that we could even calculate an expected number of hits and then an expected batting average for a player based on xBABIP if we so desired. That would really let us drill down to see just how lucky someone was. In fact, let's do that...

xAVG (Expected Batting Average) would be the expert level analysis tool but, ironically, ends up being the easiest to understand once generated. There isn't a site that has this readily available but using xBABIP we can calculate an xAVG like this: (HR+xBABIP*(AB-K-HR+SF))/AB. It's not pretty but it takes the expected BABIP to figure out the expected number of hits and then divide that by AB's. While it's a pain in the butt to gather, it gives you a situation where you can say "In 2011, Alex Avila's expected average was .269 but he hit .295 so his average should be closer to .269 in 2012." And, that sounds a heck of a lot nicer than "In 2011, Alex Avila hit .295 but had a BABIP of .366 which was well above his expected BABIP of .329 so his average should drop by some amount in 2012." Instead of you digging up all of that info yourself since it's not readily available anywhere, I've calculated the 2011 season xAVG versus AVG for all players and posted it here: Google Docs Link

So there you have it, you can look at a player's batting average now and tell someone whether you think it's legit or not. Go ahead to your local sports pub and talk about batting averages with all the patrons. Watch the normal sports fan's fist fly into your face as the words "expected BABIP" come out of your mouth! Fun times for all!

Figuring Out The Top 10 Picks in 2012

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

In one of my fantasy leagues, I have the honor of picking where I want to draft in the 2012 draft. Generally, I like to be somewhere within picks 3 to 6 for a 12-team roto league because that's the latest point where you can get a stud player while getting a better pick in the second round by not picking 1st or 2nd. In a crude experiment, I looked at the final standings over the past 6 years of this particular league and compared that to where the teams picked in that draft. It confirmed my thought process as picks 3 through 6 averaged out as the four highest spots in the final standings (picks 1, 8, 10, 12 were the worst four spots in case you were curious).

With that in mind, in most years, I would look at early ADP data or expert rankings and see where there's seemingly a dropoff within the 3 to 6 range. Usually, you can see the stud players and then a quick drop to the great-but-not-stud players somewhere within there. This year, every ranking or ADP data seems to be ranking the Top 10 differently. Looking at four different expert rankings, there are 16 different players ranked within the Top 10 between them. Out of those 16, there are only 5 players who appear in the Top 10 in all four rankings. As I look at the various rankings though, I can start to see some clear lines on three separate tiers of players.

Tier One

All five guys are in the Top 10 of each rankings and ADP

Albert Pujols (1B, ANA)

Miguel Cabrera (1B, DET)

Matt Kemp (OF, LAD)

Jose Bautista (OF, TOR)

Troy Tulowitzki (SS, COL)

This might either be one big tier or two mini tiers. I think that Pujols, Cabrera and Kemp shape up a solid top three and that Bautista and Tulowitzki are on the outside looking in of this tier but it's a group of five solid players regardless. As I've stated before, drafting for power instead of speed is extremely important at this stage in the game. You can always find speed at any point in the draft but you cannot find power later. Kemp and Tulowitzki should be closer to the 30 HR department but Kemp brings speed and Tulowitzki brings position scarcity. Pujols and Cabrera are in the 35-40 HR department but bring batting average and other goodies while Bautista is a HR machine that now seems to be hitting for average too.

Tier Two

Guys in the Top 10 of three of the four rankings

Adrian Gonzalez (1B, BOS)

Joey Votto (1B, CIN)

Jacoby Ellsbury (OF, BOS)

This is a solid little cluster of guys who should be in all Top 10 lists by the time the 2012 drafts start rolling around. I think these players and the first tier above combine to make the clear top eight players. As far as these three guys, Ellsbury is the most curious and unpredictable as his 32 HR came out of nowhere last year. If the power turns out to be legit then he will be quite the total package. Votto and Gonzalez are fairly similar but Gonzalez has shown to have more pop in his bat historically as it seems that Votto has a 30 HR ceiling while Gonzalez at least has the potential for 40 HR.

Tier Three

Guys which appear in one or two Top 10 rankings

Robinson Cano (2B, NYY)

Justin Upton (OF, ARI)

Prince Fielder (1B, ???)

