{"id":12904,"date":"2016-09-23T16:57:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T20:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12904"},"modified":"2016-09-23T16:57:47","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T20:57:47","slug":"fantasy-baseball-2016-post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12904","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy Baseball 2016 Post-Mortem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_12909\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/AltuveJose-sliding-via-outsidepitchmlb.mlblogs.com_.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12909\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12909\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12909\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/AltuveJose-sliding-via-outsidepitchmlb.mlblogs.com_-300x197.jpg\" alt=\"Altuve was a huge driving factor for me in Fantasy this year ... but it wasn't enough to win the championship. Photo via mlblogs.com\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/AltuveJose-sliding-via-outsidepitchmlb.mlblogs.com_-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/AltuveJose-sliding-via-outsidepitchmlb.mlblogs.com_.jpg 594w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-12909\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Altuve was a huge driving factor for me in Fantasy this year &#8230; but it wasn&#8217;t enough to win the championship. Photo via mlblogs.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Usual caveats apply; if you don&#8217;t care about Fantasy Baseball, you probably won&#8217;t care about this post. \u00a0I&#8217;ll return to Nats next week and am hoping to return to my detailed per-level pitching reviews this year&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Fantasy Baseball has wrapped up for the year; most leagues are doing their playoff finals this week. \u00a0This is my post-mortem for the year. \u00a0Here was my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12096\">2016 team preview article<\/a>\u00a0at the beginning of the year to show my drafted team.<\/p>\n<p>My <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>strategy<\/strong><\/span> for this year (pulled from the preview article):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>focus on hitting; don&#8217;t load up on OF early.<\/li>\n<li>wait on pitching.\u00a0 With the conversion to QS, I felt like there was a ton of value later on with starters instead of burning early spots.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted four closers (and got them &#8230; though the last one is really iffy).<\/li>\n<li>I only wanted the minimum hitters, figuring I could start churning and burning based on the lower-end starters that weren&#8217;t working out.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted a good mix of solid dependable players with a couple of high-end rookies (advice I liked after hearing it on a podcast)<\/li>\n<li>Lastly I didn&#8217;t want to spend early on either C or 1B; catcher since there&#8217;s just so much turnover, 1B since there&#8217;s so much value later in the draft.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Results<\/strong><\/span>: My strategy worked out pretty well. \u00a0I had very good hitters, I got quality starters late and off waivers, I kept 3-4 closers all year, and I finished the regular season in 1st place by 3 games. \u00a0I was able (as always) to find quality OF and 1B on the waiver wire (in my case, Will Myers who exploded). \u00a0My one strategy miss may have been waiting on a Catcher; my catcher was awful all year and there was no \u00a0help on the waiver wire until later (see below for who I picked up).<\/p>\n<p>Even despite finishing in 1st place regular season, my pitchers badly declined later in the year, I had an off-week offensively in the playoffs and I got bounced by the 5th place team in the semis. \u00a0And when I say bounced, I mean I lost 2-8 on the week. \u00a0So, a disappointing finish. \u00a0But i think the strategy was sound and I&#8217;ll do it again next year.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I ended up in team stats for the season:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Runs; 3rd<\/li>\n<li>HRs: 1st<\/li>\n<li>RBIs: 4th<\/li>\n<li>SBs: 9th<\/li>\n<li>OBP: 2nd<\/li>\n<li>Saves: 1st<\/li>\n<li>Ks: 3rd<\/li>\n<li>ERA: 5th<\/li>\n<li>Whip: 3rd<\/li>\n<li>QS: 3rd<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yeah; too bad we&#8217;re not playing Rotisserie. \u00a0The only category i was guaranteed to lose\u00a0nearly every week was Steals. \u00a0Overall I had a pretty good year.