Fantasy Beat

I like the weekly matchup thing - reminds me of Caleb Peiffer's old gig highlighting 3-4 games a day - I miss that series.

Marc,
This goes more to draft prep than in-season content, but is there any chance of getting a Top 250 over the next week, along with ordered 1B and 2B tiers?

Thanks for all you do!

I think the Stat Report leaderboards is the best idea in my opinion. Only suggestion I would make is to drop the "leaderboard" part of it. Or you could leave it as such..but I think highlighting players with stats you feel are telling (ie they might be ready to break-out or fall apart, etc) would be great. These players might not always be at the top of bottom of these statistics though, what if a guy is unexpectedly in the middle?

Mailbags are always good.

How about every week, you write a column on my roster and how it could possibly be reclaimed from a trainwreck of a draft?

I kid, I kid. I think all of your proposals are spot-on. One other possibility may be a weekly or fortnightly article highlighting a player at each position that may be a potential fill-in, based on match-ups or recent play/playing time, for those positions where one's lineup may have had injuries or may have a sub-standard player (e.g., my team, where Cristian Guzman is my starting SS). I think throughout the season it could be useful to have a list of those players that won't appear high on a search for year-to-date leaders at a position, but that may be able to help our teams based on recent events/performance.

Thanks, and thanks for all the awesome work.

I enjoy reading mailbags. The problem I often have with them is that they often consist of questions like "Would you keep X or Y" or "Would you trade A, B and C for J and K?" When one stops to consider how many different kinds of leagues there are, and that these kinds of questions can really only be properly answered by knowing the league setup, roster makeup of the rest of the teams, and the current standings, then they're often useless - to the readers, any maybe even to the person asking since the author doesn't have all the necessary information when forming an opinion. In one league the trade might be good. In another, not so. That said, I'd still end up reading!

Stat Report leaderboards would be great. I'd be interested in some instant analysis when a player is called up from the minors. I know KG does that but not always from a fantasy perspective.

Speaking of instant analysis for minor league call-ups, how plausible is a forecast of potential call-ups? Like a, "Desmond Jennings has been hot in AAA--look for Tampa Bay to call him up within the next two weeks." Having an idea about who might be called up before they are would be a nice leg up in a lot of leagues... Obviously, this would be pretty inexact but I think it'd still be useful.

I know Will Carroll runs the UTK, but a running list of ALL (fantasy useful) injured players and their expected return date would be really helpful. It wouldn't have to be anything more than a list thanks to Will's analysis, but there's nothing more frustrating than waiting for UTK only to discover that there's no update on when Jose Reyes is likely to come back. Nothing, of course, except owing Reyes last year...

I can't hit "Post Reply" for some reason, but now two of us want early call-up notice so now you have to do it.

Marc, sounds great. If you plan to do a weekly matchups post, it would be very helpful to have it accessible by mid-day on Sunday. I think most leagues set lineups well before such columns are usually posted, which renders them pretty useless.

I agree with Sharky on having weekly matchups posted by Sunday late afternoon as many leagues have Sunday night FAAB deadlines.

Can we get 2009 SIERA numbers for relievers too?

Thanks!

Agree completely on the likelihood of folks from the minors getting called up. Also, just a general highlighting of guys in the minors who are playing really really well (and for whom you expect the trend might continue) would be helpful for spotting prospects in dynasty leagues.

I've never seen an article devoted to fantasy relevant players' platoon splits. I think this is a relatively untapped area hardcore fantasy players could exploit to get a leg up on the competition.

It would be cool to see a semi-frequent blog highlighting stars who should sit against certain match ups, waivers fodder who put up great platoon numbers, or highlight certain platoon stat players who have favorable match-ups for the upcoming week.

I don't know if this would appeal to others, but I wanted to throw it out there.

I'd suggest a weekly piece on the new climbers and hot pickups each week (easily identifiable in the major ESPN/CBS/Yahoo leagues), providing analysis as to whether their presence and stats are sustainable, what we can expect from them going forward, and a FAAB "buy" or "avoid" recommendation.

Non-closer relievers. Anyone can count saves or holds, but I'd love some analysis on who's doing the best job in innings 7 and 8, even for teams where the closer isn't going anywhere barring injury. I consider BP to be a specialty site, one that can and should delve into a level of detail that others don't usually bother with.

Don't think this is totally relevant here, but did someone change the column order on the PFM? It used to read HR/RBI/SB. Now its HR/SB/RBI. Which means another (admittedly minor) manual step to be done before updating my draft sheet. Sigh.

Starting in May, I'd love a weekly article about positive and negative outliers vs. their PECOTA projections.

Is Player X really enjoying a 90% season or is it an unsustainable fluke?

I like all of these suggestions. I would also like to see the depth charts updated regularly to reflect injuries, substandard performance, minor leaguers who've improved their shot at being called up, etc. For each update, it would be forward looking (i.e., reflect the best estimate for the rest of the season). If it were paired with in-season updates to PECOTA, I'd be in heaven.

I agree with those that would like to see hot weekly pick-ups in some kind of rank order, including guys who could be considered pick-up but are really "pretenders." Also, like the idea of weekly matchups, with some quantitative analysis on why a pitcher looks like a particularly good start that week.

We hear all kinds of rudimentary analysis on other sites along the lines of "David DeJesus is facing a righty AAA callup in Comiskey, you should start him." I'd love to see you guys put some meat on it. *How* much better would you expect him to be? Would you start him over, say, Carlos Lee facing Lincecum in SF?

Perhaps there'd be a way to use that excellent run environment analysis Tim Kniker just published to help with this.

I remember last year that you wrote a sort of how to article, and isolated BABIP with associated links. I loved that, because it really helps to differentiate regardless of where you are looking at a free agent pick up. It also now significantly helps me determine if I should hang onto a player or drop them. I really can't see that sort of thing becoming a weekly column, but if you could throw something like that out there once a month, that would be great.

Can we get E-BABIP and SIERA added to PFM?

Then how soon into the season would it make sense to look at these year-to-date numbers and "forecast" rest-of-year performances that might not be obvious based on the classic 5x5 stats? After May? After June?

I'm not sure how feasible his is, but each time Christina posts a Transaction Analysis, can one of the fantasy writers post the Fantasy take in the comments section?

I'd like research on the value of bench slots, which then would go into an update for the PFM for next year. 'Cause I'm not thrilled with the idea of leaving out the bench all together in the settings or guessing the H/P split and filling in the Util/P slots with that guess.