Fantasy Baseball Today - 2021 ATC Projections plus Salary Cap Draft Strategy with Ariel Cohen! (2/2 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

We've got snow in New York but we also have Ariel Cohen! What are Ariel's thoughts on Nolan Arenado in St. Louis (3:00)? Arenado or Devers? ... Not much news today but Alex Cobb was traded to the Angels and JT Realmuto is 100% healthy (4:35). ... What goes into the process for ATC projections (11:30)? What about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.s projections? ... What are volatility metrics in projections (18:08)? ... Scott's rankings vs. ATC (22:52)! Let's debate Alex Bregman. ... If you've ever wondered, ATC's projections are 50th percentile outcomes (29:57). ... Scott vs. ATC, this time Zac Gallen (31:25). Is he worth his current ADP? ... How do projections weigh skills vs. playing time (35:56)? For example, how does it view a pitcher like Tony Gonsolin who might not have a rotation spot? ... Frank vs. ATC, this time with Austin Meadows (39:35). ... We wrap up with some salary cap draft strategy conversation (47:41)! ... Email us at [e-mail]. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday 'Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank, @AdamAizer Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. I drive, center field, and swing. This is magnificent. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank Scott, Chris, and Adam.

Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball Today. Tuesday, February 2nd, Frank Sample, joined by Scott White, in the midst of a winter storm here in the northeast. Ever roll around in the snow, Scotty? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. There was usually one good snowstorm every winter growing up

in suburban Atlanta. When I say one good snowstorm, I mean like, you know, a few inches. But it was enough to play in, you know, and you got to miss school and everything. And it was gone in a couple days. But it was all the good part of snow with none of the bad, basically.

Yeah, that's basically the opposite. in New York because we've got about two feet of snow here and it's not looking too good. No playing for the snow for me today. All work. It's fun to watch the snowfall, but in New York it becomes this mix of dirt and gravel and just slush and after a couple of days, snow in New York is just an absolute mess, at least in the city it is. Someone who might know what I'm talking about is a fellow New Yorker And that is Ariel Cohen, the creator of ATC projections, which you can find on Sportsline, the host of the Beat the Shift podcast, and of course, 2019 FSWA baseball writer of the year, but also nominated for baseball article of the year for this past year for 2020, nominated with me. So may the best man win. What's going on, Ariel?

Absolutely. And congratulations to you on the nomination. And you were nominated for a writer of the year. How are you doing, Frank? And how are you, Scott? I'm doing well, Med. Yeah, I nominated for baseball right over the year. I don't know.

Maybe I accidentally submitted some of Scott's articles, and I plagiarized them, and I kind of put them in, submitted them as my own, and that's how I got nominated. What do you think, Scott? Probably not. Probably not. I appreciate being the one who's not nominated here.

I appreciate you offering up that sentiment. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm excited. Big show today here with Ariel. We're going to take a closer look at the 2021 ATC projections, and we're going to compare some to our rankings. Scott, you know, Scott doesn't like projections very much. We'll talk about it a little bit more later on, but

we're going to pit some of his rankings up against ARL's ATC and see what we get. But of course, we do have some strategy conversation regarding salary cap drafts, formerly known as auctions. We'll have that. And we do have some mailbag questions. It seems like, finally, maybe the Nolan Aeronado trade will become official. And Scott, I've asked you about Nolan Aeronado enough. So I did just want to get Ariel's quick thoughts at the top here. Scott has said on record that he will now move Aeronado behind Raphael Devers. Ariel, what do you think about that?

I think we have to move Nolan Aeronado down a little bit, at least. We've got to move him down, you know, probably around or so. But who would you take between Aeronado and Raphael Devers? Oh, well, first of all, I've had Rafael Devers quite higher than everybody for a long while. Devers is my fifth corner infielder, first or third baseman off the lock. Yeah, Arnado, we're talking a small downtick in terms of his power output, but he should be batting in the middle of a lineup. It's going to still get you that great performance of rub production.

You know, his stack-taff numbers have been dwindling. Was it injury? hard to say. I'm not sure if St. Louis would trade for a guy who's and take on that big contract, if not. I think he's going to probably be exactly where he should be drafted.

And I'm comfortable drafting him right there, although I really do prefer Devers. Ariel Cohen, the advocate of one, Raphael Devers here in 2021. Yeah, lots of like. Got up to a slow start last year in 2020.

Also got up to a slow start in 2019. So it could just be a thing that we see now, a consistent trend with one Raphael Devers. We'll hit on some quick news and notes before we get to the projections. Not really a lot going on. Alex Cobb traded from the Orioles to the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for former second round pick,

Jemai Jemai? Probably Jemai Jones, who was a decent prospect in the Angels organization. Randall Cobb in Randall Cobb. Now I'm talking football. I know it's Super Bowl week, but it's Alex Cobb in 2020. A 4.30 ERA-134 whip, 6.5K per 9.

Really just an endings eater at this point. Not very exciting, huh, Scott? No, not very exciting that move. And Jami Jones, at one point was a pretty exciting prospect. He's been a top 100 prospect before, but he's a couple years removed from that. So, you know, I'm not expecting much from him either. It's a minor trade.

Yep, minor trade. Cobb's someone who in bestball or draft and hold leagues, I target in like round 35 or later just because you know he's going to give you innings. So will he be good in those endings? Probably not, but he's a name. Alex Cobb. J.C. Realmuto feels 100% healthy after his hip flexor strain. He suffered in September. So for those Realmuto truthers and people who like to draft catchers early,

that's good news for you. Jordan Yamamoto was traded to the Mets and offers them some more starting pitcher depth, former prospect who was sent to the Marlins originally in the Christian Yellage deal. He came over from the Brewers there. So, Ariel, not really much to see here with Yamamoto, but I know you're a big Mets guy. He adds some depth behind names like Luke Casey there at the back end of the rotation. Yeah, it looks like the Mets are just trying to stock a little bit of reserve talent here. I'm not a big Yamamoto fan.

his velocity, which wasn't all that great to begin with, ticked down. He was barely hitting 90 miles an hour now in a terrible year in a very short stint last year. Hey, you know, the Mets are just trying to get some depth and, you know, they traded a position guy for him. Can't blame them. That's where the Mets really could need the help.

