Rookies Who Surged in September - Fantasy Baseball Draft Sleepers

Each year in baseball, there’s always a handful of rookies who finally receive their call to the show. That was again the case this past season, as we saw more really impressive young talent take the league by storm.  From the top prospects to the late-bloomers, so many youngsters took full advantage of the playing […]

K-BB% Gainers: Starting Pitchers to Watch in 2022

If I were on a desert island and had to pick just one statistic to take with me to evaluate starting pitchers for fantasy baseball purposes, I would choose strikeout-to-walk ratio. Would I have bigger problems than picking the best pitchers for my fantasy team if I ever found myself alone on a desert island? […]

Mid-Round Third Basemen - 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 […]

Late-Round Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Targets - NFBC Draft and Hold Leagues

Even as the Major League Baseball lockout drags on, fantasy baseball managers have begun diving into draft season. In these early months before Spring Training begins, the most common draft formats are draft and hold leagues in which managers will draft large teams (usually 50 players) and then make no waiver claims during the year. […]

Universal DH - Biggest Fantasy Baseball Risers

The battle lines have long been drawn between baseball traditionalists (i.e. grumpy old men) and revisionists (those who realize we are in the 21st century). It appears progress has won out and both leagues will finally play under the same rules over a full season going forward. Although nothing has been officially settled in the […]

AL-Only Draft Sleepers for 2022 Fantasy Baseball

Baseball is back with a vengeance! MLB teams are wheeling and dealing like fantasy managers on a bender, but who is complaining? Not me. The season starts on April 7, so your fantasy draft or auction is right around the corner. I am here to help with seven sleeper options in AL-only leagues. Who is going […]

Mid-Round First Basemen - 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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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- […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]