Kicking Off The Fantasy Baseball Season

Mike Trout and I are both excited about the arrival of Shohei Ohtani to the Angels.

I’ve been talking about writing more for awhile now, but it comes and goes. I’ve decided that I’ll use the upcoming fantasy baseball season to create some initial structure around writing more, and in this post, I’ll talk about some topics I plan to write about. While every fantasy prep season I act like next year will be different — I’ll use more advanced tools, like self-created web-apps or analysis in Python and/or R — I’m looking forward to actually writing my own series of analysis pieces. So, in a sense, this year will be different … at least in this way. I’m looking forward to the “process” and all the podcasts, articles and research/analysis to be done.

Here’s the initial list of articles I plan to write:

1. 2018 MLB Projection: What will 2018 look like? 2017 was the year of the juiced ball and HR, will 2018 be similar? How does that impact scoring in our fantasy leagues?
2. Player Projection Systems: What’s the best projection system to use (e.g., most predictive)?
3. Best Practices: What’s the common denominator among top 3 finishers in the last 5 years?
4. Positional Analysis: What positions have had the best/worst returns over the last 3 years? Which area/range (e.g., 1B 10–15) is likely the most profitable target for this season?
5. Experts ADP: Which players are experts most bullish on, relative to “home league” players?
6. Bounceback Candidates: Who are the top bounceback candidates (e.g., missed time with injury, played through injury, other struggles)?
7. Fun with Small Samples: Which per 600 PA / 200 IP performances really stood out last season? Which players do projections like this year to do so?
8. Undervalued Players: Which players are likely most undervalued based on current ADP?
9. Prospects: Who are the best prospect bets for 2018?
10. Pitching: What’s the best approach for pitching this season? What about pitching ranks and tiers?

Well, look at that. I didn’t intentionally jot down 10 ideas, but we ended up there anyway. These will largely be focused on my leagues, so n = 1–2, but I’m hoping the analysis is transferable and helpful for other leagues, as well. If nothing else, this is an opportunity for me to practice my writing, force me to structure my thoughts and analysis, and trap my thoughts on paper.

Any other ideas that would be interesting and insightful to dig deeper into?