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Here&#8217;s\u00a0my initial draft and the player disposition on the year.<\/p>\n<p>I drafted 9th out of 10 spots.\u00a0 Here is my team (the two numbers are Round and # overall).<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>9\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Nolan Arenado, Col 3B: Kept all year and finished #6 in Yahoo.<\/li>\n<li>12\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Jose Altuve, Hou 2B: Kept all year and finished #11 in Yahoo; he was much higher but has really struggled this last month, hurting his September value.<\/li>\n<li>29\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0George Springer, Hou OF; Kept all year and finished #29 in Yahoo, almost exactly in line with his ADP and his rank. \u00a0Also struggled badly in september.<\/li>\n<li>32\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0J.D. Martinez, Det OF: Missed 6 weeks mid-season so I dropped him, but picked him back up and he was not awesome but certainly not contributing as a 4th round pick.<\/li>\n<li>49\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Miguel Sano, Min DH; was decent early, then fell off a cliff and eventually missed time. \u00a0He ended up on the Waiver wire.<\/li>\n<li>52\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Carlos Carrasco, Cle SP: kept him all year even though he hit the D\/L at some point and was awful in September. \u00a0I lost K&#8217;s by 9 in the playoffs &#8230; and got nothing from him thanks to the ill-timed line drive through the box.<\/li>\n<li>69\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Corey Seager, LAD SS: Kept all year; finished #67 in Yahoo. \u00a0A very shrewd pickup here.<\/li>\n<li>72\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Jeurys Familia, NYM RP: Kept all year, finished #71 in Yahoo. \u00a0Very solid Closer.<\/li>\n<li>89\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cody Allen, Cle RP: I dropped him when the Indians acquired Andrew Miller &#8230; then missed out when Allen turned out to be mostly the closer again. \u00a0So<\/li>\n<li>92\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Danny Salazar, Cle SP: Another cleveland SP who spent time on the D\/L but who was good when active; I dropped him during the playoffs when he strained his forearm.<\/li>\n<li>109\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0David Peralta, Ari OF: My first real draft miss; he was ok for the first 6 weeks, then hit the D\/L for a bit, then kept getting injured and didn&#8217;t play after early August.<\/li>\n<li>112\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Carlos Martinez, StL SP: My biggest &#8220;impatient drop&#8221; of the year; he struggled all the way through May and I dumped him; he got picked up by (ironically) the guy who beat me in the playoffs and he was stellar the rest of the way.<\/li>\n<li>129\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Adam Eaton, CWS OF: I dumped him at some point and he was basically on waivers the whole year; never good enough to pick up versus whoever had the hot hand.<\/li>\n<li>132\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Salvador Perez, KC C: Ugh; depth at Fantasy C is so thin, I stuck with him for almost the entire year. \u00a0Luckily I got to Gary Sanchez before anyone else, and rode him through the playoffs.<\/li>\n<li>149\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Jeff Samardzija, SF SP: Had him for a bit, thinking he&#8217;d be good in SF. \u00a0He was so streaky up and down that I dumped him. \u00a0He eventually got picked up by a competitor but was never really *that* good.<\/li>\n<li>152\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Justin Verlander, Det SP: My other big &#8220;impatient drop.&#8221; \u00a0I had Verlander two years ago and thought i&#8217;d get a find; he had a 6.49 ERA through his first 6 games. \u00a0I dumped him &#8230; and he finished the year Yahoo ranked #20. \u00a0Ugh.<\/li>\n<li>169\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Fernando Rodney, SD RP: A huge closer steal for yours truly; he was lights out right up until he got traded to be a setup guy. \u00a0That was a bummer.<\/li>\n<li>172\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lucas Duda, NYM 1B: My perennail late-round 1B pickup, only this year he got hurt and was never really a fantasy player.<\/li>\n<li>189\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lance McCullers, Hou SP: this late-round flier was on my D\/L for weeks until it became apparent he wasn&#8217;t going to shwo up any time soon; he made just 2 starts all year.<\/li>\n<li>192\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Yordano Ventura, KC SP: awful all year; yahoo ranked #732.