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About Eric Samulski - RotoBaller
NYC-based teacher, writer and filmmaker. Former collegiate and professional baseball player. Lifelong Bills fan.
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Eric Samulski - RotoBaller has written 412 articles so far, you can find them below.
Yimi Garcia (RP, MIA) - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values
BALLER MOVE: Draft target ~pick 350 CURRENT ADP: ~372 overall ANALYSIS: The 30-year-old has been incredibly solid the last two seasons and was dominant in the shortened 2020 campaign, pitching to a 0.60 ERA and a 0.93 WHIP with an 11.40 K/9 and 23.3 K-BB% across 15 innings. While 15 innings wasn't enough to qualify... Read More
Evan White (1B, SEA) - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values
BALLER MOVE: Draft target ~pick 350 CURRENT ADP: ~375 overall ANALYSIS: White struggled last year. There's no way you can argue against that when he put up a triple-slash of .176/.252/.346 to go along with a 41.6% strikeout rate. However, his contact wasn't actually the issue. In fact, when you look under the hood, you see that White... Read More
Relievers Set to Break Out in 2021
As the calendar flips to February and more leagues start drafting, it's time to dive into everybody's favorite topic: breakouts. For now, we'll ignore the increasingly common facial breakouts from pandemic-related stress and focus on relief. Relief pitching, that is. When looking for draft targets at relief pitcher, almost everybody just turns their eyes to... Read More
Are We Overlooking Ha Seong Kim?
Earlier this year I, like most of us, was quarantined in my home with limited ability to go outside and no sports on television. I had already binged Tiger King, so I was looking for a new obsession; then ESPN started broadcasting KBO games. Hungry for sports, I started recording the games and writing DFS... Read More
2021 Fantasy Baseball Sleepers - Tyler Mahle
Eric Samulski of RotoBaller analyzes Tyler Mahle as a 2021 fantasy baseball sleeper and undervalued draft pick. He breaks down Mahle's pitches, improvements from 2020, and other factors that could make him a sneaky mid-round starting pitcher breakout candidate. Fantasy players should consider drafting Mahle for their drafts this MLB Season. Be sure to also tune... Read More
2021 Fantasy Baseball Sleepers - Chris Martin
Eric Samulski of RotoBaller analyzes Chris Martin as a 2021 fantasy baseball sleeper and undervalued draft pick. He breaks Martin's pitches, improvements from 2020, and other factors that could make him a sneaky late-round relief pitcher breakout candidate. Fantasy players should consider drafting Martin for their drafts this MLB Season. Be sure to also tune... Read More
Sneaky Starters - Deceptive Pitchers Who Could Be Draft Steals
Earlier this week, I was reading Michael Ajeto's article on PitcherList about Brady Singer. In the article, Michael touted Singer's deception and mentioned a sign of that being Singer's Zone Swing Rate (Z-Swing%) minus his Chase Rate (O-Swing%). The premise of the concept was simple but one that stood out to me immediately. Z-Swing% measures... Read More
Week 17 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 17 is here, so if you're reading this article, you either play in a league with a Week 17 championship (please try to change that for next season) or you're doing some research for DFS. Either way, it's important to treat these rankings as extra preliminary this early in the week. Most weeks of... Read More
Week 16 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Oooh, baby! We tied our best week of the season at just the right time. I'm not going to lie, I had assumed Pittsburgh would deliver last night and make it eight out of ten, but they and the Rams really let us down this week. Hopefully, the rest of the rankings helped some of... Read More
Biggest Brl/BBE% Fallers from 2020
Last week, I discussed the importance of the Brl/BBE% and examined some players who had improved the most in the shortened 2019 season. If you haven't yet taken a look at that, I would encourage you to because I also gave a detailed breakdown of why I like this particular stat. However, if you simply... Read More
Squaring It Up: 2020's Biggest Brl/BBE% Gainers
Often when it comes to fantasy baseball, we get overloaded with statistics and it becomes hard to sort out what's useful from what's misleading. Many experts can write pages about why they swear by certain stats as being the most predictive for future success or accurate in reflecting who had a good season. In the... Read More
Week 15 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
If you're checking this for your match-up this week, congratulations. With all the delays and COVID cases on top of the normal scale of NFL injuries, getting to your semi-final is no small feat. Sure, maybe it was partially luck, but that's true of all the best fantasy seasons. You may have even started an atrocious... Read More
Defense Wins Championships - Top DST Streamers for Fantasy Playoffs
The playoffs are here. The work you've been putting in over the past 14-plus weeks has gotten you to this point, and now is the time to bring it home. For that, you'll need the right defense. Yes, having a guy like Christian McCaffrey coming back or Patrick Mahomes as your quarterback helps a little... Read More
Week 14 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Learn from the Chicago Bears. All year I’ve been saying that we should be picking defenses based on their ability to get pressure and force turnovers. Yardage stinginess doesn’t really matter. Targeting a bad offense only somewhat matters. For all of those reasons, I initially had the Bears as my 12th ranked defense this week.... Read More
Week 13 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 12 saw some crazy high defensive point totals with Atlanta, Carolina, San Francisco, and Houston all scoring over 15 points. In fact, all of the top-10 units scored in double-figures, which is something I can't remember having happened in a while. The Raider's penchant for fumbles early in the season had me high on... Read More