Justin Verlander (SP, DET)

Evan Longoria (3B, TB)

Dustin Pedroia (2B, BOS)

Now this is where it gets a bit murkier as it's tough to really say which of these six players belong in the remaining two spots in the Top 10. Each of these players has their own question marks. Is Longoria healthy? Do you draft an SP this early? Where will Fielder play? Will Upton repeat or regress? If I was forming my own Top 10 here, I'd likely choose Fielder and Longoria as you might be getting great value if Longoria is healthy and Fielder ends up in a good situation.

Wildcard

Ryan Braun (OF, MIL)

Of course, there is the mystery that is Ryan Braun. What do we do with him? It all depends on his appeal of his suspension. If he successfully appeals the suspension then he jumps up into Tier One and everything shifts around a bit. But, I say that things are not looking like they're going in that direction at this time so it's probably best to ignore him.

So, by taking all of that info and looking at it in tiers like this, we start to get a clearer picture on what the upcoming 2012 first round will look like. When I'm placing my money on these guys, I like to rely on the guys who have been in the first round before so Pujols, Cabrera, Tulowitzki or A. Gonzalez seem to be some of the more attractive options at first glance. But, luck and injuries will surely have a big effect on things and we'll laugh at this list 9 months from now. Regardless for the time being, this seems to be the path that will be laid out for drafters in 2012.

(And, as full disclosure, I decided to go with the sixth pick this year because I feel comfortable with anyone in that 3-6 range and feel that there is slight risk to each of them. That being the case, I'll end up with someone from that group and a better second round pick as a result.)

2011's Biggest Fantasy Surprises (Hitters)

2011-12-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

You might describe the path to a fantasy baseball title as avoiding the disappointing players and finding the surprise players. In 2011, there were certainly surprises all over the board and even some from the middle rounds of the draft like David Ortiz and Carlos Beltran. However, this particular post is about the players that were left for dead to start the year but managed to surprise us all. They're like the hand-me-down sweaters that nobody in the world wanted so they sat in a Goodwill for two years before somebody gave them a chance and then we found out that the sweaters were knitted from pure gold. Right? Just like that. Let's take a look at these big surprises and see if their success will continue or maybe how we could have seen this coming.

Alex Avila (C), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value 0.1: Avila went from undrafted fantasy catcher to a beast who hit 19 HR's with a .295 batting average to boot. His power numbers seem to be legit and where they should be (1 HR per 33.8 PA in first two years versus 1 HR per 29 PA in 2011) but his spike in average is what came out of the blue. If anything, he was expected to be a .260 hitter with 15 HR. But, unfortunately, that batting average seems to be aided by good fortune. His expected AVG (based on BABIP and xBABIP) shows that he should have hit .267 last year instead of .295 which gave him a boost in value and an additional boost in his RBI and Run totals. Be wary of that next season.

Mark Trumbo (1B), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value 0.1: Without a past MLB history to draw upon and uncertainty about the 1B position for the Angels, Trumbo was left undrafted. He showed power in the minors that came out in the majors right away as he hit 29 HR's in his first full season. His xAVG indicates that he should have actually had a much higher AVG last year than his paltry .254. Aside from Pujols taking his natural position, we have to wonder if his tiny walk rate (4.4%) will be cause for concern in his development. If his average rises closer to .285 that he should be at then he could be quite the fantasy player next season.

Matt Joyce (OF), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value: 0.1: Prior to 2011, Joyce had shown the ability to hit for power by hitting 25 HR in 575 PA. However, those plate appearances were broken up over three years of MLB duty since he was never given a starting role for a ballclub. Initially, the Rays didn't give him a green light in 2011 either but once they did he ran with it by continuing to show some power with some speed and a decent average. All of these skills seem to be sustainable based on past history. He's a player who can give you average fantasy production in all categories for deeper leagues and that should continue if he gets the chance to play.

Emilio Bonifacio (SS), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value 0.4: When Emilio started for the Marlins in 2009, he hit for a poor average .252 but showed glimpses of good baserunning (21 SB, 72 R). However, it wasn't enough to make him a very good fantasy player. 2010 was a lost season mostly due to injury but, in 2011, Emilio must have changed his approach because he started to hit a ton more line drives and walked at a better rate (9.2% versus 6.7%). His batting average and OBP went up so he was on base 75 more times which meant he stole more bases and scored more runs. He had a .372 BABIP which sounds scary but his xBABIP was actually .364 because of his LD% and his ability to get infield hits. If the LD% is legit (which is certainly a big if) then he can maintain his OBP and get SB opportunities in 2012. However, the big question is whether Ozzie Guillen will find a place for him in the field with Jose Reyes and Hanley Ramirez taking up his former positions in the infield.

