Fantasy Baseball 2012 Team Report: Blue Jays
Author: Chris McBrien
www.dmfantasybaseball.com
When considering options for your fantasy baseball team, it is never a good idea to be a “homer”. In other words, be very careful about selecting players from your favorite team just because you follow them and would like to see them on your fantasy roster. My favorite team is the Toronto Blue Jays. Always has been. Always will be. However, I will never let my allegiance get in the way of winning my fantasy baseball league. Neither should you. That being said, it is worth a look at a few prominent Blue Jays and their potential fantasy impact in 2012. Some you will want to grab, others you’ll want to avoid.
Jose Bautista (OF/3B) –
It’s not just his multiple position eligibility that makes Bautista so valuable (although, it certainly doesn’t hurt!). Since overhauling his plate mechanics in late 2009, “Joey Bats” has become the most feared slugger since Barry Bonds. He is a leader in the clubhouse, on the field and on fantasy rosters across North America. A dip in production in the second half is a little worrisome but the Jays’ slugger remains top ten material on draft day. If he ever got any help in the line up, look out.
Brett Lawrie (3B) –
Call me pessimistic but I am a little concerned with the degree that so many fantasy owners have jumped all over Lawrie this season. With only 150 big league at bats to his name, Lawrie is being drafted like a 10-year veteran in some leagues. I for one would advise a little more caution at this stage of his career. There is no doubt that he is a special talent but he has shown a knack for being injury-prone at times and until he makes his way through the league a second time, I am reserving judgement. Ask me again in July. Until then, I am playing it safe and letting Lawrie go to another owner in the early rounds.
Kramerica Sports Top Take Contest
Submit a comment below to be entered into our monthly contest to win a $20 Best Buy Gift Card.
J.P. Arencibia (C) –
You’ll take the power (23 bombs and 78 RBI as a rookie) but that batting average (.219) and propensity to whiff make him the Mark Reynolds of the catcher set. With Travis d’Arnaud nipping at his heels, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Arencibia the subject of trade rumors as early as this season. If you shore up batting average at another position, grab him for the home runs.
Sergio Santos (RP) –
I’m not letting the signing of Francisco Cordero worry me. I’m pegging Santos as a top ten closer in baseball for 2012. Cordero has been brutal lately and is around for his experience and will act as an insurance policy. Santos should be given every opportunity to succeed. Originally drafted as a shortstop, Santos is really coming into his own as a pitcher and should be dynamite in 2012.
Ricky Romero (SP) –
Sure, I’m a Jays fan but I know a number one, “ace” starter when I see one and Ricky doesn’t fit the bill. He has improved recently but a lack of command and a weakness for the big inning knock Romero down a few pegs in my book. There are safer bets at the draft table.
Brandon Morrow (SP) –
Morrow scares me more than just a little. We’ve seen this act in Toronto before and he was called A.J. Burnett. All the talent in the world with poor results. If you are in love with the strikeouts, by all means pick him up. However, you had better load up on the Tums if you want to watch him pitch. Also, say goodbye to any chances you may have at the WHIP and ERA categories while you are at it.
Another Jay to consider is Henderson Alvarez (SP) but he may be a few years from contributing anything of value in fantasy. Other jays to avoid include Colby Rasmus, Travis Snider and Brett Cecil. You’ll be better off with safer picks on draft day. Let other owners pray that these players will come through on their potential.
Just because you are a “homer” doesn’t mean you can’t call them as you see them. Fan or not, when it comes to fantasy baseball, the only allegiance you should have is to winning your league.
Chris McBrien is a freelance writer from Barrie, Ontario, Canada. He provides fantasy baseball analysis at www.dmfantasybaseball.com and contributes his fantasy insights to Kramerica Sports.
Fantasy Baseball 2012: Sleeper Pitchers
Author: Luke Gloeckner
www.mrcheatsheet.com
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 home runs 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.
Kramerica Sports Top Take Contest
Submit a comment below to be entered into our monthly contest to win a $20 Best Buy Gift Card.
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.
Luke Gloeckner is the creator of http://www.mrcheatsheet.com, a fantasy baseball blog centered on analyzing the player market and trends. His unique spin on player evaluation has helped countless fantasy owners draft their way to success. He also plays a mean game of wiffleball.