So it seems like a, you know, fair swap and medium trade. Some other news, that's not really fantasy related. It's being reported that five women detailed unwanted sexual advances is from Angels' current pitching coach, Mickey Calloway. This has become just way too prevalent in common in society, and it needs to stop. But it's worth mentioning because the Angels will likely be looking for a new pitching coach. So just thought I'd mention it.

Laser Show, Dustin Padrella, retired on Monday, a great career that featured four All-Star appearances, a rookie of the year, and, of course, an MVP trophy. Fernando Tatis, cover athletes, for MLB the show 21, which will be released April 20th this year. For my fellow Xbox players out there,

we made it, man. We have not had a good baseball game on Xbox since MLB2K13. So get excited, get hyped. Scott, I know that you are a big video game fan, but more so of the retro varieties. I don't think this really affects you.

Probably the latest baseball game I played that not the most recent one I played, but the one I played that was made the latest was MLB the show like 06, 07, something like that. So it's been a long time since I've dipped my toes

in those waters. So yeah, I didn't even know it wasn't on it. It hasn't been on Xbox. Xbox has just been a baseball gameless system this whole time. Yeah, they had the arcade game, RBI baseball, but, you know, what does that really do for anybody.

So, boom. RBI 94, for what it's worth, that is probably the most recent baseball game I've played. Same here. I played that this weekend. RBI 93. Yeah, that's the baseball game I probably played the most ever. I want to play to death as a kid.

RBI 93. That's it. First one with the Marlins and Rockies franchises in it. That's right. That's right. Jose Canseco and Florida Teal. That's how they put it on the back of the box. Oh, wow.

Make trades. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, growing up for me, MVP baseball 2005 with Manny Ramirez on the cover, anyone who ever played baseball video games, you know what I'm talking about. Before we get to the projections, just want to quickly remind everyone that if you are a big football fan, you know that the biggest sporting spectacle of the year is nearly upon us.

We know everybody loves making their picks, no matter if you're a diehard fan or just tuning in for the big game. So we think you'll also love this opportunity. the CBS Sports Football Props game for your chance to compete for the $1 million jackpot. That's right. Guaranteed $50,000 to the winner and you can win all that money without risking anything. Football Props is free to play. Speaking of the big game, of course, it's airing this Sunday, February 7th, 6.30 p.m. Eastern Time on CBS, which means you can also watch it on CBS All Access and the CBS Sports app as well.

If you haven't yet, please join our Facebook group. Lots of great questions and discussions going on there. Plus, if you're looking to join a league or you need to fill a vacant spot and you're the commissioner, there is a lot of people looking for leagues there. So you can post it in our Facebook group, our fantasy baseball today, Facebook group.

Also in the month of February, Scott Chris and I will be doing weekly Q&As. Ask us about anything, fantasy, life, video games, music, whatever comes to mind. You can find Scott Mondays 9.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Me on Tuesdays, 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time. And Chris on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. The link to join Facebook.com slash groups slash fantasy baseball today.

It's also in the podcast slash YouTube description. Scott, I know that you were just in there. And someone asked you a question about Anthony Rizzo. Oh, yeah. No, that was the most interesting question I got. Yeah, they said, why does Anthony Rizzo follow you on Twitter? And why don't you follow him back? It's a pretty good question. I don't know, but both make me feel pretty cool, right?

The fact that Anthony Rizzo follows me and I don't feel the need to follow him back. I mean, I'm big time in Anthony Rizzo, right? I actually do feel like Anthony Rizzo is my coolest follower because he's not somebody who goes and follows everybody. He's got like 200-something followers. And for some reason, I won. I don't know. But I haven't lost him yet. It's been a couple years.

I try not to say anything bad about him, I guess. All right. Well, you probably talked him up in fantasy somewhere along the lines, and maybe he heard a clip of it. So, very fair question. But again, you could ask all those at our Facebook group.

ATC projections. Going to mix in some questions about your process, Ariel, and of course, Scott versus ATC, his ranks up against your projections. So ATC actually stands for average total cost, which I did not know. I'm a dumb dumb.

I just thought you kind of named them after yourself. I thought your middle name started with a T, and there you go. R.E.L, whatever your middle name is, T, Cohen. That's what I thought it stood for. But that is not correct. They are average total cost. And these projections are great. They were actually named the number one most accurate fantasy baseball projections

by fantasy pros last year. So I did just want to start things off with, what is your process? Because I know that we had you on back in, I think it was like October, a long time ago now. And you mentioned that, your projections are in aggregate. So they take into consideration other projection systems.

So if you can break that down in layman's terms, what does that mean, Are you? Yeah, very basically, there are a lot of other good projection systems out there. And they do all sorts of good things. Some are manual. Some are automatic, formulaic-based. Some of them are better for home runs. And some of them do pitching strikeouts better. Each projection system has a good quality and a worse quality to them.

And I take the best parts of each. For home runs, I might take 40% of projection system A and 20% of projection system B. And for a different one, I can swap that and take nothing of one and a lot of another. It's a way of combining getting the best parts of each projection system in one. It really helps you not go off track. So because I'm melding projections, I'm not going to project, oh, my God, this guy's going to be amazing. What I'm going to do is I'm going to stop you for making mistakes. If ATC thinks that a player is really a bargain, wow, he probably is.

And if ATC says stay away, it's probably a good idea that you might get mixed up by just using one standalone projection system on its own. So how much subjectivity do you put into the projections? Or is it all just, you're looking at past three years production, what a player has done most recently, projecting forward a little bit, taking a piece here, a piece there from this projection system, projection system. But when it comes down to it, how much are you actually adjusting on the fly by yourself, Ariel, where you say, all right, well, you know, all these projection systems have player X, let's say Dominic Smith projected for this many at-bats. But I think he's going to get more. How much of that is just your opinion? Yeah, well, in terms of the rate stats, in terms of, you know,

how many home runs per at-bat or how many stolen bases per plate appearance, pretty much almost nothing. I pretty much take the formula at ATC produces, and that's what it is, unless I see some kind of really error that makes no sense that there's something wrong with the data, but it's pretty much nothing. With the playing time, it's mostly formulaic what ATC does, but if I think that there's something in the news that maybe isn't there yet, so, you know, Daniel Murphy retired and Nolan Aronado is shipped off to St. Louis, maybe there's a chance for some of the Colorado starters, other ones to pick up some playing time,

I might manually adjust them until the projections get there. So playing time is something that I could tweak. I try not to do that too much because it'll all come out when the projection, if you wait a week, all the projections will hit it and it'll bake it right into ATC, but for short sports, you'll see me changing that.

