Champ or Chump: Paul Skenes Fantasy Baseball Outlook

A new era dawned in Pittsburgh on May 11. Paul Skenes, age 21, made his MLB debut and racked up seven strikeouts in just four innings. The team won, and baseball fans were treated to the most anticipated debut of a prospect pitcher since Stephen Strasburg. Pirates fans are understandably excited, but what should fantasy […]

Champ or Chump: Josh Hader, Corey Seager, Corbin Carroll Fantasy Baseball Outlooks

The calendar has flipped to May, so it's time to assess your fantasy players. Players who aren't performing may force us to adjust our expectations moving forward rather than assume positive regression is coming. Of course, we don't want to cut bait on a superstar who goes supernova for five months, either. It's a delicate […]

Champ or Chump: Joey Loperfido and Pete Crow-Armstrong Fantasy Baseball Outlooks

This column is not exclusively about prospects, but most of the interesting names this time of year are prospects. Next week, we'll try to find something to look at other than prospects. That's not an option this week. Two more names of note have recently been called up: Pete Crow-Armstrong and Joey Loperfido. Both offer […]

Champ or Chump: Andy Pages and Jonatan Clase Fantasy Baseball Outlooks

Last week, we explored how prospect rankings don't always equate to immediate fantasy baseball value. You probably want to roster Jackson Holliday in 2028, but his chances of making a quick impact in our game are low. The converse is also true. Players who don't have much prospect pedigree may have just the skills your […]

Jackson Holliday: Fantasy Baseball Champ or Chump?

Well-regarded prospects are breaking camp with their clubs more frequently these days, which is why Wyatt Langford started with the Rangers and Jackson Merrill got a trip to South Korea. However, the fantasy community is greedy. We want every top prospect to debut on Opening Day. As such, many fantasy managers were disappointed when the […]

Champ or Chump: David Hamilton, Blaze Alexander, Justin Foscue Fantasy Baseball Outlooks

If your fantasy roster needs middle infield help, injuries give you several options. David Hamilton should receive everyday run after Trevor Story dislocated his shoulder, Blaze Alexander is the beneficiary of Jordan Lawlar and Geraldo Perdomo going down in Arizona, and Justin Foscue was expected to get at-bats after Josh Jung broke his wrist. With […]

Champ or Chump: Victor Scott II and Colt Keith Fantasy Baseball Outlooks

The 2024 fantasy baseball season is officially underway, and it's easy to overreact to one series of games. Everything is a small sample size that shouldn't change your preseason valuations much outside of playing time. That said, slow starts can create buying opportunities for intriguing players who would have cost much more a month ago. […]

Fantasy Baseball Champs or Chumps: Jackson Merrill, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Wyatt Langford

The Orioles sent shockwaves throughout the baseball world by sending top prospect Jackson Holliday to Triple-A to begin the season, leaving fantasy baseball managers who rolled the dice on him scrambling for a replacement. It seems some teams prefer service time games to being good, even with the incentives in the new CBA. Fortunately, plenty […]

Hunter Brown - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values and Sleepers (2024)

BALLER MOVE: Target in drafts ~pick 136 CURRENT ADP: ~156 overall ANALYSIS: A surface-level analysis would suggest that Hunter Brown is a great sleeper for 2024. His 5.09 ERA masked a 3.52 xFIP across his 155⅔ IP, his 26.8 K% and 8.3 BB% were solid, and his .330 BABIP, 68.8% strand rate, and 21% HR/FB appear primed […]

ADP Champ or Chump: Jose Leclerc, Anthony Santander, and Andres Gimenez

Once a fantasy baseball draft gets going, it's all too easy to fall into the trap of looking at a guy's numbers and trusting that's who he is. In truth, just as many players perform to their 30th or 70th percentiles as their 50th. You can't always believe what you see. Three examples on 2024 […]

Tyler O'Neill - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values and Sleepers (2024)

BALLER MOVE: Target in drafts ~pick 185 CURRENT ADP: ~276 ANALYSIS: Tyler O'Neill didn't have a great 2023, slashing .231/.312/.403 with nine homers and five steals over 266 PAs. Injuries cost him some time, but the Cardinals also benched O'Neill regularly when healthy. It prevented him from getting into a rhythm and showing what he […]

Rick Lucks' 2024 Fantasy Baseball Bold Predictions

Eric Cross kicked off our 2024 fantasy baseball bold predictions series, and now I'm going to build on that momentum and share 10 bold predictions of my own. As a reminder, bold predictions aren't supposed to be likely outcomes but long shots with a purpose. My predictions in particular all do one of two things. […]

