Hello everyone. It brings me great pleasure (and relief) that the 2014 fantasy guide is available for public consumption. What you will find is more than 440 player profiles totaling more than 150,000 words.

The goal is to help owners who want to think for themselves and who are looking for new ideas on player evaluation. For example, some fantasy writers write analysis that reads something like, “Player X struggled at the plate because he had the burden of carrying the offense, which caused him to press. However, now that the team has improved he will not press as much and he’ll become the player he once was.” As a reader what am I supposed to do that? Is the writer his psychiatrist? If so, then that statement has a lot of weight. If not, it’s pure speculation, means nothing and does not help with the evaluation of the player.

My approach to player evaluation is based on several pieces of information. I look at the data, scouting reports and other credible authors who have provided analysis or further information about the player. For example, Yoensis Cespedes had a down year in 2013. According to the scouting report from Jason Parks at Baseball Prospectus a reason why he struggled was due a poor approach at the plate. Specifically, he gears up for the fastball at all times, regardless of the count, which makes him susceptible to off-speed and breaking pitches. The table below shows his performance against off-speed and breaking pitches the past two seasons. The data in table coincides with the scouting report. Therefore, I don’t see a big improvement in batting average coming for Cespedes in 2014.  Maybe Cespedes will have a great year and I’ll be incorrect. That’s okay with me. I believe in process over performance because good process will normally win out in the end. With any game there is going to be variance that is out of your control. However, if you have a good process you’re odds of performing well increase exponentially.

This is the approach I took when writing the fantasy guide and I believe this provides more useful information and empowers the reader to make more accurate opinions on players. When someone reads my projections on a player it is my hope the reader will know why I’m down or high on a player.

I wrote the guide out of a labor of love so any feedback, even if its criticism would mean the world to me. Seriously, if you think my evaluations are no good or my methodology should be changed then please tell me. I want to be a better evaluator and the more information and ideas people tell me the better. Since I wrote this myself I’m very certain you will find typos and grammatical errors. I tried my best to catch all of them, but if you find some I apologize ahead of time.

2014 Fantasy Baseball Guide

Hitter and Pitcher Rankings with Projections & Dollar Values

The dollar values use the “standard” $260, 23 player roster (14 hitters including two catchers and nine pitchers) and the traditional 5×5 format. The budget split is 68/32 for hitting and pitching.