As somebody who plays fantasy baseball, obviously, you won the Top Wars League you were in last year, which was, which one was it, head-to-head? Head-de-points. Head-head points? Okay. Do you just like, do you basically just draft off your projections so there's virtually no subjectivity happening anywhere in the process,

or do you, do you, you know, hop around something in your projections to get the players you want? That's a great question. I'll say two things to that. Number one, if you veer very far off projections in the long run, you're going to do yourself harm. The numbers guys are pretty smart. and ATC is very, very smart. And if you, I address this guy, that guy, that guy, you keep adjusting people,

you'll find that for every three people that you're going to be right on, five people you're going to be wrong on. That's not to say that I don't do anything. Just like what I do on my podcast, the Beat the Shift podcast, I use ATC to bubble up what I think are undervalued players. And for the players that are high above the market, I say, okay, here's what ATC thinks is a bargain. Do I agree with them?

And I'll go and do a deep dive myself. And I'll say, okay, the projection here makes sense. I like it. This projection, you know what? I think that it doesn't incorporate a pitch change. And maybe he's a change to his launch angle. And if I have a reason to believe it, I'll then adjust the projections for my own rankings and for my own draft myself. So the answer is no, I do adjust it myself, but I try not to do that very often because I know in the long run, it's not going to be a great use.

Great question, Scott. and one that I wanted to hit on myself because I saw that when you convert the ATC projections, there is an auction calculator, but we'll go with salary cap draft values, but there is a calculator on fan graphs where you can convert the projections into values. And I noticed that for 5x5 roto,

ATC has Vladimir Guerrero Jr. over Pete Alonzo. So, Ariel, you've got city fields in the background there. I know that you're a big Mets guy. Would you, if you're on the board and need a first basement, actually take Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ahead of Pete Alonzo? So for those two, when you do the auction calculator, yes, Vlad is more than Alonzo, but very close. In a 5-by-5-15 team format,

Guerrero is $23 and Alonzo is 22, so we're splitting hairs. What I would take in a salary cap draft is if whoever's cheaper pretty much. You know, if I can get Vlad for $2 cheaper than Alonzo, I'll take it. To me, that's even. And or if I need a lot more homers and a little bit less average, then I'll go for Lonzo. If I need the batting average and, you know, don't need as many homers, I'll go for Vlad. So I'm indifferent pretty much to the two and I take them as needed or more importantly, whoever is cheaper. That's the right answer.

He's always ready. He's ready for anything. Talk to me about these new volatility metrics with ATC projections, because it's something that you and I have DMed a little bit back and forth, but I wanted to kind of fill everybody else into what these new volatility metrics are in the projections. Yeah, so these aren't new for me, but these are new that I haven't published them yet. You know, because ATC is an average of other underlying projections, not only do you find an average of what ATC says is the middle ground, but you also know that there are some players who have a very big disagreement between the projections.

They're all over the place. ATC is an average, but it's very volatile. There's also some players that are very tight, where every projection is pretty much the same thing. So one metric I have is interprojectional standard deviation. That's the measure of how wide they are. I also have something called interprojectional skew, which tells us how skewed they are. Are the projections up and down balanced, or is there one outside projection that's so low that's just bringing down the average but everybody else is up or the opposite?

If it's skewed up where there's just one projection that's just far above the other. And so the skew and the standard deviation give you a little bit of a flavor for what goes into ATC. just to give you some examples, Paul Goldschmidt has a very, very low standard deviation of about a buck six. Most people values, the standard deviation is about $3.5. So if you're below it, it's great. Paul Goldschmidt is a little bit less risky. From a projection standpoint, they're pretty much all in agreement on his value.

Take Jonathan VR, his standard deviation is $9. Projections do not agree. You can have some that have a tremendously high, tremendously low. I'm less confident in picking VR, even at ATC's value, because who knows, they can be all over the place. On the picture side, Tony Gonsolin, $9 standard variation, but Mitch Keller, only a buck and a quarter. Keller might be interesting because projections do agree, you know, and so on and so forth. The third projection, the third of volatility metric I have is intra-projectional volatility. And that's just a measure of the five-by-five, how much of a one category or multi-category player is.

like Keston Hayura has a very low interest standard deviation because he gets a little bit of each category. Whereas at Alberto Mondesi has a tremendously high one, he's a one category player. For the same price, I would prefer the multi-category guy. And so you now can get a measure of how that stacks up within ATC. And where would we find that, Ariel, or is it just baked into your projections? So it's different. You get that stat with the on sports line. if you go to, and I think you tweeted out a link earlier today, Frank, just go on there.

And off to the right side, you know, you'll see homers and stolen bases, and you'll see interprojectional standard deviation and skewness and so on and so forth. So interprojectional standard deviation. What is it for Vladimir Guerrero? Just out of curiosity, do you have that there that you can look at real quick? I can definitely look that up. So for Vlad, I have a volatility of $5.5,000, which means, projections do not agree on Vlad. Okay.

I just wanted what like the low projections would look like for him since he, with your projections, he comes in higher than Pete Alonzo, if enough projections systems are factoring in enough downside for him. And it sounds like maybe they are if the standard degeneration is that wide. Correct. I have some projections that are in the low 20s for homers

and I have some projections that are in the mid-30s for homers. So they're all over the place with an average of 26 that ATC brings. So it's actually a great example that you gave because now you know that he comes up higher than Alonzo, but he's more volatile. Alonzo, to give you a comparison, I'll look up his volatility metrics. His projections are, I'll tell you, a 3.2. So he's about an average player in terms of volatility. So if you're thinking about the difference between the two, Alonzo is clearly the safer person, the safer player in terms of the distribution of projections. Yeah, no, that's very useful too because it's a way to find players who, okay, we know Vlad has a very high ceiling, but the floor might be lower than someone like Pete Alonzo who's being projected, at least in terms of salary cap draft value, to be a similar cost.

