MLB Daily Notes - September 29
the end of another season!
Well, it’s over! We now get one day off, and then we start the playoffs. But the fantasy baseball season is over. And I’ll say once again that I had a great time and this Substack and everything that comes with it is fantastic and has been a huge blessing for me. So, thank you for everybody for following along and supporting.
I hope I helped a good number of you have a successful season. But I do think this season was my worst work in the three years doing this. My draft recommendations pretty much sucked, and I don’t think we find mound in-season gems along the way like we usually do.
That will happen, I guess. There’s variance and randomness to it all, but I do think I was also a bit distracted with other things to really focus on the season-long fantasy game in the way I should. I’m re-prioritizing things ahead of next year, and I promise to do better! And man, I’m excited to get started on it already.
Hopefully, you took my advice on the Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s and Joe Ryan’s of the world rather than jumping on the grenade with me over my love for Shane McClanahan, Oneil Cruz, and Masyn Winn.
Fantasy MVPs
Looking at some of the standout fantasy hitters in point-scoring.
Juan Soto: The guy led the National League in steals. That must have been like a 5000:1 outcome. Insane stuff. He scored 1,697 fantasy points, third to Ohtani and Judge.
Cal Raleigh: Runaway production at the position like we’ve rarely seen before. 60 bombs, 124 RBI, 110 runs from a catcher.
George Springer: Dude was a top-five bat in the league by a lot of metrics. He hit .307/.397/556 with 32 homers and 18 steals. Insane stuff from the 36-year-old!
Junior Caminero: The lesson learned of just paying the price for young elite talent. It was pretty clear to me that Caminero was going to have a nice season in the power department. I didn’t see 45 bombs coming with a .264 batting average, but that’s what he did. He’ll be a top 25 pick next year.
Geraldo Perdomo: 1,489 fantasy points scored. 20 homers, 27 steals, and a .290 batting average. Elite production from a guy that wasn’t drafted in most leagues.
Pete Crow-Armstrong: He more or less sucked after July ended, but at the end of the year it was elite roto production with a 31-35 season.
Eugenio Suarez: He was pretty cheap at the 3B position. And that was a position that didn’t have a ton going for it this year. Suarez ripped off 49 homers and 118 RBI.
Nick Kurtz: When you consider that you were able to accure stats in your lineup before plugging Kurtz in there in May, you could make the case that he was a top-five value this year. He hit 36 homers in 488 PAs. It was 2.4 fantasy points per PA, the third-best in the league (Ohtani and Judge). He’s the #1 first baseman next year and will be a second round pick, I think.
Jose Ramirez: Just another 30-40 season for J-Ram who continues to do it quietly. We take him for granted.
Jose Caballero: This is a stretch, but he stole a league-leading 49 bases. Nobody went over 50 this year. If you just kept Caballero in your roto lineup all year, he paid off nicely.
On the pitching side:
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: He was one of the clear SP1s in the game that you didn’t have to pay a ton for. A 4th-5th round pick this year who pitched like a first rounder. 2.38 ERA, 0.98 WHIP in 174 innings while crossing 200 strikeouts.
Bryan Woo: A 2.84 ERA with a 0.92 WHIP and he piled up the strikeouts late to flirt with a 200 K season of his own. And he put up 187 innings, among the leagues’ best.
Cristopher Sanchez: A lot of people saw this breakout coming, but it came forcefully. A 2.41 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP. The season he had would win the Cy Young a large portion of the time. Unfortunately for him, he had Skenes in the league with him.
Logan Webb: It was the best season of his career, and he was affordable in drafts. Another 200+ innings (207) from him with a strong 3.22 ERA. It was a middling WHIP (1.24), but the 224 strikeouts and all those wins and quality starts were super valuable.
Jesus Luzardo: It was a bumpy road early on, but Luzardo finishes with a 3.92 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP with 216 strikeouts.
Jacob deGrom: You got a decent discount on deGrom, and he ripped off 173 innings.
Nick Pivetta: So solid. 2.92 ERA, 0.99 WHIP in 182 innings. We’ll see him pitching against the Cubs tomorrow.
I’m sure there are more, but that’s what I’ve got.
Baseball is great. It’s a lot of fun, and honestly, a pretty great thing to add to your family life. There’s a lot a kid can learn when baseball is a big hobby of theirs. So we’re doing more than just entertaining ourselves here. I hope I was able to add a little bit more to your lives this year, rather than just spitting out numbers and picking players for you.
I’m learning a lot as I get older. I know I can be pushy with my views and give unsolicited religious and political takes sometimes, but I try to do it with grace, humility, and humor along the way. So thanks for humoring me on that front, and another thanks to everybody who encouraged me on that front as well. I get feedback when I go off the reservation, and it’s mostly good, and that really does encourage me in a lot of different ways. So once again I say thanks for being here and thanks for your support.
