One thing I'm personally struggling with this year is that I don't know how to evaluate some of my bad teams.
In one league, I spent a big chunk of auction capital on Yordan, Jared Jones, Schwellenbach, and Clase. Obviously that team sucked, but I don't know what to change for next year lol
Example
2025
William Contreras: .260, 17 HR
Carlos Narvaez: .241, 15 HR
You might get lucky with a Cal Raleigh (ADP 86 in March) or a Hunter Goodman (ADP 318) but it's not worth chasing in the first 10 rounds
razzball.com/top-20-catch...
@razzball.bsky.social wrote the definitive opinion piece on how to draft catcher in fantasy baseball 2 years ago imo
Tldr: every catcher is gonna hit between .240 - .260 and 15-20 hr. The 300+ pick gap between the top and bottom catchers is dumb and don't get sucked in
If only my Michael Harris love was as rewarded haha
Using Savant overall PF (and I know there's more nuance to this than one number), the park move was MASSIVE
BOS (104 PF, 2nd / 30)
to
SD (97 PF, 26th / 30)
Is comparable to moving from CIN (103 PF, 3rd /30)
to
SF (97 PF, 29th / 30)
It was a really dramatic shift in park
I can't find my receipts anywhere, but when he was unsigned in Feb I had "If Pivetta signs in SF he finishes top 5 in CY" as a bold prediction this year.
BOS is so underrated as a crazy babip park. Literally the 2nd most friendly offensive PF per savant, more hitter friendly than GABP
Yeah, 100%. You can be streaming SP like Lodolo and Eury a lot of the time too. And almost nobody has a bad team either, so it's often really competitive with lineups of absolute STUDs
10s are hard because the wire is so good. Like Heliot Ramos was not rosterable in 10s from July onward, but was 100% owner in every other format
20% K supported by SwStr and Stuff+. ERA estimators in the mid 4s. The upside here is Eflin. He should be nowhere near the top 40 imo
Luis Garcia Jr '24
JJ Bleday '24
Michael Harris '23
Dalton Varsho '22
Cedric Mullins '21
Austin Hays '21
Are some examples off the top of my head
There's a category of player who I've been burned by a lot the last couple years which is "bats who have a legitimately great season that is mostly supported by reasonable growth in underlying stats but with no prior track record of being above average" and I feel like those guys aren't good bets
If you expected the same number of PA in 2024 and 2025, you were almost spot on. 528 PA in 2024 vs 507 PA in 2025 with 6 games to go
FG auction calc values
2025: 2B 20, +$1
2024: 2B 4, $12
Even accounting for a platoon split, it's a complete bust from a guy who made very believable improvements
This was me looking at Luis Garcia Jr this past off-season lol
To be clear, I agree with you that we have enough of a sample to not believe in the breakout coming.
But I was just providing the case for why I've been in the last couple years and why I expect him to still be drafted as an upside sleeper type guy next year
And that tweak only took Pivetta, what, 6 years and going to a new team? So it'll happen for Pfaadt any day now I'm sure
Yeah, that would be the one problem with his game lol
But that's the thing. He doesn't need to reinvent himself completely to be good. The velo and command agent problems.
He just has to find a way to be even just ok against lefties. It's one tweak away.
I think the bullish case is his career stats vsRHB
217 IP
224 K
3.56 xFIP
19.8% K-BB
That's probably a top 20ish SP most years.
But I agree generally with what you're saying.
I think Pfaadt, Taj Bradley, and Nick Pivetta (in BOS) are all a similar category of dude.
There's obvious potential to be a true fantasy difference maker but also clear flaws that need to be addressed before they can take that step
On the broadcast they said Skenes is 13-0 in games where he received 3+ runs of support for his career. 14-0 after today
He's working on it
Man, baseball is *nuanced*
Ah, thanks for the clarification. The other things I noticed is how weird it is having elite contact guys like Kwan and Arraez on the same side as high career K guys like Suwinski and Raley
I think the more consistent swing paths may actually be harmful as it makes you easier to pitch to. Avoid pitching to the exact swing path and those hitters will struggle more to adjust
The NLBM is one of the coolest baseball experiences I have ever had and this sucks
Through July 3, Logan Webb has more strikeouts (127) than
Hunter Brown (126)
Dylan Cease (121)
Paul Skenes (115)
Chris Sale (114)
Just like we all predicted
The .194 slg to .445 xSLG also seems relevant to Jac generally lol
If he qualified, he'd have the 6th worst o-swing among qualified hitters. Right next to Sal Perez, Yainer Diaz, Nick Castellanos.
Streaky players, but all definitely major league caliber hitters. Any improvement there seems like it could unlock something serious
Wow that aggression is incredible lol. I know your model is far more sophisticated than just o-swing and z-con, but being under 40% and nearly at 90% respectively seems like the aggression isn't necessarily a huge problem?
In my mind, I've been comping him to Nick Castellanos
Do you have one of these for Jac?
I imagine this was meant to read like "Have fun! We sure did!" But instead, I read it as Yoda "Have fun, we did"