Champ or Chump: What to Make of Castellanos, Bogaerts, and Abreu

Another day, another hitting streak that I don't care about for a Boston player. This time it's Xander Bogaerts, a shortstop that I dismissed in the preseason for lacking obvious fantasy skills. Jose Abreu is another guy I never really cared for, as he never posted a FB% that made me trust his impressive HR […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Shaw, Shelby and Sonny

Shelby Miller made offseason headlines after commanding an ace's price tag in the trade market. There were plenty of critics, but everyone assumed he would be better than his current performance. Travis Shaw seemed likely to usurp the struggling Pablo Sandoval at some point this year, but injury has opened the door faster than anticipated. […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Bradley, Murphy, and Greinke

Imagine your favorite position player on your favorite team, real or fantasy. How did he do five games ago? 17? What about 24? You don't remember, do you? I don't either, yet we as a baseball fandom hold hitting streaks on a pedestal despite needing to ask someone if one is going on. If Jackie […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Jones, Puig and Scherzer

My plan was very simple. Last week I profiled three struggling aces, intending to shift over to slumping bats this week. Then Scherzer decided to strikeout 20 Tigers amid concerns that he was off to a slow start, so I felt I should look at him. Thus, we have two slumping bats and whatever you […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Wainwright, Price, and Keuchel

If a player slumps in June, it is easy to avoid overreacting. His overall numbers still look acceptable, to the point that standard rotisserie league owners may not realize the slump exists until it is over. Slow starts to the season, however, are far more noticeable. OH MY GOD! DAVID PRICE HAS A 6.14 ERA! […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Aledmys Diaz, Neil Walker and Joey Votto

If you look at any baseball coverage with an analytical bent, you are sure to see the word "regress" or one of its derivatives. Baseball writers frequently cite it when a given player's performance, whether good or bad, seems likely to revert to a previously established level. The word is widely misinterpreted, however. If Player […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Mallex Smith, Trumbo and Harvey

Small sample size has been a common refrain from fantasy baseball experts over the past few weeks, as one hot or cold game should not significantly change your outlook on a player. The month of April is almost over now and, while it is still a small sample, a sixth of the season is almost […]

Champ or Chump: What to Make of Jeanmar Gomez, Randal Grichuk and Robinson Cano

It takes a little while for the advanced stats to have any significance at all, so we're continuing to look at guys with unexpected roles and analysis of 2015 data. This week, we have a closer that came out of nowhere, a struggling St. Louis slugger, and a perennial All-Star enjoying an early season resurgence. […]

Champ or Chump: Kiermaier, d'Arnaud and Trevor Story

Hello, and welcome to the first in season Champ or Chump of 2016. For anyone that is not aware, this column embraces sabermetrics to predict whether a given player will be good (champ) or bad (chump) the rest of the way. The advanced stats are used only to predict the usual fantasy ones, so I'll […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: Starting Pitchers

As Opening Day rapidly approaches, we close the preseason version of Champ or Chump by looking at a trio of pitchers. Pitchers have a unique set of data points to consider. Stats like BABIP and SwStr% continue to matter, but we want our pitchers to have low BABIPs and high whiff rates whereas with hitters […]

Brandon Phillips (2B, CIN) - 2016 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

BALLER MOVE: Roster as MI in shallow leagues, starting 2B in anything deeper CURRENT ADP: 255.8 ANALYSIS: Long left for dead in the fantasy game, Brandon Phillips came out of nowhere to post a .294/.328/.395 triple slash line with 12 HR and 23 SBs in 2015. Many feared that the aging second sacker would be […]

Jimmy Nelson (SP, MIL) - 2016 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

BALLER MOVE: Stream in standard mixed leagues, start as a back of the rotation arm in anything deeper. CURRENT ADP: 274.8 ANALYSIS: Nelson's middling 11-13 record and 4.11 ERA don't exactly scream out "Draft me!," but there is solid upside here nonetheless. As a pitcher in a hitter's park, the first thing you should look […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: Outfield

I like to look at the outfield as the department store of fantasy baseball. Sluggers, speedsters, batting average and all around players are all available in abundance. Most leagues compensate for this by starting five OFers per team, but even then the OF-5 is better than a lot of shortstops or catchers. While you don't […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: Shortstop

There are those who will try to convince you SS is amazingly deep this year. Don't buy it. In reality, it is just littered with guys that have ridiculously inflated ADPs based on unsustainable performances in small sample sizes. My best advice on the position is to wait to fill it, kind of like catcher. […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: Third Base