So it's something that definitely is useful for fantasy baseball. all purposes. Let's get into what people actually came here for. Scott versus the computer, the projections. Scott, why do you hate projections? Can you just let Ariel know? Well, first, I would say, you know, my argument carries less weight based on some of the details he shared about his own projections. And certainly, if you're going to go about using projections to draft off of them, combining the best of all projections would be the way to do it. But for someone like me who is in the data enough for every player individually, I just don't feel like they're necessary.

And I would be worried that they'd, I'd be locking myself into one expectation for a player. Okay, this is what the projection says he's going to do. So this is what he's going to do. Instead of considering the wide range of outcomes and adjusting for that, you know, going for the upside play late, going for the safe play early, which is what I like to do. If I'm just confined to one example that may or may not happen,

but one example of what could happen, then I'd be afraid it would lead me to some bad decisions. I think it's less likely with the projection system you set up, but that's why I don't really use projections as a draft tool for myself. So let's talk about a player in particular, Scott. I know that you are still very high on Alex Bregman. You were high on him entering last season as well, and you have Breggman ranked as your number three third basement in both formats

in both head-to-head points and in Roto, the traditional 5x5. ATC loves Bregman in points leagues, which makes perfect sense. Really good OBP, good eye at the plate, he's going to walk a lot that helps in points leagues. But they have Breggman as the eighth third baseman in Roto. So, Ariel, defend the projections on Alex Breggman. Well, I don't have to defend the points league, because he comes out great. It's pretty much a lot to do with the roto

and with the batting average nature of 5 by 5. His batting average, he had a 242 batting average last year. His homers trickled down. He only had six homers last year, which scaled to about 16. The 2019 year where he had 41 homers is just seems off. He was lucky in terms of he had more fly balls

than he usually does. And it went back down. this past year, so it's fluky. Home runs per fly ball, that was extremely lucky, and it went down to where it is now. His heart hit contact, he's been down three straight years, his barrel rate, all the stat-cast metrics

down every year over year. So I, you know, I'm not going to say that he's a terrible player. He's obviously one of the best, and I'm projecting that, but I don't have this near-40 home-run kind of projection. Maybe he can hit 30 home runs. Maybe he

can bat 280. ATC is just a tad lower than that. I don't see anything more. And to me, he needs more stats. And he has nothing in stolen bases, right? If you have nothing in stolen bases, you're going to fall very, very far in Roto. It's hard to take him early on.

Over the past four seasons for Bregman, he has gone from 17 steals to 10 to 5 to 0, a donut in 2020. Of course, he only played 42 games. And he was banged up for a good portion of the year as well. So, Scott, this is your opportunity to defend your love for. Bregman. And I mean, if you were like, what's a realistic expectation in, you know, like the five

categories. Now we're making Scott make projections. What would you expect, you know, like, realistically from Bregman in a rototype context? Well, I'm probably thinking the middle ground between his 2018 season and his 2019 season, 2018 season, he get 286 with 31 homers, 2019, 296 with 41 homers. It surprises me that batting average is considered. a trouble spot for Bergman. I know he hit 242 last year, but that seems like one of those stats based on the oddities of the season

and the consistency of his track record that we can throw out. I mean, he makes a ton of contact, great plate discipline. His lowest batting average the three years prior, the lowest was 284, and he averaged 289 over those three seasons.

Yeah, I don't know that we're going to see another 40 Homer season from him again, I feel pretty confident in 30 plus. And as much as he gets on base, a lot of runs betting high in that lineup, a lot of RBI. Steals, you know,

I'm willing to say he's in nothing for steals. I was hopeful that with Dusty Baker taking over last year, maybe he could make a comeback in that because I think he's fast enough to steal bases, but he stole zero and zero attempts. So I'm not going to count on that now. But I think he's a four category stud. And I would, well, I think it's reasonable

not to rank him as high as third, if you wanted to put Aeronado ahead of him, Rendon, maybe even Devers. I don't know how seven third basemen end up ahead of him. That's a difficult one for me to wrap my head around. But what's the case against Eugenio Suarez being better than him? Well, I mean, Aeohenio Suarez had one monstrous power season. It was pretty good the year before that, but he has strikeout issues. he, you know, after last season, I'm not,

I'm not totally sure he's trending the right direction. You know, I had the shoulder trouble early on and his batting efforts just bottomed out. And since the plate discipline isn't that good for him, I'm not, I mean, if you're taking, if you're asking me, category for category, what could Suarez be better than Breggman in?

I would say maybe home runs, but I'm not even super confident in that. And I would definitely give Breggman the edge and all the others. On the opposite, I think that Suarez, other than batting average, has an edge

on every single category. I mean, he had 15 homers last year, which is a pace of 41. He had 49 the year before, 34 the year before. He had a pace of over 100 RBIs in the last three years in a row.

I think Suarez is a much safer player than Breggman. Breggman's going to have a worse lineup than last year. Suarez is probably about the same. I, you know, I think that he's very, equivalent to the overall value of Bregman. And for that reason, I would pass on Bregman and take a

cheaper Suarez later. And I like this too because it's good to hear both sides of the coin because now you make arguments and people who are listening or watching get the opportunity to, okay, well, this is the case for, this is the case against Alex Breggman. So no, it's a really good point. And I think in a vacuum, I think Suarez I would probably expect to hit for more power, more home runs in general, but the counting stats, I think I would probably still lean in favor and definitely batting average with Alex Breggman. So is that worth, you know, three or four rounds of ADP? Maybe not. And that's where you can get A. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. Heneos-W. Hwarres at a value. I want to go back to another process question, Ariel, for the projections. And something that Scott brought up before is that

sometimes when people look at projections, they might just get locked in. All right, well, this is what the projections say this player is going to do. So that's what's going to happen, right? Not exactly. are these projections a 50th percentile outcome? And basically that means if you ran a simulation 100 times, these projections are basically the median expectations. So is that what I'm getting at? Are projections on fan graphs at least and sports line? Are these 50th percentile outcomes? Yeah. So, I mean, I can't tell you for sure because most projections are black box. Certainly the way ATC constructs everything, it assumes 50 percentile. or an average, you know, one of those some middle ground.

