A savvy fantasy baseball player knows to look at splits in the major league season to see underlying trends that could indicate either a breakout or step back in the next season.
As fantasy baseball draft season kicks into gear in February, smart fantasy players are studying now for their drafts, looking at trends from the previous season to find possible undervalued or overvalued players in drafts to help guide draft strategy. Let’s look at some of the trends in 2018, and which ones you can buy into and which ones you should not.
Postseason
The first thing we’ll look at isn’t part of the 5 to believe or not to believe. It’s the ultimate in highly-visible small sample size that can drastically sway a view on a player for his next season’s fantasy baseball value.
A great example last season was David Price. Coming into the ALCS, Price had never won a game as a starter in the postseason in 10 starts. When he allowed 3 runs over 1 2/3 innings against the Yankees, many ranted about him, stating he was nowhere near the pitcher he was being paid to be.
Price then went on to make 5 appearances (4 starts) in the ALCS and World Series for Boston, going 3-0, tossing 24 1/3 innings with a 2.59 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, and a 10/23 BB/K ratio, quite arguably earning the World Series MVP, though the award went to teammate Steve Pearce.
Is Price the pitcher who couldn’t win a playoff start before that Houston series? Is he the guy who dominated the World Series? Perhaps better to view instead is his second half of 2018, when Price went 6-1 over 11 starts, posting a 2.25 ERA, 0.7 WHIP and struck out 68 in 68 innings. Finally healthy, he showed production akin to his early career, and that should be what you track for fantasy baseball, not a two-week October sample.
The guys to watch for inflated value in fantasy baseball drafts this season due to their postseason performance would be Nathan Eovaldi, Joe Kelly, Walker Buehler, and Josh Hader. Those who could see their value dip due to the postseason could include Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, Clayton Kershaw, Xander Bogaerts, Joakim Soria, Jeremy Jeffress, Luis Severino, and Cody Bellinger.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at the second half trends to believe and to doubt, and we’ll alternate, starting first with one to doubt…