Eric Hosmer (1B), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value: 0.7: Hosmer started the year in the minors and thus went undrafted. When he got called up early in the season, he became a gift from the waiver wire gods. He literally did it all for roto fantasy owners as he hit for great average while contributing a bit in all other categories. His batting profile indicates that the batting average is here to stay next year, while his power numbers seem repeatable based on his minor league numbers. The only questionable part of his game is whether he'll get above 10 SB again. Even if he doesn't, he should be a great 1B next year as he should hit around .300 with 25 HR and good RBI and Run totals. This should just be the beginning for Hosmer.

Jeff Francouer (OF), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value 2.4: Jeff freakin' Francouer! After three years of forgettable baseball, Francouer rises from the ashes with a 20/20 season. In his previous 6 MLB seasons, he stole 23 total bases then he came out of nowhere to steal 22 last year due to the Royals running like crazy. I'm not sure what to make of it. His SB% wasn't even that good as he was caught stealing 10 times. But those SB's really spiked his fantasy value. In regards to his other stats, the batting average seems legit at .285 while his homerun numbers were inflated a little bit by higher HR/FB numbers but he's shown the ability in his younger days to hit over 10% HR/FB. If I were a betting man, I'd say that his SB's drop and his HR's drop slightly which should make him turn back into a fairly forgettable fantasy player. But, we'll always have 2011, Jeff.

Michael Morse (1B), ADP 378, 2011 Roto Value 2.8: He showed us signs that he could do this in 2010. In about 300 PA's, he hit around 20% HR/FB with a .229 ISO which translated into 15 HR. In 2011, he got nearly twice as many PA's and hit twice as many HR's with similar HR/FB and ISO rates. His batting average was slightly inflated due to a higher BABIP but the power is certainly real. Though he should hit for a fairly high average, he most likely won't sustain a .300 average again in 2012. Still, there were warning signs that a big year was coming as discussed here in the preseason. The lesson is to keep an eye out for guys who did a lot with limited playing time in the previous season.

Lance Berkman (OF), ADP 321, 2011 Roto Value 3.5: At 35 years old, it seemed like Berkman's career was headed in the wrong direction. His HR totals had gone from 45 to 34 to 29 to 25 to 14 and all of his other numbers seemed to be following down each year. As observant folks, we've seen this before with countless players because players tend to get worse as they get in their late 30's. I don't know how this could have been predicted but Berkman suddenly turned into his younger self again for a full year with a .300 average and 30 HR's. While it certainly seemed like a legit year, it's hard to count on Berkman doing it again at 36 without the benefit of a DH position for an old guy like himself.

Alex Gordon (OF), ADP 391, 2011 Roto Value 4.4: Gordon had always shown some promise in his early years but injuries had plagued his career up until now. In 2011, Gordon's got the benefit of good health and good luck. Playing a full season showed him to be a player who could contribute across the board (23 HR, 17 SB, 101 R, 87 RBI, .303 AVG). On the other hand, good luck was able to boost his average up (xAVG was .283) which also likely gave at least a little boost to RBI, Run and SB totals. His numbers should dip a bit next year and health is a lingering concern so if he is being drafted in the range of elite players then I have my issues with him in 2012.

Melky Cabrera (OF), Undrafted, 2011 Roto Value 4.5: Melky goes from 4 HR and 42 RBI over 500 PA's in 2010 to becoming a fantasy god. His numbers were eerily similar to Gordon's above (18 HR, 20 SB, 102 R, 87 RBI, .305 AVG) and they don't show signs of being fluky either. His power stroke came back to his 2009 days and he finally benefited from decent luck in the AVG department. The Royals let him run (like they did with everyone, it seems) and the Runs and RBI's followed suit. Baseball is a crazy game. Even with the best analysis in the world, it's hard to predict this stuff. He'll be in San Fran next year and it will be interesting to see if he can benefit from high RBI and Run totals there to boost his roto value. They may not run him quite as much as the Royals did and the change in scenery will certainly be a factor in his 2012 value. As you could imagine, further analysis will be coming in the coming months.