Looking Ahead to Next Year
As mentioned before, Tim Kanak is going to be a big part of things moving forward. His focus will be on prospects and dynasty leagues. Podcasts begin this week! They’ll be on YouTube, as well as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
So there’s no time off here. I am going to focus closely on the MLB postseason and I will be writing daily slate previews at least through the first couple of rounds when we have multiple games on the slate. The projections will keep rolling the whole way through.
We’re also going to launch a big dynasty league. It will be at least a 20-teamer, I think. Settings to be determined. I’ll put out a full post on that in October or November. I want to be pretty selective with who I let in because I want to minimize turnover as much as possible. There will be some form of an application process.
I’ll also be looking to have somebody else run the league. I’m thinking about just paying that person’s yearly entry fee myself as payment for running the league. I think it will be way better for the league if I’m not the one running it.
DAILY NOTES UPGRADE
I think this will be the last officially branded “Daily Notes”. I’m going to change the name next year. The automated reports will keep on coming, but the structure will get an upgrade.
The key for me next year will be to develop a content schedule and stick to it. I will come up with some new name and branding for these posts with the goal of having some routine for what I put in them every day.
Something like:
Mondays: Weekend review, pitchers to stream this week
Tuesdays: Breakout hitters, specific advanced stat analysis
Wednesdays: Breakout pitchers, long-term pitching adds
Thursdays: Specific category breakouts
Fridays: Weekend preview & streamers
And I won’t withhold my personal rantings and ravings whenever they come to me. I don’t want to get so structured that it loses all of the personality, but I think if I have a set topic every day I’ll be better at actually providing useful content for fantasy baseball leagues.
And I’d like to do a way better job with DFS content next year. That’s my favorite thing in all of this. I didn’t think it was super popular by the middle of the year, it seemed like nobody was caring about DFS. But I might have been wrong about that because I got some feedback on it. DFS is great, and playing that during the week keeps you on top of all of the stuff that is changing during the year. Call-ups, trends, etc.
PROSPECT CONTENT
As I’ve already said, the plan is to have upgraded prospect tools with grades and ranks. Tim will handle most of that, and he’ll be doing weekly podcasts with myself and Doc. I’m also hoping to get those two writing at least one weekly piece about the prospects they’re most enthralled with. And since I’ll be playing in the dynasty league and managing these new tools and stuff, I’m guessing I’ll be contributing to that as well since I’ll have some real skin in the game.
WEB APP & MOBILE APP
The one thing I learned this summer was Streamlit. And a lot of you saw the fruits of that in the SLATE ANALYSIS TOOL. You can check that out now, just put a “1” in for the password and it will let you in.
It started as mostly a DFS tool, but it turned into a ton more throughout the year. So I will be renaming that to just be the MLB DATA WAREHOUSE APP, and I will be coding it so it looks and feels as good as possible on mobile devices. There’s a ton of stuff there now, but I’ll add more and more. And a ton of the draft prep tools and projections and business will be hosted there as well.
HIRING WRITERS
There is only so much I can do on my own. And while I still have this other full time job, I get into some weeks where I just don’t have much free time. So I will be looking to hire some writers to do regular posts. Mostly weekly waiver wire and FAAB articles. There will be some weekly payment, but you’ll also get your subscription to everything totally comp’d for as long as you’re writing.
NEW PAYMENT STRUCTURE
And now the bad news! Right now, $12 a month gets you everything I do. The daily projection model and Tableau dashboards alone are probably worth something like $75/month. And my ultimate goal now is to be able to quit my full time job so I can do everything I’m so passionate about doing here, and do it well. With three kids, I’m not close to being able to pull that off now. But in a couple of years I could see it happening.
With the added prospect content and upgraded tools and apps, I’ve decided that it’s time to add a new payment tier and raise prices. Here’s how it will look:
Basic Subcription ($12/month, $85/year)
Daily notes (or whatever that gets called next year)
All written content
Season long projections
Draft tools and guides
Google sheet reports
MLB DW Pro Subscription ($225/year)
Access to everything
So I’m pulling out the daily projections and the Tableau dashboards and putting them underneath the PRO SUBSCRIPTION, which will only be able to be purchased yearly for that $225. So that’s a price hike on a ton of you, but you’ll get more stuff for your money next year than you did this year. Some of you are paying me like $5/month right now because you jumped on right at the beginning. You’ll get to keep that price for as long as you have your subscription, but it will just be a basic subscription. To get everything you’re used to now for next year, you’ll have to upgrade. You can do that now, but I’m guessing most people will wait until next year to do that. I’ll be happy to help with questions and issues with upgrading.
So that’s it! We move on to the playoffs, I will talk to you tomorrow for an extensive look at the absolutely beautiful four-game Wild Card slate we have. And we’ll get cooking on 2026 prep very soon as well! God Bless!
I won my league. See you next year