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... Read More

ADP Draft Sleepers Tool - Quickly Find Draft Day Gems

RotoBaller Premium Subscribers can click here to access the ADP Draft Sleepers Tool. RotoBaller’s ADP Draft Sleepers Tool is a powerful yet simple tool that can help you unearth fantasy baseball gems on draft day. It's a sleek tool that's easy to use, and will have a huge effect on your draft selections and help you... Read More

Where Do Elite Starters Come From?

Among expert drafts, starting pitchers are coming off the board earlier and more rapidly than in previous years. For instance, the LABR mixed league saw nine starters drafted in the first two rounds in comparison to just six in 2018 and five in 2017. Pitcher selection in expert drafts has been somewhat more aggressive than... Read More

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... Read More

When and How Do You Target Sleepers on Draft Day?

If you're the type of fantasy baseball enthusiast who enjoys the preparation as much as the draft itself, chances are you've been filing away names as potential under-the-radar breakout candidates. Maybe you've got your eye on a young utility player who is one injury away from regular playing time (not that anyone should be rooting... Read More

How to Avoid Cognitive Bias on Draft Day

Cognitive bias: whether or not we fully understand what it means or how it operates, we have all seen it at one time or another on draft day, regardless of the sport in question. It can take the form of a co-worker who insists on drafting a full roster of players from their favorite hometown... Read More

The Winning Way to Draft Relief Pitchers

We've gone through each division, team by team. We've talked about the top setup men you should know about this season. We've looked at handcuffs and which closers you should have a backup for on draft day. It's a lot of information, but how does it apply to your league? Most people play in standard 5x5... Read More

RotoBaller H2H Draft Strategy Primer

Fantasy baseball, much like the sport itself, it is one of the more complex to follow closely. Compared to fantasy football, in which nearly every league was head-to-head before the advent of best-ball, fantasy baseball comes in a variety of formats. Many leagues are roto-style, 5x5 category-scoring, with cumulative season-long stats. While that is the... Read More

Expert Mock Draft Reactions - RotoBaller Friends & Family

On February 13, 2019, we assembled a group of industry experts to take part in the second annual RotoBaller Friends and Family Expert Mock Draft. Our participants represented multiple sites, including: CBS Sports (Heath Cummings) The Athletic (Nando Di Fino) Fantasy Alarm (Howard Bender) Fangraphs (Alex Chamberlain) RotoWire (Tim Heaney) Mastersball/ESPN (Todd Zola) GuruElite (Ray... Read More

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... Read More

Best-Ball Targets and Sleepers For 2019

One of the biggest challenges that fantasy baseball owners face is that they literally have to follow it every day. Unlike fantasy football, where you only need to check lineups once a week, baseball is on every single day and if you don’t pay attention your season will be in jeopardy. Most leagues are won... Read More

Are Elite Pitchers Undervalued?

After San Francisco Giants’ president Farhan Zaidi announced that the team might use an opener this season, Madison Bumgarner messaged Bruce Bochy: “If you use an opener in my game I’m walking right out of the ballpark.” In addition to giving us the most Madison Bumgarner quote of all time, the news prompted me to... Read More

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... Read More

Winning Strategies For Your Dynasty League Startup Draft

Some people enjoy playing fantasy baseball one season at a time, drafting a new roster every year. Others are fascinated with drafting a team and managing it year after year towards multiple championship trophies. The latter individuals are best suited to play in dynasty leagues. For rosters to be competitive annually, they have to possess... Read More

Nick Mariano's Auction Draft Strategies and Tips (Premium Content)

All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. Congratulations to you and your leaguemates for electing to play in the vastly superior format that is auction-based fantasy baseball. We can draw many parallels here, but playing/reading your fellow owners and managing your own money well lends itself best to poker. We're here... Read More

Josh Hayes' 2019 Best Ball Avoids (Premium Content)

All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. The wait is over! Best Ball leagues are great for any fantasy baseball manager who wants to start preparing for the 2019 today, and is looking for an indication on which players are ADP risers and fallers this season. As important as it is... Read More

Early-Round Fantasy Baseball Draft Q&A with The King

All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. Industry legend Scott Engel has joined RotoBaller as a featured contributor, building on 20-plus years in the fantasy industry. “The King” is an inaugural member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association’s (FSWA) Hall of Fame and a two-time FSWA award winner.  When you are making... Read More

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... Read More

Josh Hayes' 2019 Best Ball Draft Targets (Premium Content)

All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. The fantasy baseball season is here! For those fantasy players looking to get an edge on their 2019 leagues, Best Ball formats are a great way to get a head start on the players that look to be ADP risers this season. One key... Read More

NFBC Draft and Hold Strategy - Pitching Category Boosters (Premium Content)

All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. There is no such thing as a can't-miss pitching prospect. Pitchers never stay healthy. Relievers are volatile. All of these are sayings that diehard fantasy baseball players are familiar with, and to some extent, live by during the fantasy season. Developing a pitching strategy... Read More

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... Read More

RotoBaller's Industry Experts Mock Draft - The King's Perspective

At RotoBaller, we recently assembled a group of fantasy baseball experts to take part in the RotoBaller Friends and Family Expert Mock Draft. Our participants came from all over the industry, representing a host of various sites such as: CBS Sports (Heath Cummings) The Athletic (Nando Di Fino) Fantasy Alarm (Howard Bender) Fangraphs (Alex Chamberlain)... Read More

NFBC Draft and Hold Strategy - Late-Round Offensive Category Targets (Premium Content)

All other Premium Tools can be accessed on the premium dashboard. With the growing interest in draft-and-hold formats, new draft strategy prep is critical for full season runs at the title. For those who are new to the format, typically teams draft 27 starters in a live draft, with 27 players joining the team in... Read More

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... Read More

What I Learned in My First Slow Mock Expert Draft

Over the years, I’ve done hundreds of mock drafts, maybe even thousands. However, as someone relatively new to formal writing about fantasy baseball, I’ve never been part of an organization that ran a slow mock draft. I recently took part in RotoBaller’s Dynasty Mock Draft, and boy was it ever SLOW. We started this thing... Read More

How to Approach Rookies in Re-Draft for Success

With the NFL season officially a thing of the past, we can now turn our undivided fantasy attention to preparing for our baseball drafts. We are still waiting on the answers to a few key questions (such as, I don't know, where Bryce Harper and Manny Machado might play their home games?), but we have... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 6 - Pull Percentage

Earlier in this series, we saw that fantasy owners generally prefer batters to hit the ball into the air in order 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... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 5 - Plate Discipline

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 Chris Davis are potential drains on a fantasy team's batting average. Furthermore, players that whiff a lot tend to continue... Read More

Is Punting Steals a Viable Draft Strategy in 2019?

For readers who tune in to watch MLB games regularly, the phrase “small ball is dead” is becoming more and more the cliche. Managers do not feel the need to run as much, there is a decreasing rate of sacrifice bunts, and above all, no more hit-and-run as a primary offensive tactic. While many factors... Read More