So, yeah, but of course the projection isn't just a one-point number. He is not going to exactly get that. It's just a point on the range of what he could possibly be. And that's why it's important to know what upside and downside is. And as Scott alluded to earlier in the show, if you're at the top of the draft, you want to focus on a floor, maybe a 30th, 40th percentile outcome. Towards the bottom, you probably want to focus on 80th percentile outcomes for the player. And that's why I think that having the ATC volatility in there is so helpful because you can focus on less risky players up top and maybe take some of those higher standard deviation ones in the bottom.

Yes. And that's exactly why we're drafting John Carlos Stanton everywhere this year, boys. All right, back to Scott versus ATC. Scott has Zach Gallen as SP 14 in both formats. ATC projections have Gallant at SP20 in Roto, SP 36. in head-to-head points. Wah-Wi-Wa. Why so down on Zach Gowan?

I haven't really checked the head-to-head points. Not that he's so down. I think the market is just tremendously up. I mean, he had two great seasons a row, 28-ERA, 275 ERA, some decent whip numbers. You know, ATC, looking at the confluence of projections, just show that he's going to have regression.

I have him at a 371 ERA. decent strikeout numbers, 189 strikeouts and 174 innings. I think it's more in the question of ranking puts them a little bit behind the others. But, you know, if you look at some of the guys around him, Kyle Hendrix, Hunjin Ryu, Denelson Lemette, Woodruff, Carrasco, Nola, guys are just a little bit ahead in my rankings. If you look at a pure auction value or a salary cap value, whatever you call it these days, they're really close.

Like I have Aaron Nola at like a $22 value. and gallon around $18. So there's a really big rain, a really big bucket of players that are so close in value there that to just talk about the straight ranking number doesn't tell you the whole flavor. He can be just as good as any of them. And I might be comfortable drafting him, whoever's cheaper in that range. If Carasco is cheaper, if he's cheaper, if Hendricks is cheaper, I'll take the cheaper one because to me all of them are really in the same range of value.

The ADP for Zach Gallen, according to fantasy pros, is at 42. So, Scott, would you be willing to invest that early? Let's say, you know, late third round pick, early fourth round as your likely SP2. Would you be willing to invest there on, Gowan? Yeah, I would. I mean, that's the point in the draft where I feel like you have to get the majority of your pitching because everything, once you fall below a certain tier at that position, everything is just too risky and way more downside than upside.

and Zach Gallen, you know, was on the right side of that. So, you know, I have him right there with a lot of the same pitchers. Ariel mentioned Carlos Carrasco and Brandon Woodruff specifically. It was a really close call between those three. And the reason I ultimately went ahead with Gallin

is because I don't have any reason to think he's not durable. He's been, you know, in 2019 between the majors and minors, he threw close to 180 innings. And last year he was consistently six innings, seven innings. You know, Woodruff and Carlos Carrasco, and their very recent past have had some health issues, some issues that caused them to miss a lot of time.

So that's why I opted with Zach Gallin over them. I think maybe why projections in general are lower on Gallen than I am is kind of something that I've kind of felt more alone on among fantasy baseball analysts in general in recent years, and that is putting less emphasis on ratios and putting more emphasis on volume. And I think that's going to be especially important in this season because we can't really count on volume for much of any pitcher

after a year when nobody could throw 100 innings, even 100 innings. So Gallen gets upgraded because of that. I just see him as somebody really durable, somebody's going to be allowed to pitch deep into games and throw a lot of innings over the course of the season. And I agree with that mentality, by the way, Scott. Take a pitcher like Trevor Bauer. ATC projections does not have him as a fantastic buy compared to the market,

but to me, Bauer is worthwhile because of any pitcher, I think he has the highest probability of hitting 200 innings. I mean, he's outwardly said, I want to pitch every, every fourth day. I don't think he's going to pitch every fourth day, but I think that they're not going to shut him down. They're going to let him pitch quite a bit each day. They're not going to take him out of after five innings like the Rays do. So because of the volume that you're going to get with Bauer, I would also, just the same way you did, upgrade him and keep him high up in the rankings, even though projections say he's a little bit lower exactly for that reason. I want to go back to another process question here, Ariel, and I want to think.

to ask, how does ATC account for talented players that we might have questions regarding their playing time versus players who will play every day, but maybe are not as skillful? For example, your projections article on Sportsline points out that you are very bullish on Tony Gonsolin, who is projected for a 379 ERA and a 1-2-A-WIP by ATC. But we don't know if he'll be in the rotation right away, but it could just be one of those things where it assumes, you know, talent wins out. So how does the projection system account for playing time versus skills, basically, with some of these players? Yeah, so the hardest thing about projections is the playing time. The rates are a little bit easier. You won't go so far, any good projection system

won't go so far off the rates. You might get one or two less homers or not per at bat, but the playing time can differ. And that's the hardest thing to predict. What ATC does, and ATC's formula for projections for the playing time is one of those aggregate things, and it probably picks a little bit more manual projections than the automated formulaic because it knows that it has a good history of manual projections doing a little bit better. And what manual projections do is that they see a high-skilled player, and they give them a little bit more playing time than some of the other projections would. So I find ATC in general when there is a little bit more high skill getting a bump in playing time.

So for example, last year Dominic Smith, who nobody thought, where is he going to play? Is he going to DH? Is he going to play? You got Cespidus. Well, left field. He can't put left field. Lo and behold, he was a high-skilled player. He went out.

ATC was the highest projection system on him because it got that bump from that manual system that gave him some more at bats. The year before that, DJ LaMayhew, on the Yankees, where is he going to play? is he going to play second? Well, you got Glybert short. You can't play first. ATC saw the high skill and bumped him probably a good hundred at bats. And so it does that.

So ATC will correlate in some way the high skills with that by the fact that the playing time has a higher weight towards some of the manual projection systems that do that. Yeah, and I think that later on in drafts, especially in deeper leagues, you should be taking these dart throws at players who have these questions, but we feel pretty good, are good players. I mean, if there's no universal DH, right? If there is no DH in the National League, I could see some of the Padres potentially coming at a discount.

