April 12, 2016
Fantasy Freestyle
My Fantasy Investment Portfolio
by Scooter Hotz
On Sunday I finished my final auction of the 2016 season. After a Founders Red’s Rye and a Tired Hands Alien Church with a few of my fellow owners, I went home and started to compile a list of players I owned in each league, with an eye toward figuring out which players I had most frequently across my six leagues.
This idea isn’t new. I first remember seeing this kind of analysis done by the excellent Paul Sporer. I liked Paul’s terminology, so I’m going to co-opt it. If he owned, say, Jose Iglesias in four leagues, Paul would say that he had four shares of Jose Iglesias.
Here’s a quick rundown of my six leagues. I won’t get into all of the gory league settings details, but I’ll give a rough sketch of each league:
- AL-Only rotisserie, auction with $260 budget, keeper, 14 hitters and 10 pitchers, old-school 4x4, includes BP’s own Mike Gianella
- NL-only rotisserie, auction with $260 budget, keeper, 14 hitters and 9 pitchers, standard 5x5
- Mixed rotisserie, auction with $260 budget, keeper, 14 hitters and 9 pitchers with 12-plus reserves, standard 5x5
- Mixed rotisserie, snake draft, redraft, 9 hitters and 7 pitchers with 5 reserves, standard 5x5
- Mixed head-to-head, snake draft, keeper, 11 hitters & 8 pitchers with 5-plus reserves, 6x6 (standard 5x5 with OPS for hitters and QS for pitchers)
- Mixed head-to-head, auction with $260 budget, keeper, 11 hitters and 9 pitchers with 6-plus reserves, 6x6 (standard 5x5 with OPS for hitters and OPS-against for pitchers)
Two more notes before I get started:
- This week, I’ll focus on the major-leaguers. Sometime soon, I’ll perform the same exercise for minor leaguers.
- I‘m in six leagues, but I can’t have more than five shares in any player because one of those leagues is an AL-only league and another is an NL-only league.
Five Shares (one player)
Matt Moore
I love Matt Moore this year. In our Bold Predictions post, my call on the pitching side was that Moore would finish in the top-20 overall among starting pitchers in mixed leagues. I put my money where my keyboard is and managed to get him in every league I could.
Four Shares (two players)
Byron Buxton
If your league(s) include minor leaguers, you may have heard of this guy. He was the no. 1 prospect in BP’s rankings in 2014 and 2015 and slipped all the way to no. 2 in the 2016 rankings after a disastrous season during which a wrist injury and a concussion conspired to keep him off the field for long stretches and limit his performance while on the field. He still has the same thunderously loud tools that he’s always had, and his stellar defense should keep him in the lineup even if he hits a rough patch at the plate.
Yasmani Grandal
Before the All-Star break last year, Yasmani Grandal hit .282/.401/.526 with 14 homers. After the All-Star break, a shoulder injury bothered him at the plate, and it showed, as he hit .162/.280/.218 with two homers I’m buying the upside of what a healthy Grandal can do at the plate over a full season in his age-27 season. Of course, Grandal started the 2016 season on the DL with a forearm injury, so maybe betting on health isn’t the best idea. The injury is seemingly a minor one, though, as he is expected to be behind the plate for the Dodgers at some point this week.
Three Shares (seven players)
Kyle Schwarber
Man, that injury hurt. I’m not ready to talk about it or him yet. Instead, here’s a video of Kyle Schwarber singing and dancing as part of his high school’s show choir. Miss you, big guy. Looking forward to seeing you mash again in 2017.
Hanley Ramirez
It seems like Hanley Ramirez’ terrible 2015 season made people move him down a lot in their rankings. I remember Hanley raking for the first month of 2015 before hurting himself while stumbling around the outfield, limiting him for the rest of the season. Health has never been Ramirez’ strong suit, though, so betting on it involves some risk. Even when healthy, he’ll never be the stolen base threat he was for the Marlins, but he still has the talent to be a premium bat, even at first base. His dual 1B/OF eligibility this year in most leagues is helpful, too.
Wil Myers
Like Hanley, Wil Myers has dual 1B/OF eligibility in most leagues. Also like Hanley, an injury-shortened season put a damper on his overall numbers in 2015. I like the odds of a comeback season for Myers, especially since he was available much later or much less expensively than he should have been by my opponents.
John Lackey
No, I don’t think that John Lackey will be able to match the stellar numbers he somewhat unexpectedly posted in 2015. With Lackey, it was less about having strong feelings about him as a player and more about the way he kept slipping in drafts further than he should or the way the bidding for him stopped well short of where it should, even after accounting for regression to the mean.
Jeremy Jeffress
Cheap saves. When Will Smith went on the DL during spring training, Jeffress transformed from a part-time closer into a full-time one with little competition for the role. He also posted good rate stats last year and strikes a lot of guys out. There’s a lot to like with Jeffress and the news about Smith’s injury didn’t boost my opponents’ valuations as much as it should have.
Fernando Rodney
Rodney has been so volatile for so long that just about every experienced fantasy owner has rostered the disastrous version of him at least once. That kind of trauma can keep team owners from picking or buying a guy even when he’s a good value proposition. He’s risky, but a lot of teams moved him down way too far on their sheets and several refused to take him in any round or at any price. I’m happy to roster him if the profit is there.
Nathan Eovaldi
There isn’t much to say about Nathan Eovaldi that J.P. Breen didn’t cover in his fantasy profile last month. I’m betting that a decent amount of the improvement Eovaldi showed in the second half of 2015 carries over into 2016.
Scooter Hotz is an author of Baseball Prospectus.
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