January Expert Mock Draft Analysis - Rounds 5-9

The 2018 MLB season is approaching ever faster and draft season is already here! RotoBaller recently gathered 12 of our baseball writers to conduct a 23-round mock draft in order to evaluate current ADP values. We will break down those draft results in detail throughout the week. This article will take a look at rounds 5-9... Read More

January Expert Mock Draft Analysis - Round 1

We at RotoBaller love to draft. In fact, we love it so much we couldn't wait until March or even February to start drafting! So we decided to share the results of our latest fantasy baseball mock draft, taking place on RT Sports, accompanied by a series of articles analyzing each round. Here's the complete... Read More

Snake Drafts and the Subtle Art of the Snipe

For the last several years, I’ve played almost exclusively in auction leagues. It’s a personal preference that isn’t unique or “correct.” I have a lot of reasons for this preference. That’s not what we’re going to talk about today, though. Instead, let’s spend some time touting one of the virtues of traditional snake drafts –... Read More

2018 Dynasty Baseball Strategy - Basic Asset Valuation

Dynasty baseball is a beautiful thing. In a redraft league, everybody is trying to win now. You all have the same goal. Dynasty formats allow for long-term planning. If your team is competitive, you'll value players differently than a rebuilding owner. This discrepancy makes it much easier to find mutually beneficial trades. Unfortunately, this same... Read More

Fixing A Broken Fantasy Baseball League

Coming into last season, my home league of 13 years had a problem. Since becoming a rotisserie league, adopting an auction draft, and instituting a new keeper system six years earlier, only one person had won it: Me. Let me state up front and unequivocally that I don’t intend or want for this article to... Read More

Forgetting The One That Got Away

If you’re a voracious consumer of baseball analysis – a judgment that, if you’re reading one of my articles almost three months before the season starts, I would deem fair – you’ve heard the following phrase plenty of times: Better a year too early than a year too late. This, of course, refers to older... Read More

2018 Dynasty Baseball Strategy - There Are No More Wins

Pitchers have always made for awkward dynasty assets. There's no denying that you need some highly productive arms if you want to win your league. However, pitchers - both starters and relievers - have this bad habit of turning into pumpkins with very little warning. It's relatively rare for a hitter to pull a Prince... Read More

2018 Dynasty Baseball Strategy - The Batting Average Nightmare

Last week, we discussed prioritizing power hitters when constructing your roster. In order to compete, most leagues require an average of roughly 25 home runs per active roster spot. Hitting that target requires a plan. However, power alone will not win a championship. Roster too many Joey Gallo types and you'll be left with a... Read More

All-Star Break Rest-of-Season Strategy: Head-to-Head Leagues

Happy All-Star Break to all you fantasy baseball nerds out there. As we sit through what seems like the longest four days of the summer, I thought it might be helpful to discuss some general season-long strategy for the rest of the year. Of course, strategy can differ greatly based on your league type, so... Read More

All-Star Break Rest-of-Season Strategy: Rotisserie Leagues

Happy All-Star Break to all you fantasy baseball nerds out there. As we sit through what seems like the longest four days of the summer, I thought it might be helpful to discuss some general season-long strategy for the rest of the year. Of course, strategy can differ greatly based on your league type, so... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 13: Barrels For Pitchers

Last time, 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... Read More

Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball Part 12 - Barrels for Batters

If you've watched a baseball broadcast in the so-called 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 figures. There is... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 11 - 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,... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 10: PITCHf/x

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 numerous ways to analyze player performance. PITCHf/x is a publicly available pitch tracking system that provides a lot of different data to... Read More

Maximizing Yahoo DL and NA Slots In Your Draft

Most fantasy baseball leagues have at least one DL spot. Many have two, three or even more. While certainly useful during the season when players inevitably get hurt, they can also be part of your draft strategy. Not as widely used and relatively new to Yahoo leagues, NA slots allow you to stockpile difference-makers for the... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 9: Pitcher Batted Ball Distribution

The league average batted ball distribution in 2016 was 20.7% liners, 44.7% grounders and 34.6% 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 (.127 BABIP in 2016) consistently have... Read More

Last Minute Draft Prep and Strategy: Sweat the Small Stuff

The deeper your league, the more important it is to gain a slight edge over your opponents whenever possible. Nobody “dominates” a competitive draft. Presumably you have compiled a list. Most RotoBaller readers know who’s injured. Everyone has sleepers, some of us a hunch or two. Yet even with dedicated preparation, a successful live draft... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 8: 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. While some of this luck is unpredictable, we can and should predict some... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 7: FIP & 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

Industry Experts - March Mock Draft: The Overview

With your fantasy drafts rapidly approaching, we organized an expert mock draft last week. The 12-team "league" was selected on RTSports.com featuring writers from five different sites along with a few twitter fans. Among the RotoBallers represented were Kyle Bishop, Pierre Camus, Andrew Sullivan, JB Branson, and me. Also in the room were Nick Doran of... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 6: Lineup Slot & Counting Stats

To this point, this series 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... Read More

Standard League Draft Strategy: Part Two (Pitchers)

For many, a draft is all about finding sleepers, predicting who the busts and breakouts are, and deciding who to pick with the first pick or who to allocate the most money to in an auction draft. While finding the right players is certainly a necessary element of a successful fantasy draft, it is not... Read More

Standard League Draft Strategy: Part One (Hitters)

For many, a draft is all about finding sleepers, predicting who the busts and breakouts are, and deciding who to pick with the first pick or who to allocate the most money to in an auction draft. While finding the right players is certainly a necessary element of a successful fantasy draft, it is not... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 5: Pull%

Earlier in my series on using sabermetrics for fantasy baseball, 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... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 4: 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 Adam Dunn, Chris Carter, and Chris Davis are potential drains on a fantasy team's batting average. Furthermore, players that whiff... Read More

Using Sabermetrics For Fantasy Baseball Part 3: Batted Ball Distribution

Fly balls can turn into home runs. Ground balls never do. It would seem as though fantasy owners want their batters to hit nothing but flies, yet I closed the last piece by stating that this is not the case. Why would this be? Let's take a look, as my series on using sabermetrics for... Read More

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

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. Many owners... Read More

Fantasy Baseball Points League Primer: Five Rules to Remember

The majority of fantasy baseball advice and analysis is tailored to standard head-to-head and rotisserie leagues. The rationale for this is twofold. First, those scoring formats are significantly more popular than points leagues, and writers naturally want to capture the broadest possible audience. To wit: I make a point of familiarizing myself with ADP data... Read More

Expert Mock Draft: Mariano in the Middle

I was fortunate enough to be invited to mock with some of the industry’s brightest on Thursday night, where I was able to test out how picking No. 6 in a 12-team roto league would go. Organized by fightingchancefantasy.com, I locked horns with folks such as Steve Gardner, Tim Heaney, John Halpin and Joel Henard... Read More

Are Basestealers Undervalued in Fantasy Baseball?

Last year we heard rumblings of players and fans alike thinking the ball was juiced, as homers skyrocketed. We have also begun to hear teams mention over the years that outs on the basepaths might not be worth the risk of a stolen base. Then again, maybe it’s just my bias as an Orioles’ fan... Read More