Tag Archives: Xander Bogaerts

With My Own Eyes: Portland vs Trenton

by The Dynasty Guru

It’s always fun when you can have another first in life, and Friday night I had a pretty exciting one–it was the first time I went to a professional baseball game with a press pass. With the assistance of the almighty Joe Hamrahi and my new friends at the Trenton Thunder, I had a perfect seat right behind home plate, which allowed me to do fun things like take some video (which I’ve attached at the end of the post) from a nice angle.

And fortunately for me, I got to see a number of players who matter for dynasty leagues up close and personally. So, while I’m not a scout, the more baseball I watch, the more little things I pick up. And the more little things I pick up, the better informed I become about the game as a whole. It’s the same as with anything else in life–repetition breeds knowledge. So with the opportunity to see Xander Bogaerts, Matt Barnes, Tyler Austin, Slade Heathcott and Nik Turley, I arrived at the ballpark excited for what would excite me. And as baseball would have it, the players who would excite me most were not even on that brief list.

Unfortunately, the biggest reason for this was that Xander Bogaerts was held out of the starting lineup, for reasons unknown. As he was the biggest reason I made the 75 minute drive down to Trenton, it was quite a bummer when I first discovered that. I’m sure if he were on the field, I’d be raving about him for pages and pages and pages, so consider yourselves all lucky that i didn’t. However, these were some players who I saw and how much attention they are worth paying in dynasty leagues:

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The No. 1 Prospect For 2014 Is …

by Ben Carsley

In preparation for our highly successful and critically acclaimed A Podcast For Your Eyes debut last week, our Benevolent Dictator Bret Goodwin asked Craig and myself to create individual Top 10 lists for 2014.

While I was initially glad to accept my assignment simply because I find these things enjoyable, I was surprised to find that it’s actually a pretty useful exercise, too. If you want to really put a prospect under a microscope and truly weight his upside, what better way than to ask yourself if you could ever see that man topping a list of all players in the minors?

I’ve carried that idea to its logical conclusion here, and am bringing you eight players I think could rank No. 1 over all on Top 100 or 101 or 150 lists before the 2014 season. The first four names might make you say “duh,” but reasoning is provided. The following four might surprise you, and reasoning is provided here as well. My Top 150 rankings from my 2013 list are in parentheses.

The Frontrunners

Xander Bogaerts, SS, BOS (3)

I’m not sure if you guys know this, but I’m actually sort of high on Bogaerts. All he did last season was decide to post a wRC+ of 144 in High-A and of 159 in Double-A as a 19-year-old, all while convincing many that he can at least begin his career at shortstop. That’s, like, really good. I don’t think he sees a ton of MLB this season because there are two capable players head of him in Stephen Drew and Jose Iglesias, and if he does switch positions he’ll need time to adjust as well. But if Bogaerts is still prospect eligible next season and he still profiles as a shortstop, he’s almost guaranteed to top my list. Continue reading →

A Podcast For Your Eyes: The 2014 Top 10 Fantasy Prospects Edition

by The Dynasty Guru

As I hinted at in yesterday’s post on projecting the Top 10 fantasy prospects at this time next year, Ben, Craig and I tried something interesting on Wednesday night as we sat down on gchat and conversed for almost an hour and a half about the topic at hand. The following conversation has not been edited, abridged or otherwise touched (besides cleaning up our names so that it’s easier to read).

Without any further introduction, I present to you the Episode 1 of A Podcast For Your Eyes. If you like it, tell us and we’ll do them more often. If you don’t, tell us and we’ll forget this whole thing ever happened. And we’re off..

Bret:  whats going on guys?

Craig:  watching O’s/Rays over here

Ben:  watching NYY/BOS

Craig:  also eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich, because I’m 12

Bret:  i’m watching the mets start their WS run

Ben:  sooo playing MLB the show?

Craig:  I was going to say…can we have a moment of silence for Bret’s sanity?

Bret:  my sanity has been missing for a long time

Craig:  touche

Bret:  alright, so you guys have the consensus list, right?

Craig:  yes but I just dripped jelly on my shirt so I’m in crisis here

Bret:  save that gold for when we’re “recording”

Craig:  hahaha. ok problem solved, but you feel free to include it

Bret:  fair enough, i’m going to do an introduction, and then we’re just going to jump right in and ben and i can fawn over xander bogaerts

Ben:  im super good at fawning over bogaerts

Bret:  ha, i’m sure you are. alright, let’s do this

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Predicting the Top 10 Fantasy Prospects For 2014

by The Dynasty Guru

With the minor league season kicking off today, we wanted to do something fun here at The Dynasty Guru. And that something fun started with a rather innocent question to the rest of the staff: who do you think will be the Top 10 Fantasy Prospects on next year’s list?

