In our tabloid-style format, we have compiled our Dynasty 700 and subsequent Top 100 Fantasy Prospects using a combination of our scouting reports and fantasy expertise. We must also acknowledge the unsung contribution of RoboScout.
Projections play a significant role in fantasy baseball. It is essential to estimate a player’s potential contribution to your fantasy roster accurately. This allows you to make informed decisions when drafting your team, building your roster, and making trades. Projections are crucial for success in redraft leagues.
The accuracy of projections diminishes as we look further into the future. However, the same principles apply in dynasty leagues. By estimating a player’s future yearly contributions to your dynasty fantasy roster, you gain an advantage over less rigorous leaguemates.
The creation of projections relies on a simple truth: past performance is related to future returns. By analyzing historical data and adjusting for various factors, such as sample size and survivor bias, we can generate expected age curves for statistics like walk rate, strikeout rate, ground ball rate, home runs per plate appearance, and OPS.
We can also apply this approach to the minor leagues. By examining historical performances at different levels, we can estimate a pitcher’s strikeout rate in Double-A based on their performance in High-A. By factoring in the expected performance at higher levels, including MLB, we can generate an “expected” major league projection for minor league players.
To refine our projections, we can incorporate additional adjustments, such as platoon splits, quality-of-competition, and independent age curves for different hitter archetypes.
It’s important to note that hitting a home run on opening day does not guarantee a player will finish the season with 162 home runs. We apply regression to small sample sizes to provide a more accurate reflection of expected season-long performance.
Minor league Statcast data also contributes to our projections. Metrics like barrel rate, exit velocity, and contact percentage are shown to correlate with future wRC+ for hitters. For pitchers, RoboScout considers pitch-level metrics like movement and velocity.
While using multiple years of performance yields more accurate projections, RoboScout focuses on quickly estimating future performance using only current season data. This allows us to identify prospects in dynasty leagues before industry outlets publish their updated lists.
Making decisions with imperfect information is necessary to take advantage of RoboScout’s capabilities. Waiting until a player is called up to the major leagues and performs well may result in missing out on valuable prospects who have already been rostered for weeks. RoboScout aims to positively influence decision-making despite imperfect information.
RoboScout is designed to be simple and easy to maintain. It solely relies on results-based analysis and does not consider factors like a player’s position or defensive abilities. It ranks players at each minor league level based on their projected major league performance, projected peak performance, and expected long-term fantasy value.
From all the above considerations, we present the RoboScout 100 list.
According to the Source baseballamerica.com