2018 Fantasy Baseball

Mick Ciallela is back with Part 2 of his Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy series discussing why projections fail to equate to player values.

We have finally passed the quarter-pole mark of the season, and numbers are (mostly) beginning to stabilize. As is the norm in this space, I will list every player who is at least 50 percent owned either overall or among the top 100 teams. I will also highlight several players at each position who may be worthy of a New Player Claim, using a benchmark of at least 3.50 points per game. For this week I will focus on potential targets whose salaries are less than 2000 because these players are obviously easier to introduce into…

Welcome to the Fantrax Bronze Points Salary Cap Challenge Period 8 Ownership and Claims Report. I have tweaked a couple of the parameters from previous installments of this column. First, I have added a PPG (points per game) column to the tables. We are approaching the point of the season at which this metric can become a more reliable tool for measuring fantasy output. As with any data point, it should not be used as the end-all-be-all of evaluating tools. For example, even though Mitch Moreland is averaging 3.67 points per…

The big news from last week was the promotion of star Atlanta Braves prospect Ronald Acuna, and it had quite an impact on the Bronze Points Salary Cap Challenge game. 137 teams claimed Acuna this week, far and away the most we’ve seen in a week to this point in the season. Another 66 claims were used to pick up Mitch Haniger. All told, a whopping 761 New Player Claims were used this week, an average of just over one per team. The players who were claimed and dropped themselves were not surprising, but the volume of roster…

Fire - Mitch HanigerPerhaps no hitter over the first few weeks has flown under the radar as much as Mariners outfielder Mitch Haniger. Through 23 games, the 23-year-old is hitting .305/.372/.659 with 8 home runs and 24 RBI. Haniger was productive in an injury-shortened 2017 season as well, hitting .282 with 16 homers and 5 steals over 96 games. That power was good for a .209 ISO, but this year he's sitting at .354, which is good enough for fifth in MLB at the moment. He's been primarily batting cleanup or sixth, which…