Mid-Round Starting Pitchers - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values and Targets

Welcome officially to the 2022 fantasy baseball season! Now that an MLB deal is in place, a lot more fantasy drafts will be taking place -- and we're here as always to guide you through it. Once you reach the middle rounds of drafts, everyone is looking to draft players with upside that can provide... Read More

FaBIO Analysis: Flyballer Starting Pitcher Prospects, Right-Handed Edition

I developed the Fielding- and Ballpark-Independent Outcomes (FaBIO) pitcher evaluation system circa 2013 as a tool for quantifying non-batted-ball and batted-ball fundamentals of individual pro pitchers versus batters of both and either handedness type. Since the model was first applied to affiliated 2013 MiLB play, its reach has been extended to MLB, NCAA Division 1,... Read More

Undervalued Draft Targets for Fantasy Baseball Mixed Leagues - Hitters

WE HAVE BASEBALL!!!!! MLB and the MLBPA have finally agreed on a new CBA, which means players are reporting to Spring Training, and the season starts in less than a month. This also means fantasy baseball draft season is about to hit full speed ahead. We have been drafting for a few months, but now... Read More

Let's Overreact to Spring Training News and Tweets

Baseball is back, spring training is here, and every tweet from every beat writer is getting scrutinized to an outrageous level. It's wacky season at its best, but instead of shying away from that, we're going to lean into it. I've found some bits of news that are interesting and also, at times, amusing, and... Read More

Mid-Round Outfielders - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values and Targets

Welcome officially to the 2022 fantasy baseball season! Now that an MLB deal is in place, a lot more fantasy drafts will be taking place -- and we're here as always to guide you through it. Once you reach the middle rounds of drafts, everyone is looking to draft players with upside that can provide... Read More

Starting Pitching Sleepers for Fantasy Baseball Drafts - National League

Starting pitching is always one of the more fun positions to watch in fantasy drafts. You can grab an ace in the early rounds or wait around a bit longer and grab some value in the middle to later rounds. As we saw this past season with Logan Webb, Freddy Peralta, and Robbie Ray (amongst... Read More

Finding Clones of Stud Hitters at Cheaper Draft Day Costs

Fantasy baseball is, most of the time, a category-centered game. Unlike fantasy football, where all you want are raw points, the roto category format of baseball really separates certain players in terms of how they can help your fantasy team. Some hitters will boost your team's batting average while bringing down your home run pace,... Read More

Three Hitters Set To Break Out Earlier Than Their Prime

In baseball, common sense would indicate that a player would break out when they reach their prime, which is around 26-years-old. However, development is not linear. We have seen plenty of players burst onto the scene with the first or second season and flourish, while others have taken longer than expected to develop. It really... Read More

Building an Offense After Pick 100 - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values

There are basically three large categories of players you'll draft in a fantasy baseball league: Hitters Pitchers Relief Pitcher One of the tougher things to nail down in a draft is when to dive into each of those groups. There are good arguments for going heavy at hitting early on, good arguments for quickly grabbing... Read More

Manufacturing a Stud: Late-Round Hitter Combos

Fantasy baseball is most often a category-centered game. You compete in five or six offensive categories every week with your final season finished depending on how well you perform in each category. This opens up the opportunity to deploy certain draft strategies that help your team become more well-rounded all throughout the draft. The best... Read More

High-Upside Hitters for Fantasy Baseball - Deeper Leagues Analysis

If you are drafting this early in the fantasy baseball season, you are probably playing in some pretty serious leagues. That means there is a good chance your draft is stretching past 300 picks. It is very tough to keep a large player pool sorted out in your head, and it's not hard to get... Read More

High-Upside Starting Pitchers for Fantasy Baseball: "Stuff" Edition

In the first analysis of my "finding high-upside starting pitchers" series, I looked in depth at swinging-strike rate. You can read that here. That analysis looked at overall SwStr% for every pitcher, taking into account all of their pitch types to one SwStr% number. In this article, I want to go a step further and... Read More

Strong Septembers to Remember - 2022 Breakout Candidates

One of the most difficult things to do as a fantasy sports contributor is attempting to glean valuable information from small sample sizes. Small sample sizes represent a higher opportunity for variance, which can wreak havoc if not taken seriously or properly accounted for. However, variance isn't all bad and there are certain things to... Read More

Noteworthy Hitting Leaders (xBA) - Statcast Review for Fantasy Baseball

There are stats for everything now. It's great, but it can also be overwhelming at times. Depending on where we look, we can tell ourselves all different types of narratives about a player. As a result, I've always been a proponent of identifying the stats that you find to be most useful/beneficial and focusing on... Read More