You know, Jay Kronoweth, which, okay, there's question marks there, but like Hase Young Kim and Tommy Pham and Will Myers, if people start to get scared off, maybe we see them drop. Same thing with the Reds. I still like Nick Sondel because he's a former first round pick. I'm still putting some stock into that prospect pedigree. Jesse Winker flashed at times last year. So if people get scared off by these Padres and Reds situations,

maybe you get those guys at a discount, but I do still think that there's a lot underlying there that we should be paying attention to. So it's a good point, especially late in your drafts. Now, that's smart the way you factor that, and I really like that. And I did notice when you were mentioning examples of players with high standard deviation,

what's the term you use? projectional standard deviation. Yeah, yeah. Jonathan VR and Tony Gonselin were two of the ones you named, both of them with major playing time concerns going in. So there's kind of a natural just with that, that factors into it as well. Right. I do have

a Frank versus ATC, so I got to get this one off my chest, Ariel, so get ready. And this one is, this is going to be my guy this year. I've already, I've planted the flag, he's one of my guys. And it's Austin Meadows. I have him as a top outfielder in both formats. ATC has Meadows,

outfieler 36 in Roto, outside the top 50 outfielders in head-to-head points. And what's crazy is ATC is actually one of the more generous projection systems on Austin Meadows. So, you know, the other projections are worried about, I guess, potentially playing time and they're factoring in what happened

last year. Yeah, I'm not really worried about last year. I think you kind of give him a mulligan because of the COVID situation. When he came back, he dealt with the oblique. Some people worried about playing time against left-handed pitching in both 2018 and 2019. He fared very well against lefties. So, you know, maybe if you're skeptical about the numbers he put up in 2019, which Scott has mentioned on this podcast that he is skeptical of,

then, okay, I understand. I'm not so much. So I think he can get back to 25 to 30 home runs, double digit steals. I think that's well within reach for a healthy Austin Meadows. So where do you land, Ariel, when it comes to Meadows for this season? You know, he's one of the guys that I'm going to trust the ATC projections who are already on the high side of other projections, as you mentioned. And when I look at him, I look at the projection, I say, okay, what's wrong with that? And, well, the projections say he's only going to hit 20 homers.

And I say, no, I think I agree with the ATC of 25 stolen bases. Everybody is projecting him for about 10 stolen bases. It's hard for me to argue any higher because all the projections are already. going to it. The only thing I'd say just from my looking at it with my own eyes, I don't trust the Tampa Bay Rays. I mean, at any point, you can ship in Travis Darno,

play him at first base, and bat him cleanup. I mean, take a look at a Peter Fairbanks. He didn't close any games in the regular season, and all of a sudden he's closing in the World Series. I don't trust anything they do. They can platoon at any time. They can bring up a minor league player from

AA, and just to come up and play, just like you saw like Randy a Rosarine, So it's hard for me to project upside in a ray. And so I don't have any reason for me to veer from projection. So he's one of my guys that I'm just going to say, I'll trust ATC here. Yeah, maybe I'm just not scared off enough by the rays because I think for Meadows, and even to an extent, Arosa Rana, I think they're probably talented enough where I wouldn't worry about any type of platoon situation.

I feel like they're just going to let those guys go out and play. is there an opportunity for them to play Mike Brasso over Austin Meadows against lefties at some point? Yeah, I guess there's an opportunity for that, but I'm crossing my fingers, and I'm hoping that they don't do that. I mean, they batted, sorry, they batted Jimon Choi Ritey,

and he's not even a right-lety-up. I mean, this is just crazy what they did. It did happen down the stretch last year that Meadows was sitting against left-handed pitchers. Now, maybe they were sitting him because he was slumping, because he was dealing with the after effects of COVID, and they'll go back to playing him every day next year. But I think his performance is going to drive how they use him.

And so it's really contingent on him getting off to a hot start. And that's asking a lot. Yeah, so I think, Frank, I think that if you really buy him at where he's going in the market or more, I think you're paying for his upside. And I don't like buying people at their upside. I want to buy people for a profit. So while I believe in the upside, I don't think there is any to make, at where he's being drafted.

Yeah, fair enough. I guess we'll just agree to disagree there because I think the upside could be 30 plus homers, maybe like a 280 batting average, and if he does that, he's probably like a second or third round pick come next year. So I guess it's just your belief in the actual

player in Austin Meadows. Just quickly, I wanted to mention a few other players that ATC is higher on in the industry including Tyler Glass now, Eddie Rossell, Rosario and Eduardo Escobar. Ariel, did you want to add anything on those

specific three Glass now, Rosario, Escobar? Yeah, I'll say that for Tyler Glass now, we're talking about a huge whip stabilizer and his ERA has tremendous upside. He had a one-something ERA one year. You know, I'm only projecting him for 160 innings, and his strike out rate is ridiculous, even with those limited innings.

So he's just fantastic. Eddie Rosario has increased his rotor value every year, 1821, 22, 24, the last four rotor values. Now he's going to be in a decent situation also. I like him there. Eduardo Escobar is just a matter of value. Great career year in 2019, classic regression last year. And I think that people are just saying,

yeah, it's just, he project 2020 all over again. No, I think he's close to where he used to be, probably not as high as 2019. So I'm at about a $10 player, and the market's only paying at $2 to $3. So I just like him for the price. Three players at ATC is lower on versus the industry. this is an interesting one.

Francisco Lindor, Jake Cronoworth, and Zach Plesack. And my question for Plesack in particular is, do projection systems struggle with pitch mix changes, right? So it was such a small sample size last year that maybe they can't really factor that in. But, yeah, so where do they come out on someone like PLEASC there? Yeah, that's a great point you make on PLEZAC.

And yes, I do think that projection systems do struggle with some pitch mix changes. Remember, projection systems, most of them, are going on some kind of three-year weighted average of history, and you don't get any new skills that are really pumped in there unless you manually override him. Of course, ATC does put some manual projections, which helps there. But for his case, you know, ATC has pretty meh ratio stats,

419-ERA, 128-1-21 whip. That's not good for a fourth-rounder. His K rate, even last year it was like around 8.5K per 9. That's meh for fourth-rounder. So I just don't see the price for him at all. good pitcher, but I mean, he's going way higher. For Jake Cronworth, you mentioned him before, but I don't know where he's going to play. I mean, they got Kim.