I can’t speak for the thought process of the rest of the guys (see the bottom of the post for more details on that), but when I sat down to come up with my individual list, it was a bit of a balancing act between performance and PERFORMANCE. Hear me out for a second. You have a bunch of guys who are going to start the year in the upper minors, but if they perform extremely well, they could force their team’s hand and get them a call up this summer, which would result in them losing their prospect list eligibility. On the other hand, if they stink, they’re not going to be worthy of being in the top-10 for a whole other reason.

For my money, I made the assumption that all of the big names at the top of the 2013 list (Profar, Taveras, Hamilton, Myers and Bundy) would all lose their eligibility for 2014. Same for other top-20 pitchers such as Gerrit Cole, Zack Wheeler, Shelby Miller and Jose Fernandez.

So here’s what we did. I collected the individual top-10′s from Craig, Ben and Ian and made a TDG collective top-10. For any prospect to make the group top-10, they had to be on at least two of our individual lists. Each player also received a two-point bonus for each list they appeared on. And the following is what the process churned out – your 2014 Top 10 Fantasy Prospects:

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Bret’s Eleven Bold Predictions

by The Dynasty Guru

It’s so close to Opening Day at this point (12 hours!), you can almost taste the Rangers beating the heck out of the Astros. And here at The Dynasty Guru, we’re celebrating the march to Opening Day by having every contributor come up with 11 bold predictions. Yes, we know that people do this at plenty of other sites, but goddamnit it’s fun. And we’re allowed to have some fun around here.
The biggest difference between our predictions and the predictions from “those other guys”? Ours go to 11.

And since this there’s really nothing else important that can be said to set up a bold predictions piece, this seems like an appropriate to end the introduction. Here are things which will happen in the future according to me, Bret Sayre:

1. Alex Gordon blows the doors open and hits over .320 with 27 homers and 15 steals, finishing in the top-5 of MVP voting in the American League.

I’m a big Alex Gordon believer, you guys know this already – and I think this is the year he takes that step forward into superstardom. Well, superstardom on a national level, as in reality, he’s been worth 12.4 wins above replacement over the last two seasons. Gordon has reduced his strikeout rate every year of his career since 2009, and his 8.5% HR/FB rate will jump back up to the 12-13% range it’s been at the last three seasons. It’s going to be fun to watch.

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The Top 50 Dynasty League Shortstops

by The Dynasty Guru

Now things are finally starting to look up. The difference between SS and 2B positionally is pretty eye-opening once you start including prospects, as 2B only has one top-40 prospect and SS has six. It really makes me think twice about ranking the dual eligibility guys on the SS list – although if I did it in reverse, the SS crop would look much weaker. However, when you look at just the values for 2013, the positions look closer to equal in value.

As with its middle infield counterpart, SS has a clear tier at the top and backs it up with prospect firepower. And I’ll start on that subject by answering an obvious question. I did rank Jurickson Profar at SS because that is his natural position and one which he will be playing in short order in the majors, despite the fact that he has 2B eligibility only in most leagues heading into 2013. So the exciting part is that although the position is gradually improving, there’s a lot more help coming – and we may not be too far away from another fantasy golden age at the position.

However, clearly we’re not there yet. In 2012, there was not a single shortstop to hit more than 25 HR and Derek Jeter was the only shortstop that hit over .300. There was only one triple-digit total in any counting stat at the entire position, and that was Jimmy Rollins’ 102 runs scored. This lack of high-end production is what allowed guys like Martin Prado and Marco Scutaro to be top-10 shortstops in 2012. This is going to change over the next couple of years and it’s going to be led by the first name on this list.

And now your top 50 dynasty league shortstops, with commentary:

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The Top 150 Dynasty League Prospects, Part 5 (#30-1)

by The Dynasty Guru

Today is Day Five. Over the next 27 days, this site will be dedicated almost solely to the task at hand – the 2013 Dynasty League Rankings. If you’re looking for background on both the content you should expect and the dates you should expect them, check out the 2013 rankings homepage. And we’re kicking off the month-long project with the list that I’ve gotten the most questions about since the off-season started. The only difference between the original schedule and what you’ll see this week is that I’ve broken the Top 150 out into five parts, not three. Each day of the week, you’ll get thirty more guys until we culminate Friday with #1.

First, I have a couple of disclaimers specific to the prospect list before we jump in. These rankings are for fantasy purposes only, and do not directly take into account things like an outfielder’s range or a catcher’s pop time. Of course, these things do matter indirectly as they affect a player’s ability to stay at a particular position. So, while Austin Hedges may be a top-50 prospect in baseball, due in large part to his defensive value, he’ll be much lower in these rankings because his upside isn’t nearly as great for fantasy. Additionally, these rankings will take into account a player’s parent organization – so a pitcher likely to call Petco or Safeco home, will get a bump. Same with hitters who are likely to play at Coors or in Arlington. But most importantly, the intention of this list is to balance the upside, probability and proximity of these players to an active fantasy lineup. So, in a vacuum, I’d rather have the #104 player on this list than #105 on my dynasty league roster right now, based on all of those factors.

