Mailbag Friday, February 6th
I answer your mailbag questions
There were only three questions this week, and I’m sick, so I’m doing this in written format.
I love the NFBC ADP over the last x amount of days that you provide because it's the best drafters and the best overall view of where players go. I am in a Yahoo H2H cats league and wanted to know if there is a way to see that ADP data. How would you recomend finding it? Thanks, and looking forward to my second year as a MLBDW sub!!
~ Brandon
FantasyPros has a good tool for this.
You have to have a free account, though. Or just click here cause I put it in a Google Sheet.
If you’re drafting online in a league where people use the pre-ranks, there are massive edges to be had. You can simply use the NFBC ADP and compare with the site you’re on’s default rankings, and find some killer values. If you’re the only person in your league doing this, you’ll get some massive steals. Here are some guys going 100 picks later on Yahoo compared to NFBC:
Even if you don’t love those guys, if NFBC dudes are picking them 100 picks earlier than Yahoo bros, you know you have something there. And you can absolutely exploit that, although obviously you need to take into account league settings - because NFBC does operate a lot differently than your standard sort of home league setup.
Flipping it around the other way:
That gives you a pretty good idea that Yahoo is way more casual on average. People are still chasing Javier Baez, and they’re drafting Ryan McMahon in the top 200. Those are pretty familiar names, but they’re both garbage for fantasy. So the fact that they’re so mispriced on Yahoo tells you something about the people drafting to make that ADP.
You also clearly see ignorance of injuries. Corbin Burnes and Jared Jones are going earlier than they should. BUT AGAIN, this could very well be because Yahoo leagues often have a bunch of IL slots, and you don’t have that on NFBC, which makes a big difference.
Take the data and be smart with it.
Please break down the top 3 fast food burgers
~ Wendy
I like these questions a lot more than most of you do, I’m guessing. If anybody cares about my fast food burger takes, you shouldn’t. There should be other things filling your brain. But we live in this world.
And it is an interesting question, and it’s made me think a lot in the past. I loved Wendy’s growing up. That was the spot my high school friends and I would hang out, and I thought their burgers were really good. But now I realize that they suck.
That begs the question. Was I wrong back then? Am I wrong now? Or was I right in both occasions, and things just changed?
This is true across the board with fast food, I think. I hate all of it now. So did the quality change? Or did my taste? It’s probably both.
I’ve recently decided that if we’re going to eat out, it’s a total waste to get fast food. The things fast food, in principle, has going for it:
It’s cheap
It’s tasty
It’s convenient
I suppose number one is still true relative to better restaurants, but with three kids, I’m spending $30+ no matter where we end up. And since I’m financially pretty comfortable (shout out to Indiana prices, my real job, and this Substack), it’s a no-brainer to just spend $40 for decent food than $30 for crap. There’s a Mexican restaurant near my house, and it’s elite. I’m sure it’s the same as every other Mexican place, but I just love that food. And it’s seriously within $10 of the cost of any fast food place. Total slam sunk.
To answer your question, though.
Five Guys
Burger King
Culver’s
I don’t have In N Out or Hardees or the other ones I see people talking about a lot. And you probably don’t have Culver’s. But I think we can all agree that Five Guys is the best.
If you had to put all your chips on one players to take a substantial step forward, who would it be? Use advanced analytics to support your decision.
~ Vernon Wells
This is obviously the real Vernon Wells. So I’ll tell you, bro, I’m formerly a fan of yours. I remember having you on a fantasy team or two of mine in the early days around 2008 when I was first getting into it. Thanks, man.
But you asked the question like you’re giving me a standardized test or something. I’ll do what I want, man!
To answers come to my head, and I looked at a lot of players during the team previews series.
The first one is Jac Caglianone. I kinda don’t like that so many other people are on it, and I have heard some high stakes serious players not really liking him. But I’m on the buy side. He seems to have a rare combination of exit velo and contact rates that you just don’t see too often. Here’s everybody from 2024-2025 with a fly ball EV90 above 106 and a zone contact rate above 84%:
You have some losers in there like CES, Avisail Garcia, Bart, and Rowdy Tellez. So it’s not foolproof, it’s mostly a very impressive list of hitters. And Jac is still just 22 years old, and he got that super valuable experience last year. And hey, they’re moving the fences in to help him out.
The second option is Dylan Crews. I’m not sure he’ll ever be a 30-homer guy or a .290 hitter, but I do think he’s an easy 20-20 guy if he stays healthy. And he’s very cheap.
So it’s another skills, age, and price-based breakout pick. Here’s a bunch of data on fly ball EV90 and stolen base attempt rates. You’ll see much Crews sticks out in this regard.
It’s not the end-all, be-all, and both of these guys might suck. Maybe neither of them can actually hack it, and these skills won’t play out. It wouldn’t be the first time by any means. But they’re both super high-ceiling player,s and it’s way, way too early to dismiss them as busts.
One pitcher on this front, and this is no sneaky pick, would be Eury Perez. He seems to have all the makings of a top-five SP pick next year, and you can grab him pretty cheap this year.