Hitting for the Cycle #20
A Sunday Review - June 5, 2022
This the BaseballHQ centric Hitting for the Cycle edition. No paid advertisement here. Just sharing the site and tools that got me way more interested in this game of fantasy baseball than I ever thought. For me, BaseballHQ is the foundational knowledge for fantasy baseball. This is where it all starts.
📖 What I’m Reading:
BaseballHQ.com
This is a paid site, but it’s well worth the annual fee. However, at least once week, some articles are free for non-members, and I would strongly encourage you to check it out if not already subscribed. It’s the best all encompassing fantasy baseball site out there. I use it not only for NFBC and Fantrax leagues, but also for my H2H home leagues with trading on Yahoo and CBS. Here are the sections below I “live in” on the site. If you’re a subscriber, what are some of your favorite sections and/or analysts?
News - “PT Today” and “PT Tomorrow”
Skills - The whole section! This is where the majority of my time is spent on the site.
Research - “Speculator” by Ryan Bloomfield who is one of my favorite industry analysts.
Teams - “Today’s SP” and “The Week Ahead”
Scouting - “Call-Ups”
Strategy - Great article here for the off-season and drafting
Stats & Tools - “Stats & Projections” and “Leading Indicators”
🎧 What I’m Hearing:
BaseballHQ Radio - Hosted by Patrick Davitt
For me, this podcast is top 10 in the fantasy baseball intro music category. More importantly, when the week has been super busy with non fantasy baseball related life, this is my go to podcast to catch-up for the week that was as well what to anticipate for the following week. The “Big Friday Full Edition” as Patrick calls it has the following:
Industry expert interviews with their player “Boons & Banes” for the rest of the season
Detailed NL/AL Player News reports discussing injuries, call-ups and in-season performance
Frequent Flyer section that discusses some deep under the radar players to take note
Extra Innings commentary from the host himself
📊 Metric of the Week:
Mayberry Method (“MM”)
As described starting on page 62 in the 2022 Baseball Forecaster below, this is one of key metrics I use in evaluating players:
“MM evaluates skill by embracing the imprecision of the forecasting process and projecting performance in broad strokes rather than with hard statistics. MM reduces every player to a 7-character code. The format of the code is 5555 AAA, where the first four characters describe elements of a player’s skill on a scale of 0 to 5. These skills are indexed to the league average so that players are evaluated within the context of the level of offense or pitching in a given year. The three alpha characters are our reliability grades (Health, Experience and Consistency) on the standard A-to-F scale. The skills numerics are forward-looking; the alpha characters grade reliability based on past history.”
💬 Quote of the Week:
“We’re playing this game, and we have to cling onto anything that gives you some semblance of control, and in tracking players’ skills, that gives us some semblance of control… The best we can do is just grasp on to what we can control, and then just do as much contextual analysis as we can, and hope for the best.”