Additionally, if you want to delve any further into the list or have specific dynasty league questions, either post them in the comments section below, catch me on Twitter at @dynastyguru or send me an e-mail to dynastyguru [at] gmail [dot] com and I will answer all of them. If you just want to say hello or tell me I’ve over/under rated someone you love/hate, that’s great too. I’m a firm believer that an ongoing dialogue is always more helpful than a singular monologue, and the goal of this is to be an additional resource in guiding your team to a championship.

So without any further ado, here is the final installment of the 2013 Top 150 Dynasty League Prospect list:

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The Dynasty Guru’s Crystal Ball: 2017′s 5×5 Category Leaders

by The Dynasty Guru

This is a fun exercise I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Right now, Opening Day 2017 is four and a half years away, but there’s absolutely no reason I can’t start speculating about who will lead the standard 5×5 rotisserie categories that season. Who knows if the 5×5 format we use now will still be the most commonplace scoring system that far into the future anyway? Maybe a standard ESPN league will be using OBP and QS instead of AVG and W. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume that the categories are remaining the same.

Now, this isn’t an all-prospect list – although there are some prospects on here. And if you think I’m understating the impact of prospects in this exercise, here’s a fun fact for you. If we did this exercise after the 2007 season, looking at the 2012 category leaders, guess how many of the categories would be led by players who had not played a game in the majors at the time? The answer is 5 out of 10. And if you expand out to the top-3 in each category (including ties), you get 13 out of 33, which is 39%. Of those 13 top-3 category finishes, 7 were from players that debuted in 2008, 2 were from players that debuted in 2009, 2 were from players that debuted in 2010 and 2 were from Mike Trout, who was a junior in high school when the 2007 season ended. In fact, Trout and Buster Posey were the only two players who finished in the top-3 of any 5×5 fantasy category in 2012 to be drafted AFTER the 2007 season.

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction – let’s go to the Future Dynasty Guru for the breakdown of what happened in 2017:

Batting Average: Miguel Cabrera (.341)

It feels like Miguel Cabrera’s been around forever, but he only turned 33 on Opening Day 2017. While his power has started to wind down (this was his first season with under 30 HR in over a decade), Cabrera continues to maintain a high batting average. The two main reasons for this are: 1) he’s still a fantastic hitter to all fields and 2) by the laws of physics, it’s been impossible for him to get any slower than he was back in 2012. Runners up: Oscar Taveras (.334), Starlin Castro (.328)

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Drafting a Dynasty League Roster: Minor League Draft, Rounds 1-3

by The Dynasty Guru

As I mentioned last week, in my Plan for the Off-Season post, I signed up for a newly-formed 20-team dynasty league so that I could write about building a roster the old-fashioned way (as opposed to the series on my rebuilding project). It’s been a couple of years since I drafted a dynasty league team from scratch, and participating in this draft has been a welcome challenge. So before I delve into what has happened so far, I want to lay out the details of this particular league for context.

It is a 7×7 H2H league that uses all of the standard 5×5 categories, plus OPS/Total Bases for hitters and Quality Starts/Holds for pitchers. The active rosters are one player per position (OF are broken out by LF/CF/RF) plus a Utility player on offense, and nine pitchers (2 SP, 2 RP, 5 P). On top of that, there are 7 reserve spots, 3 DL spots and 20 minor league spots. So, all in all, it’s a deep league with an active lineup that skews a little towards pitching and very deep minor league rosters (400 total prospects will be rostered). The league is starting off with the a 20-round minor league draft for any rookie eligible players (130 AB, 50 IP), and will have the major league draft later in the off-season. Oh, and by the way, I’m the Minnesota Twins.

As far as my philosophy goes with a draft like this, I went into it wanting my first couple of picks to be players who are advanced enough have a reduced risk of flaming out. Just like it’s tough to contend when your first or second round pick in a redraft league flops or gets hurt, it’s a sizable set back if one of your top prospects busts. Of course it’s not quite the same, since minor leaguers are much less predictable, but it’s something you want to avoid. For that reason, I was hoping to get good value on a couple of hitters to start the draft, as they have more predictive value than their pitching brethren. On top of that, I’d probably try to be less of an upside whore since the league is so deep.

So here is a review of the minor league draft’s first three rounds. I’m going to look at who I picked and why (along with others I was considering) and who the best/worst picks of the round were (mine excluded). Hopefully this helps with either your valuations of these prospects or the preparation for your own dynasty league draft.

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