Champ or Chump: Bobby Bradley and Jordan Yamamoto

Last week, we looked at a couple of players who are likely to be on first division fantasy teams. This week, we're taking a closer look at players likely to appear toward the bottom of your league's standings. Bobby Bradley is a former third-round draft pick summoned by the Cleveland Indians in an effort to […]

Champ or Chump: Max Kepler and Josh Bell

If you're in the top third or so of your league's standings, you've probably had more than a couple sleeper picks work out well. Good for you! Of course, sorting through all of those 2019 breakouts represents something of a first-world problem: who's for real, and who's extended hot streak is about to end in […]

Champ or Chump: Dallas Keuchel and Yordan Alvarez

If you've been following baseball news at all, you probably know that free agents Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel have finally signed with teams (the Braves and Cubs, respectively). You may have read a variety of conspiracy theories about how MLB owners were "cheap" or otherwise unscrupulous in dealing with each pitcher. In truth, teams […]

Champ or Chump: Zach Plesac and Mallex Smith

The calendar has officially flipped to June, which means that your league's standings page now contains useful information. No, it's not time to give up on your sixth-place team. Instead, it's time to pinpoint your unique areas of need and then make trade proposals and waiver wire acquisitions accordingly. For example, maybe the league-wide dearth […]

Champ or Chump: Bryan Reynolds and Cavan Biggio

Prospects continue to be called up faster than we can look at them, so we have two more on the docket this week. Bryan Reynolds was a second-round pick by the San Francisco Giants in 2016, but nobody seems to have noticed him raking for the Pirates. Cavan Biggio has big league bloodlines, and his […]

Champ or Chump: Brendan Rodgers and Austin Riley

The top prospects have been getting called up quickly of late, giving us plenty of options who warrant a closer look. Let's go with 22-year-old kids who took a big step forward at Triple-A this season, are infielders technically playing out of position at the big league level, and were drafted in 2015. Those criteria […]

Champ or Chump: Keston Hiura and Jose Ramirez

The Brewers have summoned top prospect Keston Hiura to replace the injured (and struggling) Travis Shaw on their roster, giving fantasy owners another hyped toy to play with. Unfortunately, it appears as though the excitement surrounding the 22-year-old's big league debut far outpaces his realistic output, potentially driving many owners to waste FAAB or waiver […]

Champ or Chump: Spencer Turnbull and Joey Votto

If April is the month of churning through sleeper candidates to figure out who can stick on your roster, May is the month where you start to look at disappointing performers to see if it's a simple slump or something more. There are still plenty of intriguing players on most waiver wires, but the fact […]

Champ or Chump: Michael Chavis and Mike Soroka

The topic of the day is former first-round picks with the first name "Michael" currently owned in approximately 50% of fantasy leagues. In truth, the fact that both of the players discussed below fit all of those criteria is nothing more than happy circumstance, but both players deserve more fantasy attention than they're currently getting. […]

Champ or Chump - Hunter Dozier and Christian Walker

Every season seems to have a couple of players emerge from nowhere to post fantasy-relevant lines in April. Most of them fade back into the abyss, but a few of them stick around to produce value for the entire season and beyond. In 2019, Hunter Dozier and Christian Walker are surely among the names who […]

Champ or Chump - Fernando Tatis Jr. and Yoan Moncada

It can be incredibly easy to overreact to your team's performance thus far, but remember that it is still very early. You shouldn't even be thinking about dropping big names like Aaron Nola or Mookie Betts, nor should you count on Daniel Vogelbach or Jay Bruce continuing their home run binge. That said, you don't […]

Champ or Chump - Corbin Burnes and Trent Thornton

By this point of the season, you probably have some injuries, under-performances, or squandered sleeper picks cluttering your roster. You're also probably intrigued by a few potential breakouts on the waiver wire. Who should you keep moving forward, and who should you pick up with any newfound roster spots? This column seeks to answer that […]

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 16 - Interpreting Minor League Stats

Once you've grown accustomed to having advanced tools to help make fantasy decisions, it can feel 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 15 - Ballpark Factors

If you have ever selected a streamable pitcher based on home park or benched an otherwise must-start arm at Coors Field, you already know how much a stadium can impact a player's bottom line. Ballpark Factors quantify the influence each stadium has, allowing you to make the most of your fantasy team's real-life schedule. Today, […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 14 - Statcast Expected Stats

