The Fantasy Baseball Sherpa

Today I’ll start my series of reviews of several widely available sources of 2008 fantasy baseball projections. First up are the Hitters’ projections available at MLB.com. I’ll use the benchmarks laid out in my 3/17 post on Hitters.

1. Total At-Bats (AB) for all Hitters, all teams - can’t judge this; unfortunately, the MLB.com summary projections don’t include a Hitter’s projected AB.
2. Total AB for a team - see previous item.
3. Total Hits - see item #1.
4. Overall Batting Average - since AB for individual Hitters aren’t readily available, I used Runs Scored as a proxy for AB. This proxy suggests an overall Batting Average of .280, which is greater than the benchmark of .268-.273.
5. Total Home Runs = 6,592, which is significantly above the benchmark of 4,900-5,400.
6. Total Runs Batted In = 27,510, which is significantly above the benchmark of 21,000-22,000.
7. Total Runs Scored = 28,669, which is significantly above the benchmark of 22,000-23,000.
8. Total Stolen Bases = 3,664, which is significantly above the benchmark of 2,500-3,000.

Conclusion - MLB.com’s Hitters’ projections, when viewed as a whole, appear to be a set of “Best Case” projections rather than “Expected Case” projections. While that may serve you well at the end of your draft/auction when you’re trolling for sleepers, relying on a “Best Case” set of projections throughout your draft will likely result in your drafting mediocre players too soon or paying too much for them in an auction.

I’ll look at MLB.com’s Pitchers’ projections later today.

The Sherpa

Tags: "Best Case" projections, "Expected Case" projections, fantasy baseball projections, Hitters' projections, MLB.com, Pitchers' projections, sleepers, The Sherpa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under fantasy baseball, fantasy baseball projections, fantasy baseball sherpa, fantasy baseball strategy, fantasy baseball strategy blog, position scarcity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.