Third base is home to two of the trendiest "sleeper" picks this draft season, Kris Bryant and Miguel Sano. I put sleeper in quotes because they both need to hit their upsides to simply break even relative to their current draft day costs. This seems to happen every year with a few young players, but […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: Second Base

Position scarcity gives certain players an uptick in ADP over what their established production warrants based on the feeling that it is important to get something out of the lineup slot. Buster Posey is a much better offensive performer than other catchers, for example, so slotting him in at C is more valuable than a […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: First Base

While I provide generic ADP data in these articles, it is at least as important to look at the data for the site and format you are drafting on as well. Wonky default ratings often lead to absurd values, such as Masahiro Tanaka lasting way too long in the recent Rotoballer industry draft. It is […]

Preseason Champ or Chump: Catchers

Earlier this offseason, I did a series of articles detailing how to use advanced metrics to validate and predict baseball player performance for fantasy purposes. In season, advanced metrics are useful to separate random hot streaks from legitimate breakouts. In the offseason, they can spare you from wasting a high pick or a bunch of […]

Rick Lucks' 10 Bold Predictions for 2016

While I like the idea for this series, it has become a trend to blame fellow RotoBaller Kyle Bishop for making us do it. So thanks a bunch, Kyle, for making me do something I wanted to do anyway. Usually, I identify whether specific baseball players are champs or chumps. This time, we'll find out […]

Ian Kennedy: 2016 Fantasy Baseball Draft Value

2015 In Review Ian Kennedy? Seriously? You want me to buy the bust that somehow fleeced the Royals for $70 million and a draft pick as a sleeper? Yes, I do. Kennedy's 9-15 record and 4.28 ERA last season don't look great, but his xFIP was a much more palatable 3.70. The biggest difference is […]

Five 2015 Breakouts Poised to Regress in 2016

Every year, every fantasy owner tries to predict who will breakout and outperform their draft day cost by a significant margin. The players that manage to do so may be viewed skeptically the next year, as the fantasy world wonders if the performance is repeatable. Sometimes, younger players are given a pass on that skepticism because […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 10: Minor League Stats

Once you've grown accustomed to having advanced tools to help make fantasy decisions, it can be disorientating to be without them. Prospects are increasingly becoming a focal point in both real and fantasy baseball, but the minors simply do not have all of the data available for MLB players. For example, advanced plate discipline stats, […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 9: PITCHf/x

One of the most fundamental questions in fantasy sports is if a player's current performance is sustainable. PITCHf/x is a publicly available pitch tracking system that provides a lot of different data to help fantasy owners make this determination for mound breakouts and busts alike. The first data point, and the easiest to understand, is […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 8: Batted Ball Distribution for Pitchers

The league average batted ball distribution in 2015 was 20.9% liners, 45.3% grounders and 33.8% flies. Last time, we took a brief look at how pitchers may specialize in either grounders or fly balls. Fly ball pitchers have a BABIP advantage over their ground ball-inducing counterparts, since fly balls (.129 BABIP in 2015) consistently have […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 7: BABIP for Pitchers

While FIP is a useful tool to predict a pitcher's future ERA performance, fantasy owners should remember that ERA, not FIP, is what really matters in most formats. This means that we are interested in the "luck" that separates the two statistics. Some of this is unpredictable, but we can and should predict some of […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 6: FIP and xFIP

The first advanced pitching stat most fantasy owners encounter is FIP. FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, and attempts to measure a pitcher's actual skill instead of the effects of luck or his supporting cast. According to the DIPS theory that the metric is based upon, pitchers control only Ks, BBs (and HBP) and home […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 5: Lineups, Runs and RBI

To this point, this column has focused exclusively on trying to predict and validate HRs and batting average. There is a reason for this--modern sabermetrics tend to reject the idea of a "clutch RBI guy" and therefore do not bother inventing predictive metrics for it. Runs and RBI are team dependent stats, and are unhelpful […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 4: Plate Discipline for Hitters

No matter how high a particular player's BABIP may be, his average will be mediocre at best if he strikes out too much. This is why fantasy owners have known for years that players like Adam Dunn, Mark Reynolds, and Chris Davis are potential drains on a fantasy team's batting average. Furthermore, players that whiff […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 3: Batted Ball Distribution

In the first post of this series, I referenced that Chris Davis's BABIP is not explained by that post alone, and that we would consider him again in the future. He was not considered in Part 2. He will be considered here. Davis managed an above average overall BABIP of .319 in 2015, despite the […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 2: HR/FB for Hitters

Using BABIP to predict a player's batting average is great. Average is a category in many league formats, and every hit is an opportunity to steal a base or score a run. But most owners find the long ball sexier. Every HR comes with a guaranteed run scored and at least one RBI--and maybe more. […]