<\/li>\n<li>209\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0J.J. Hoover, Cin RP: a flier on a closer-by-committee was the first player I dropped. \u00a0Luckily I caught on with some lower-end closers and did very well. \u00a0I got Luke Gregerson in Houston, who did well for a time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So, just 8 of 21 players on my team all year from the draft. \u00a0And not one player drafted after the 10th round made it all the way though. \u00a0I&#8217;m not sure if that&#8217;s an indictment of my drafting, or just the nature of fantasy baseball.<\/p>\n<p>Here was my team (save for playoff transactions) at the end of the year:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>C: Gary Sanchez: What a monster; #11 for the month of September.<\/li>\n<li>1B: Wil Myers: another waiver-wire monster: He ended up yahoo ranked #30 on the year and I had \u00a0him for most of it.<\/li>\n<li>2B, SS, 3B: Altuve, Seager, Arenado: never once varied all year.<\/li>\n<li>OF: Martinez, Springer and I had Keon Broxton at the end, trying to get Steals. \u00a0I played the waiver wire heavily for OFers, cycling through the likes of Justin Upton, Joc Peterson, Rajai Davis, Kendrys Morales, and for a long time Marcelle Ozuna. \u00a0In fact, for weeks I rolled out Martinez, Springer and Ozuna and had an extra random 1B (like Duda, or Napoli, or Travis Shaw) type filling in at utility.<\/li>\n<li>Starting Pitchers: Anchors were Salazar and Carrasco. \u00a0All my other SPs were waiver pickups. \u00a0Teheran, Sanchez and Fulmer did the best for me, also had Smyly, Odorizzi at the end. \u00a0I cycled through a few SPs that in retrospect I wish I had kept versus what I ran out during the playoffs: Maeda, Gray, Bauer, Straily, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Closers: Familia was the leader, also had Thornberg, Watson and Johnson at the end. \u00a0Really worked waivers to get closer replacements when my original\u00a0guys were traded\/got layered\/lost out. \u00a0Allen and Rodney were really strong for me the first half, and then I just was quick on the trigger to grab Thornberg and Watson when their closers were traded.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So, how do we improve for next year? \u00a0My downfall was depending on waiver wire starters who faltered late. \u00a0I definitely had too many rookies (Sanchez\u00a0and Fulmer in particular) leading the line.<\/p>\n<p>I need to be patient with starters of course, but that&#8217;s the same thing every year.<\/p>\n<p>I need to focus on getting a SB threat in the draft.<\/p>\n<p>I need better luck. \u00a0Or to go rotisserie. \u00a0Or to get some transactions during the playoffs (which became a huge issue in our league, especially as I lost 3 different guys to injury during the playoffs).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Usual caveats apply; if you don&#8217;t care about Fantasy Baseball, you probably won&#8217;t care about this post. \u00a0I&#8217;ll return to Nats next week and am hoping to return to my detailed per-level pitching reviews this year&#8230;. Fantasy Baseball has wrapped up for the year; most leagues are doing their playoff finals this week. \u00a0This is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2592],"tags":[3302,3142,2321,71,3140,2594,2029,2025,3141,2117,1235,3297,2378,1304,3138,839,3139,1829,2371,3299,3304,2562,1913,425,44,1568,1597,3298,2914,1738,3300,3303,2261,626,1947,493,2085,1016,3306,3301,1056,3305,1303,2232],"class_list":["post-12904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","tag-aaron-sanchez","tag-adam-eaton","tag-carlos-carrasco","tag-carlos-martinez","tag-cody-allen","tag-corey-seager","tag-dan-straily","tag-danny-salazar","tag-david-peralta","tag-drew-smyly","tag-fernando-rodney","tag-gary-sanchez","tag-george-springer","tag-jake-odorizzi","tag-jd-martinez","tag-jeff-samardzija","tag-jeurys-familia","tag-jim-johnson","tag-jj-hoover","tag-joc-peterson","tag-jon-gray","tag-jose-altuve","tag-julio-teheran","tag-justin-upton","tag-justin-verlander","tag-kendrys-morales","tag-kenta-maeda","tag-keon-broxton","tag-lance-mccullers","tag-lucas-duda","tag-marcelle-ozuna","tag-michael-fulmer","tag-miguel-sano","tag-mike-napoli","tag-nolan-arenado","tag-rajai-davis","tag-salvador-perez","tag-todd-boss","tag-tony-watson","tag-travis-shaw","tag-trevor-bauer","tag-tyler-thornberg","tag-wil-myers","tag-yordano-ventura"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12904"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12911,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12904\/revisions\/12911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}