Late-Round Stolen Base Targets for Fantasy Baseball

Ah, stolen bases. It's a real love/hate relationship. They're fun, but they also seem to be dying out, which means fantasy baseball managers are hunting for them like Nicholas Cage hunting for his precious truffle pig. (Side note: "Pig" is such a gem. Forget whatever you think it's about and just watch it. It's so... Read More

Take Out the Trash: Pitchers Who Should Junk Their Worst Pitch

Just throw the ball over the plate- it's that easy, right? Unfortunately, pitching is much more than that. In fact, it's a science. What are your best pitches? What's the optimal pitch usage for each pitch? How do they play off each other? There are so many variables that can be difficult to pin down. In... Read More

Post-Hype Hitters Ready To Break Out

In a day and age where prospect coverage is at an all-time high, we as a baseball community have never hyped up prospects to the extent we are currently. Once upon a time, prospects were seen as unproven commodities that we asset in trades for established big-league players. Now, they're the exciting new kid on... Read More

Biggest Brl/BBE% Gainers - Statcast Review for Fantasy Baseball Hitters

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. While the... Read More

Three Post-Hype Pitchers Set To Break Out

Once upon a time, prospects were seen as unproven commodities that we asset in trades for established big-league players. Now, they're the exciting new kid on the block that we center our attention around. As we look for the "next big thing," it's easy to look towards prospects, and embrace the concept of the unknown-... Read More

Jarren Duran: 2022 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

While Marcelo Mayer, Triston Casas, and Nick Yorke are regularly ranked as the top-hitting prospects for the Boston Red Sox, there’s only one hitting prospect on the team who warrants your attention going into drafts for season-long leagues this year, and that’s 25-year-old outfielder Jarren Duran. Casas will likely find his way to the majors... Read More

First Base Breakouts for 2022 Fantasy Baseball

The first base position has definitely gone through some changes over the last few years. While still home to a lot of good power hitters, the elite at the position is thinner than it used to be. It's also a position that is on the older side. The majority of the mid-tier first baseman wind... Read More

Oneil Cruz: 2022 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

Discovering sleepers is a vital part of the fantasy baseball process. Finding a quality sleeper can often be the difference between a championship team and a bust. One of the more interesting sleeper prospects heading into the 2022 MLB season is Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz. Let's dig in to see if he can be... Read More

Third Base Draft Sleepers for Fantasy Baseball

Outside of the top five or six studs, there’s really not too much to write home about at the hot corner when it comes to fantasy baseball. If you’re not going to grab a rock-solid option early, you’re probably better off waiting on a mid-to-late round steal. As we saw last season with Braves star... Read More

Tanner Houck: 2022 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

There are a lot of different ways the 2022 season could go for Boston Red Sox pitcher Tanner Houck. In a best-case scenario, the 25-year-old would pick up where he left off last year and stick in the rotation throughout the season. If that indeed ends up being the case, he’s going to be a... Read More

Second Base Draft Sleepers for Fantasy Baseball

Second base is one of the interesting positions when it comes to fantasy baseball. There’s really only a handful of top-tier star-caliber guys, but after that, it’s one of the deeper positions when it comes to middle-tier contributors. While there’s a bit more inconsistency after the stars, there are definitely some interesting options with second... Read More

Three Outfielders Set to Break Out in 2022 - American League

Each year in fantasy baseball, there’s a handful of players that truly come into their own and break out at the plate. We saw it yet again this past season. Just to name a few, Baltimore Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins came out of nowhere and turned himself into a star, and Toronto Blue Jays slugger... Read More

First Basemen Set to Bust for Fantasy Baseball

First base is typically one of fantasy baseball’s deepest positions, particularly when it comes to finding power. This makes it a great position to find relative value throughout drafts. Of course, it also provides more opportunities to draft players who won’t provide the value fantasy managers were hoping for. I will highlight three first basemen... Read More

Buying Back in on Alec Bohm

Let's start with a cliché because those are always fun. We've heard over and over again that "prospect growth is not linear." Well, there might not be a better example of that in the current MLB landscape than Bohm, who was drafted third overall in 2018 and quickly moved through the minor leagues, hitting .291... Read More

Adbert Alzolay: 2022 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

When looking for sleepers in fantasy baseball, there is a certain type of player I usually search for. I have found that some of the best successful sleeper picks turn out to be either established players coming off of down years (think Marcus Semien) or young, under-the-radar guys who have shown improvement and have the... Read More