Fantasy Baseball 2012: Auction Draft Strategy
Author: Courtney Scott
FantasyDraftStrategy
Auction fantasy draft strategies may well have the most variety of all fantasy sports drafts. Adding in a maximum dollar or point amount into the mix can certainly ratchet up the stress factors a little further.
In my opinion, there isn't a perfect auction draft strategy, however, I do have my own personal choice. To be honest, I haven't identified consistent success with any certain game plan, which is why I don't care for auction drafts that much.
With my personal feelings aside, many of you participate in them on an annual basis so it is necessary to bring up the topic. I've developed a hybrid strategy that includes bits and pieces of various practices that I employ in concert throughout the length of the draft.
Here are the different components that I apply:
First, I split out the maximum cap amount ($100 for simplicity sake) by the number of roster spots (10 again for simplicity), which means the average cost per player should be $10. Although, this doesn't mean that you should count on spending that number per player.
Clearly, the cream of the crop will sell for more money while less-productive players will come cheaper. The same can be said for prices near the beginning or near the end of the draft. When everyone has money to spend, most spend it readily. So, as the bankrolls get low later in the draft, so do draft prices. Use this to our benefit and don't pay too much early on in the draft, as you will need to set yourself apart from the pack in order to pick off quality players down the road that others cannot afford.
One of my favored methods early on in the draft is to nominate guys that I have no intention of taking. Let everyone else fight over unwanted players while depleting their available payroll, as it will leave less money for them to offer on players I'm intrigued in buying. This is something that I typically do in every draft I'm part of and I think it works quite well.
The last tip that I use myself is to never pay over the maximum value amount you've identified. Nearly every draft service such as Yahoo or ESPN will provide the average draft cost for each player so you have a great starting place. However, your pre-draft research will offer further insight as to whether or not the player is really worth more or less than the average draft price.
While these auction draft strategies might seem quite simple, by incorporating these techniques into your own draft strategy will provide a strong drafting foundation. Be ready to think on your feet as the action happens fast in auction drafts.
The last thing you want is to have too many conflicting thoughts going on in your head, so keep these tips in mind and fill the rest of your noggin with your pre-draft fantasy draft research.
Good luck drafting!
Courtney Scott is the founder of FantasyDraftStrategy, a leading fantasy sports site that delivers timeless fantasy draft advice that applies to all fantasy sports. Implementing the sound techniques that we discuss will improve your chances of reaching the playoffs where, as they say, anything can happen. Every fantasy champion began the season with a solid fantasy draft. Find out how to draft fantasydraftstrategy.com.
2012 Fantasy Baseball Player Profile: Anibal Sanchez
(Image courtesy Sun Sentinel)
Author: Ian Wilson
@ianw14
Anibal Sanchez...
Not the sexiest name on your draft board, but I guarantee that when the season ends there will be quite a few owners being showered with Yoo-hoo while looking at a roster that includes Mr. Sanchez. No joke, because of Josh Johnson’s propensity for watching games in street clothes, I would take Sanchez over him.
I would also draft Sanchez over:
Tommy Hanson
Josh Johnson
Michael Pineda
Ian Kennedy
C.J. Wilson
Matt Garza
Colby Lewis
Gio Gonzalez
Ted Lilly
Shaun Marcum
Josh Beckett
Brandon Morrow
Neftali Feliz
Ricky Romero
Matt Moore
Jaime Garcia
You probably stopped reading when you saw the first five names, but in case you’re still here, let me explain. Aside from the fact that opposing hitters will be distracted by the ugliest uniforms in professional sports, there are a number of reasons to expect a big year from Sanchez.
1) Sanchez enters 2012 at age 28 with only three full seasons under his belt due to a visit with the esteemed Dr. James Andrews in 2007, and the subsequent healing time/rehab. He only pitched limited innings in 2008 and 2009, but his last two seasons have seen Sanchez reach 195 and 196 innings pitched - an indication that he is finally recovered and back to peak form.