Week 12 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 11 saw a bit of a rebound in picking the right defenses. With the weather and injury updates on Sunday, we were able to nail six of the top-10 defensive units with the Bucs still to come. Miami laid a bit of an egg against a banged-up Denver team, and the Chargers weren't able... Read More
Week 11 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 10, more so than many others before it, showed us the value of playing against a bad offense (although, clearly, the Ravens didn't get the memo). Despite having mediocre defenses for fantasy purposes, teams like the Raiders, Packers, and Saints all finished inside the top-10, thanks to the lack of firepower from their opposition.... Read More
Playoff Tight End Streamers: ROS Schedules to Attack
The tight end position has been a crapshoot all year, which even the seemingly dependable options like Zach Ertz, George Kittle, and Mark Andrews either hurt or failing to meet expectations. That has left the landscape as Travis Kelce and a whole bunch of other guys, which has amounted to a massive headache for fantasy... Read More
Week 10 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 9 saw the surprise return of some of the league's previously dominant defenses playing up to past form. Despite taking on dangerous offensive opponents, the New Orleans Saints and Buffalo Bills both put together top-5 finishes, and the Tennessee Titans took advantage of a poor Bears offense to also finish inside the top-10 defensive... Read More
Week 9 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 8 was the toughest of the year so far with only four correct top-10 predictions after Tampa Bay notched seven points against the Giants on Monday night. That puts me at 40%, which is the worst finish of the season. Weather played a factor, with winds whipping over 20 MPH in a few games... Read More
Week 8 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Week 7 was relatively successful with seven correctly predicted top-10 defenses after the Los Angeles Rams strong effort on Monday night. Washington was a close call as they made my top-12, but I never thought the Cowboys offense would fall off the cliff as steeply as it did on Sunday, and both Arizona and Jacksonville... Read More
Week 7 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
We had some surprise defenses crack the top-10 in Week 6 with the Atlanta Falcons picking off Kirk Cousins seemingly at will and the Tampa Bay Bucs easily handling Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. Even with that, we were able to get six of the top-10 defensive units, but the Indianapolis Colts may be showing... Read More
Week 6 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
I was riding high after predicting eight out of the top ten defenses two weeks ago, but we saw some craziness this Sunday (along with some top tier defenses postponed or canceled), which caused only a 50% success rate in identifying top-10 units. Miami throttling San Francisco was truly a surprise, as was a Kansas... Read More
Week 5 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
After successfully predicting eight out of the top ten defenses last week, we may be starting to hit our groove. Some of them felt a bit like gimmes, but the Jets in the top-10 was the subject of criticism and watching the Bills round into form a bit was also nice. The only two outliers... Read More
Daily MLB DFS Value Plays for FanDuel, DraftKings for 10/8/20 (Premium Content)
All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. Below you will find our Premium DFS value plays for 10/8/2020. These picks will target low-priced players in the main slate. We have another 4-game main slate of playoff baseball on tap today, with potential elimination games across the board. There are not many high... Read More
Week 4 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
Another week, and another six out of the top 10 defenses correct. Some of the top ones were gimmes, and I'm a little surprised by how the Chargers Defense laid an egg versus Carolina and the way the Bills Defense just seemed totally lost against the Rams in the second half. I'm happy I trusted... Read More
DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (10/2/20) - MLB DFS Lineups
And then there were two. After the Cubs-Marlins rainout and the Padres' offensive explosion, we head into Friday with only a two-game slate. Not getting too cute with pitching would be my approach. There is really only one clear option, outlined below, so you can always differentiate with bats. Yu Darvish remains the obvious pitching target.... Read More
Were We Wrong To Be Excited About Joe Mixon?
We did it again. I say "we" because I'm right there with you. We told ourselves we wouldn't be duped. We told ourselves that we wouldn't go back considering the frustration he caused us in the past; yet, here we are, rostering Joe Mixon and wondering what we've gotten ourselves into again. It seems like... Read More
Daily MLB DFS Value Plays for FanDuel, DraftKings for 10/1/20 (Premium Content)
All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. Below you will find our Premium DFS value plays for 10/1/2020. These picks will target low-priced players in the main slate. With some of the Wild Card series already decided, we have only a 5-game main slate of playoff action. There are some elite pitchers... Read More
Week 3 Defense (DEF) Streamers and Starts - 2020 Fantasy Tiers, Rankings
About ten minutes into Week 2, it became clear that the week for fantasy teams would simply be a matter of luck and survival. Some of the NFL's top players on both offense and defense went down with season-ending or multi-week injuries, drastically changing a number of matchups in mere minutes. While injuries are part... Read More
