Using the Baller Ranks and Meta Report

David Emerick breaks down the Meta List, a new tool that features rankings, updates, and performance for fantasy baseball players.

The Baller Ranks depict player value and active developments throughout the season. For most leagues, there are somewhere between 250 and 400 fantasy-relevant players. Most weeks feature more than 80 games, a myriad of roster moves, and enough information that many fantasy managers can miss critical changes.

In the best sense, the Baller Ranks offer updated rankings, news, relative values, and statistics that stabilize most quickly. It aims to address more than trade value and rank.

The true goal of the Baller Ranks is to give owners an advantage by providing greater clarity on what is happening in the game so they can respond to it more effectively. The ranks and values are data and projections based. I start by scraping player projections and combining them. Then I make adjustments for individual players when I can point to concrete evidence and say, "here's why the projection is wrong." I use that data set to generate z-scores and predicted player values.

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Overview

It's easy to dismiss a hot start or a cold streak as a small sample. Ideally, the Baller Ranks give owners perspective to make the best decisions as they play.

The Baller Ranks feature four main pages:

1. The Rankings sheet: A full table of the top-150 hitters. Players are arranged in a way that better illustrates their comparative value than simple ranking. It allows fantasy owners to visualize performance tiers and conceptualize trades more effectively.
2. The Core page: Each position gets its own section. The page has individual player notes, the value of a player's season-to-date performance, and their reason wOBA and xwOBA.
   
3. Early Indicators Data: A table of stats with a high correlation to fantasy value and overall offensive success. These stats are among the fastest stats to stabilize (2-4 weeks) and have predictive value.
   
4. Early Indicators Delta: In some ways, the Delta sheet is a quicker version of the "Early Indicators Data." The table offers the same stats as the Early Indicators Data, but it compares a players' recent performance to their prior performance. Positive changes are shown in green. Negative changes are shown in red. Want to know if Austin Hays is actually being more patient at the plate? Did JP Crawford's swing change improve his launch angle? It's going to show up here.

Fantasy baseball leagues aren't won by owners who simply draft well. They're won by owners who know the game and who respond to it over the course of the season. Hopefully, the Baller Ranks are a tool that helps you do that.

The sheet itself continues to be a work in progress. I'd love to get feedback from you and to hear about how we can make it even better. If you see an issue, would like a feature, or just want to ask a baseball question, let me know on Twitter. Good luck out there.