2) The Marlins new park is alleged to play like Petco East and we all know that pitching in San Diego is like The Cream and The Clear for pitchers. Home runs allowed was his worst stat last year, which rose from 10 in 2010, to 20 in 2011. Think a stadium with bigger dimensions than Petco, Safeco, and Citi Field will help bring that back down?
3) Anibal posted a career high 9.26 K/9 in 2011 which was almost 2 K’s per nine innings more than the 7.34 K/9 he averaged in 2009/2010.
4) His BB/9 has dropped from 4.81 in 2009 and 3.23 in 2010, to 2.93 last year.
5) In addition, his xFIP has dropped each of the last two years to 3.25 in 2011. I love this stat as xFIP has one of the highest correlations with future ERA of all the pitching metrics out there according to FanGraphs. Think his increased K/9 and decreased BB/9 have anything to do with the drop in xFIP?
His current ADP is 129 on www.mockdraftcentral.com with range from 99th to 192nd, meaning that he is going from anywhere between round 9 to round 16. That is a huge spread for a guy that I think will end up a top 25 starting pitcher by year-end. By avoiding a sexier name earlier you can instead stock up on hitters and have a guy like Sanchez anchor your staff when he drops to you while everyone else is scrambling to find a middle infielder.
The value is especially good when you look at him in auction leagues. Yahoo! and ESPN have him at an average auction cost of $4.00-$5.00. I would go as high as $20 for him, but it looks like I will be able to spend that $15 somewhere else in the draft. $20 production for $5 cost: that is how you win in fake sports.
Ian Wilson is a former collegiate baseball player and aspiring writer from Los Angeles, CA. He has been playing fantasy sports since 1992 and is just slightly fanatical about them. He recommends reading any analysis that he provides and then doing the opposite. You can follow him on Twitter at @ianw14.
Cory Luebke: 2012 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper
Author: Luke Gloeckner
www.mrcheatsheet.com
Though he was a starting pitcher all throughout his minor league career, Cory Luebke opened last season in the Padres' bullpen but finally cracked the rotation at the end of June after dominating out of the bullpen. As a reliever, he had a 3.23 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 9.92 K/9 and 3.46 BB/9. Despite the transition from reliever back to starter, those numbers all stayed virtually the same once his workload increased (with the walk rate improving greatly even). His core numbers are phenomenal from 2011. If he has the ability to repeat that low WHIP and high strikeout rate then he will be a premier pitcher in 2012.
In the minors, Luebke's greatest asset was his good command as he commonly had a low walk rate and a decent strikeout rate. Last year, he had a strikeout rate that seems a bit out of the blue as it was over 2 K/9 higher than his usual minor league numbers. It's hard to pinpoint an exact reason for the jump in strikeouts but it may have been partly due to the element of surprise with hitters seeing a rookie pitcher for the first time. For that reason, it's hard to fully endorse Luebke without history supporting his role as a strikeout artist. But, he still does have other positive attributes such as his spacious home park in San Diego which will help limit his run totals.
If Luebke is experiencing a metamorphosis into becoming a new pitcher that strikes out over a batter per inning then he could likely be one of the best pitchers in the league this year. However, without evidence supporting it, I'm tempering my expectations. Thus far, he has struck out 6 over 5 IP in the spring so perhaps he has turned over a new leaf. If you draft him, he's being drafted around the range of a 3rd or 4th fantasy SP so the risk is high to go along with the potentially high reward.
Sleeper Verdict: Sleepy risk. The ceiling is high here but the price is also high. There's not enough of a past history to completely sell me on Luebke and he won't benefit from seeing a lot of hitters for the first time this year. I might roll the dice on him in a few leagues but I need to see more before I'm completely sold.
ADP as of this posting: 136.9 (Round 12 in 12-team league)
Projected 2012 Role: SD #4 SP
2011 Production: 6-10 W/L, 3.29 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 154 K in 139.6 IP
My 2012 Prediction: 10-10 W/L, 3.30 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 180 K
Luke Gloeckner is the creator of http://www.mrcheatsheet.com, a fantasy baseball blog centered on analyzing the player market and trends. His unique spin on player evaluation has helped countless fantasy owners draft their way to success. He also plays a mean game of wiffleball.