They just signed pro far to a long deal. I just don't see where he's going to play to get enough at bats. So I actually agree with the ATC projection here. And you know what? He was lucky for a month. He actually had a terrible September. So I think it's just a sample size of last year that just props up his value. With Francisco Lindur, he's actually my eighth.

ranks shortstop. ATC likes Lindor, but I like a lot of better players. He has shown declines in Homer, stolen bases. I don't think the batting average is high enough to really put him in the first or second rounds. I will say, though, that he's a great player for roster construction because he gives you five category values. But for the first round, not a value. I think that there are better people, some star pitchers, some star less volatile players to get. I just don't like the price for him. All right, on the podcast side, we're going to take a quick break. If you're watching here on YouTube, just stay right here because we're not going to go anywhere.

All right, so salary cap draft strategy, formerly known as auctions. Just wanted to wrap up with some strategy discussion here with this specific format. And I would be remiss not to mention that, of course, Ariel won the Tout Wars head-to-head points salary cap league last season, which we participate in together. So congrats again for that. Um, Ariya, how much do you plan beforehand in a, in, you know, a format like this? Because I tend to overdo it where, you know, I have an entire sheet handwritten, by the way, uh, with players that targets at every position, how much I expect them to go for and backup plans in case I get

priced out on said players. So are you going that hard when it comes to planning for a salary cap draft? Well, um, thank you very much for the congratulations. And I thought you were a really big foe. I saw that we went after a lot of the same players in the league. I put quite a bit of preparation into it. I don't handwrite anything because my handwriting stinks. I use a computer. But no, I plan. I have obviously a value for every player and I have a market value for every single player. The best way to determine what you think is going to be a bargain is to think about what other people are going to pay. But I don't have a backup plan for if I don't get a player, I'm not interested in any player, I create what I call hotspots. So let's say, for example,

I find that Alonzo, Matt Olson, and Paul Goldschmidt are all similarly priced players, slight bargains to what I think that others will pay, and obviously they produce somewhat similar statistics, or they have the same position. That's what a hotspot is, same position, or similar statistics. Now, the reason why I put these three together, and on my sheet, I'll write, I don't know, $20, Alonzo Olson, Goldschmidt. I don't care which one I get because they're all similarly priced, but here's the interesting thing. You might be very interested in Alonzo. Somebody else might be interested in Olson. I would have no idea if somebody is very interested. But when you have three players in a hotspot,

the probability that one of those is going to fall at the price I want to pay goes up. The bigger the hotspot, the four players, I can probably get one of those four at a high probability. So I'll try to look for pairs and quadruple and quid, you know, as many hotspot and large size or up, up and down the auction. We're a hotspots at $25. We're the hotspots at $10. We're the hotspots at four at two. And I'll see, okay, here's a list of players. I want one of these three, one of these four. And whatever comes out the cheapest, that's how I get it. So that's my, my planning that goes into salary cap drafts. So these hotspots, they sound a lot, Scott, like tears basically, similar to tears where, you know, you're just, you're just, you're just, you're,

you've ranked players that you expect similar outcomes from, and you will just take whichever one comes the cheapest. So it sounds like a similar situation to tiers. Scott, how about for you? Like how much planning goes into a salary cap draft? Because this could be quite helpful, considering we are going up against each other in your Dynasty League. Yeah, no, I think it's pretty similar.

Maybe it's kind of a mix of what both of you do. there might be particularly with regard to stolen bases there might be a single player that my entire plan hinges on because it's such a scarce category so few players contribute to it and so i make a plan for i make a plan around that player as my stolen base source and if it doesn't work out because it would just blow out the budget because he goes for way too much then you know i have a plan be in place for stolen bases based on that but for most of the positions at most of the most of the to the positions. I'm targeting a range of players, a tier of players, a hot spot of players. I think these are all basically referring to the same thing. And, you know, it's hard to guarantee you're going to get the least expensive of them because you can't control when they're going to be nominated and how much money everyone else has on the board when they are. But I do have an idea at every position of what I want to do, how much I want to spend, what kind of player I'm looking for.

And, you know, I make it, I obviously make it so it can fit within the budget, $260. And in the heat of the draft, you know, I might have to spend over for something. I might get something for much less than I had budgeted for. And obviously, I tweak what I'm aiming for at each position based on that. So I have, I do pen and paper with this. That process is just easy for me, scribbling out a number and then writing another number in its place that I can now afford to spend at that position.

But, you know, computer, pen and paper, it's whatever you're most comfortable with, I think. As far as, I think one way that Ariel and I might be different is I suspect he holds to preset auction values a little more than I might. that's my suspicion. Maybe I'm wrong. But really all I use auction values for is just an estimate of what other people are going to spend on the guy. And if I'm seeing that whatever set of auction values I have, guys are consistently go high-end guys are consistently going for lower than I have them for.

That means there's going to be more money later. That means the mid-tier guys are going to go for more than I want to spend on them. And so I'll probably jump in and get more of those high-end guys. opposite applies if all the high-end guys are going for more than I have them marked down for. That means there's not going to be much money for the middle-end guys, and they may all be discounted. But that's really all I use auction values for personally. Ariel, I wanted to ask you, what is the ideal split in terms of paying for pitching versus hitting? Because many people bring up the 70-30 split in favor of hitting.

So spending 70% of your salary cap budget on hitting. But in Roto, you start 14 hitters and you start nine pitchers, which means hitters take up roughly 61% of your starting roster. Yet, there are five pitching categories and there are five hitting categories. So you need all of them. Why are we not going 50-50? What are you specifically doing when it comes to this hitter versus pitcher split? All right.

So this is not a cop-out answer. The real answer is, I do whatever everybody else does. And the right number for what you should split hitter, and pitcher is whatever the league is doing. And I'll give you an exaggerated example. Let's say I thought that cosmically, the real answer is 50-50 because just as many points are hitters, just as many pitcher, so it should be 50-50, and that's the theoretical answer.