ADP Champ or Chump: Jazz Chisholm Jr., Brandon Pfaadt, and Will Smith

As we approach peak fantasy baseball draft season, it's crunch time. You might think you know each player's value, but double-checking never hurts. We're back with three names of interest on draft day: Jazz Chisholm Jr., Brandon Pfaadt, and Will Smith. Chisholm was the cover athlete for MLB The Show 2023, Pfaadt looked like a […]

ADP Champ or Chump: Giancarlo Stanton, Logan Webb, and Maikel Garcia

Welcome to another year of Champ or Chump! In this column, we take deep dives into fantasy baseball player profiles to determine whether the player is a "Champ" worth adding or a "Chump" better left to someone else. We'll look at each player's NFBC ADP and whether they will likely justify their cost in this […]

Statcast xStats: Using Sabermetrics For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

Statcast is a valuable tool for fantasy baseball analysis, and it can be easy to look at a stat called "Expected Batting Average" and blindly use it as your projection. Of course, proper use of these metrics is a little more nuanced than that. First, a disclaimer: This article is about the "Expected Stats" found […]

Average Draft Position: Making Sense of ADP for Fantasy Baseball

ADP, or Average Draft Position, is one of the most commonly cited statistics in fantasy baseball discourse. It allows owners to look at a single number and quickly determine a player's market value, making it easier to identify potential value picks in a draft. Furthermore, fantasy analysts can use it to determine how a particular […]

Statcast Pitch Tracking: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

When you're evaluating a pitcher by Pitch Info on FanGraphs, sometimes you see pitches that don't seem to accomplish anything. If Pitch X is seldom a strike, rarely chased outside of the zone, and not generating whiffs or a favorable batted line against, why doesn't the pitcher scrap it entirely? Some pitchers could improve by […]

Spin Rate: Using Sabermetrics For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

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 of conveying what spin rate really means. The result has been a ton of fantasy managers who know spin rate exists, […]

Pitcher Statcast: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

Statcast metrics such as Barrels and Brls/BBE are great ways to evaluate a fantasy baseball batter's performance, so it is only natural to assume that the metrics would be predictive for pitchers as well. As much as batters want to hit a Barrel every time, pitchers want to avoid them at all costs. Yet, there […]

Barrels and Brls/BBE: Using Sabermetrics For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

Previously, we looked at how exit velocity is only one piece of the fantasy baseball analysis puzzle. Baseball broadcasts commonly cite Launch Angle (LA) to complement their EV figures, but it is given in terms of degrees. Are we trying to find the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle? Launch angle is basically a fancy way […]

Exit Velocity (EV): Using Sabermetrics For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

If you've watched a baseball broadcast in the Statcast era, you have undoubtedly noticed the broadcasters commenting on a batted ball's exit velocity or EV. Many have taken to using stats like Hard% and Soft% to forecast how a player should be performing, expecting larger Hard% rates to produce larger BABIP and HR/FB figures. There […]

MiLB Stats: Using Sabermetrics For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

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 don't have all of the data available for MLB players. For example, advanced plate discipline stats, Pitch […]

Park Factors: Using Sabermetrics For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

If you have ever selected a streamable pitcher based on a 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. […]

Intro To NL/AL-Only Leagues: Draft Strategies for Fantasy Baseball

If you're looking to liven up your fantasy baseball experience, trying your hand at an Only league could be a great way to bring a fresh perspective to one of your favorite pastimes. While standard mixed leagues are largely a race to accumulate as many elite performers as possible, Only leagues allow gamers to demonstrate […]

Pitch Info: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

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 many statistical measures that can be dissected in numerous ways to analyze player performance. Pitch Info is a public pitch tracking system providing a lot of data to help fantasy managers […]

Batting Order: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

You may be wondering why there aren't any advanced stats aimed at predicting a player's counting stats like runs and RBI. The answer is simple: modern sabermetrics 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 ascertaining […]

Pull%: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

We have previously determined that fantasy managers generally prefer batters to hit the ball into the air to have a chance at a home run. Yet, all fly balls are not equal for this purpose. A player can maximize his power production by pulling the ball in the air. One way to illustrate this is […]

Pitcher BABIP: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

While FIP is a useful tool to predict a pitcher's future ERA performance, fantasy managers should remember that ERA, not FIP, is what 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 of […]

FIP/xFIP: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

While we've only examined how to evaluate hitters using advanced stats thus far, sabermetrics are just as useful for pitchers. The first advanced pitching stat most fantasy managers encounter is Fielding Independent Pitching or FIP. FIP measures a pitcher's actual skill instead of the effects of luck or his supporting cast. According to DIPS (Defense […]

Plate Discipline: Using Sabermetrics for 2024 Fantasy Baseball

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 managers have known for years that players like Joey Gallo are potential drains on a fantasy team's batting average. Furthermore, players who whiff a lot tend to continue […]