Statcast is a valuable tool for fantasy analysis, and it can be easy to look at a stat called "Expected Batting Average" and blindly use it as your projection moving forward. Of course, proper use of these metrics is a little bit more nuanced than that. Our series on how to make sabermetrics more accessible […]

Rick Lucks' Bold Predictions for 2019

Our series of Bold Predictions continue with my piece. I've had success with this exercise in the past, but last year was easily my worst performance to date. That said, I am traditionally one of the boldest authors on this series, and I think you'll agree that the predictions below will at least let me […]

ADP Champ or Chump - Jackie Bradley Jr. and Juan Soto

You've probably heard people say that position scarcity is dead, as there is plenty of talent available at every offensive position save catcher and all catchers are about the same level of blech. This is true in standard 12-team leagues and some deeper formats, but it's not the case in the deepest leagues (20+ teams) […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 13 - Statcast for Pitchers

Previously, we looked at Barrels, a stat combining exit velocity and launch angle to measure how often a batter makes quality hard contact. As much as batters want to hit a Barrel every time, pitchers want to avoid them at all costs. Yet there is some evidence that pitchers do not have the same influence […]

ADP Champ or Chump - C.J. Cron and Robbie Ray

No matter how much you prepare for a draft, what you do in the heat of the moment can reveal who you like and who you don't. I recently completed two Rotoballer Challenge drafts (there's still time to sign up if you haven't yet) and decided that any player I took in both of them […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 12 - Spin Rate

Spin rate has become one of the most recognizable Statcast metrics, with supporters of a given pitcher highlighting his spin rates to make their case. Unfortunately, the baseball world has done a lousy job conveying what spin rate really means. The result has been a ton of owners who know that spin rate exists, but […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 11 - Pitch Info

One of the most fundamental questions in fantasy sports is if a player's current performance is sustainable. More than any other sport, baseball has a slew of statistical measures that can be dissected in numerous ways to analyze player performance. Pitch Info is a publicly available pitch tracking system that provides a lot of different data […]

ADP Champ or Chump - Garrett Hampson and Rougned Odor

Traditionally, fantasy talent is evenly distributed between the keystone and shortstop positions, but shortstop looks considerably stronger heading into 2019. As such, you should probably plan to draft at least two SS-eligible players to cover your SS and MI slots. That said, you still need at least one second baseman to fill out your roster. […]

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 10 - Pitcher Batted Ball Distribution

The league average batted ball distribution in 2018 was 21.5% liners, 43.2% grounders and 35.4% flies. We have previously seen 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 (.117 BABIP in 2018) consistently have lower BABIPs than worm […]

ADP Champ or Chump - Nick Senzel and Christian Yelich

As fantasy owners, it can be easy to fall in love with a player's talent and end up overpaying for a guy. Nick Senzel's stat lines suggest that he has all of the talent necessary to make an impact at the MLB level, but the combination of his health issues and a crowded Cincinnati roster […]

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 9 - Pitcher BABIP

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. While some of this luck is unpredictable, we can and should predict some […]

ADP Champ or Chump - Jesus Aguilar and David Dahl

Sometimes, it can be tough to turn away from the waiver wire guys who helped your team the previous year. Jesus Aguilar likely won some leagues with his 35-homer campaign out of nowhere last season. Likewise, David Dahl provided juice in all categories when he saw the field in 2018. Unfortunately, adding somebody for free […]

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 8 - 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 […]

ADP Champ or Chump - Kyle Gibson and Miguel Sano

Fantasy owners frequently like drafting players on good teams because of the benefits of playing in a strong lineup. In 2019, the Astros, Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, and Dodgers clearly fit into this category. We also like drafting upside plays from rebuilding clubs like the Marlins or Royals because of the opportunity they have. A […]

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 7 - Lineup Spot

To this point, this series has focused exclusively on trying to predict and validate home runs 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 in […]

ADP Champ or Chump - Nick Pivetta and Victor Robles

As a general rule, fantasy owners like to play with shiny new toys. Victor Robles has less than 100 MLB PAs to his credit but is frequently taken just outside the top-100 based on his speed. The current 21-year-old (he turns 22 in May) has talent, but this writer sees several red flags that may […]