But let's say in this league, the league went 80-20 hitting. If I'm playing a roto league, if I'm only spending 50 on hitting and everybody else is spending 80, my hitting is going to be dead last. It's going to be awful. And my pitching is going to be great. So I'm going to end up with a team somewhere in the middle, not competitive in five categories. I don't want that. If I have the opposite, let's say everyone, I say 50, 50, and it goes 2080.

It's vice versa. I'm going to have a great hitting staff and a terrible pitching staff. The real answer is that the auction dollar and the money is not a real number. It's all relative to everybody else. You should always be scaling your numbers towards what the average market price is. You know, I have this term that I call a market premium. You know, closers, if you do your auction values, a lot of people will say, well, closers are really only worth $10, $12 at the most. Yet the market is paying $18, $19, $19 in a salary cap draft.

And why are they doing that? Well, because they think it's a scarce position. They want to get a lockdown closer. Well, if you think about it, there is a market premium of some $6, $7 just to get an elite closer. And if you want to get an elite closer and you need saves, right? you have to pay some of that market premium. The I trick is, though, is not to pay $7 for the top closer. It's to pay $3, $4 over your value.

So when you compute your values, if there's a market premium of seven, as long as you pay four more, you're okay. So again, the whole hitter-pitcher split really doesn't matter. All that matters is you get a better relative bargain to what other people have to pay on top of the average cost. So it sounds like I was completely wrong in my assumption then. I put words in your mouth and then it didn't give you a chance to respond to them. But it sounds like you don't hold to prescribe auction values very much.

Right. So I hold to the relative values. But no, if my values say it's $20 for a player, let's say, how about steals? Steels are a great example, okay? You know, you can compute an auction value, but because steals are scarce and people are paying a premium, I recognize that there is a market premium on stolen base players. So I will add, you know, $4 to all the steel guys with, you know, 25 steals or more and $4 with the, everyone who has 20 steals or more. I don't exactly do that, but you get the idea that you have to pay more because everybody else is paying more, right?

You just don't, I just don't want to pay the full $5. I want to get a guy who I want to pay two extra and have that relative bargain for the stolen base category. No, I thought it was a really good point that you bring up about, you know, adjusting to the relative prices, right? So you'll hear, you know, or you'll see in some, uh, some of these like draft calculators, things that like while you're doing a salary cap draft or a snake draft, there is inflation that is accounted for where, okay, everyone has access to the same thing. So say, you know, everyone thinks Trevor Bauer is a $35 pitcher and he goes for $40 in this salary cap. draft. Same thing with Gerard Coles. Say he's a $45 pitcher, but he goes for 50. That means you can probably account for, yeah, like on the Aces, there's going to be like a $3 to $5 inflation. And if you don't pay that as well, then you're probably going to be left behind. So that's basically what Ariel is getting at there and something that I have noticed in salary cap drafts myself. So you definitely have to be cognizant of that. I did just want to wrap with this.

Scott, have you ever tried Stars and Scrubs in the salary cap drafts? setting. So, you know, taking a bunch of players, 30 plus, and then really just kind of loading up with a bunch of $1 players later on. And if you have tried it, have you had success with it? Because I actually haven't. Oh, yeah. That's usually what I do in our, like our Memorial Magazine League. Now, that's a 12-team Roto League. The shallower, the league, the more you can justify doing that because the cheap players are still going to be pretty good. They're still going to, they're still going to be a lot of high upside types there. So I think it makes all the sense in the world. 12 teams mixed or fewer. I haven't actually done that many 15 team

auctions to really experiment with it there. It is much harder. Yeah, I would imagine so. I mean, we do the 12 team AL only and NL only auction every year, and that's, of course, as deep as it gets and completely the other way. I want my dollars distributed fairly evenly

and something that deep because the one, two dollar guys are going to be close to worthless. So, you know, it really just depends on the league, but for like a 12-teamer, which I imagine is what most people listening play in, yeah, I'm all about going stars and scrubs. I trust myself to find one, $2 upside plays.

And then beyond that, to find very useful players off the waiver wires, the season's playing out. Especially in 12-team points leagues, too. You know, if it's a shallower scoring format, which on CBA, the normal default head-to-head points lineup is a shallower lineup. Definitely something I'd be looking to go, stars and scrubs. But the deeper you go, the more you expand the player pool,

the harder it is to pull off stars and scrubs. So I play in a 15-team Roto every single year. It's called the GDD. I go up against like Nando dafino, Ian Khan, a couple other people in the industry, Jen Pichenti, Adam Rownis, and they're really, really smart players. But I've noticed that spending gets a little bit tighter.

And some of the smarter people in leagues like that, they don't spend much more than $30 on any one player. So they're really kind of living in that mid-tier. So that's what I've noticed with going deeper in those types of formats. I want to add, too, that Stars and Scrubs mean something different for me now than it used to mean. It used to mean the very highest-end players, which are usually hitters, which, you know,

last year we were talking like Yelich and Trout and Acuna. you know, those guys are going to go for upward of, they might go upward of $50 in a 12-team league. I don't consider those so much the stars anymore because usually what I mean, what I'm thinking is what's the most irreplaceable asset. So now I'm thinking more high-end starting pitchers are the stars, the guys I spend for,

as opposed to just first-rounders of any sort, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, every year you kind of have to adjust to what is most scarce. And the way that we've been trending the past couple of years is high-end elite starting pitching. And I assume that will be the case again here in 2021. All righty, fantastic podcast. He is Ariel Cohen, the creator of ATC projections, which you could find over on Sportsline, host of the Beat the Shift podcast.

Of course, 2019, FSWA baseball writer of the year. Ariel, anything else you'd like to promote? Let everyone know where they could find your work. Yeah, you couldn't read my stuff on Fangraphs, on Sportsline, and on Rotoboler. ATC projections are up on all three sites now. You got those new volatility metrics. And yeah, we've now moved the podcast over to Fangraphs, so you can go on FanGraphs and listen to the Beat, the Shift Podcast. We do tons of strategy more so than even players, but just how to win and tidbits like I've given today.

So check it out. For Ariel and Scott, I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. Danny and Will coming up on tomorrow's podcast. We'll be back again on Thursday. Bye-bye.