2011 Undervalued Players | According to Marcels Projections

There are a number of viable baseball projection systems in existence these days which are great tools for fantasy baseball draft planning.  Finding accurate projections can be an essential part of winning your next title as it basically gives you a peek into the likely future.  One of the more successful systems out there is a rather simplistic one called Marcels that was created by Tom Tango.  The system takes the last three year's worth of player data, with the most recent year weighted heaviest, and regresses data to the mean based on player's age.

Using our WERTH roto valuing system here, we can assign point values to a player's projected performance that will let you know how many roto points that player will add to your team above average.  Taking those values and the currently reported average draft position for players, we can then create a trendline from the beginning to the end of the draft based on expected roto point values for each slot in the draft.  By comparing projected point values to values expected at that draft spot, we start to see outliers that indicate who might be expected to be a hidden gem or a major dud in 2011.  Listed below is a list of players that the Marcels system has projected to perform well above their current draft spot's value:

Player	Pos	Tm	ADP Rd	Value	xValue	Diff
Hunter Pence	OF	HOU	7	2.09	1.04	1.05
Vladimir Guerrero	DH	BAL	8	2.25	0.99	1.25
Torii Hunter	OF	ANA	9	1.82	0.85	0.98
Roy Oswalt	SP	PHI	9	2.71	0.79	1.93
John Danks	SP	CHW	9	1.67	0.73	0.94
Delmon Young	OF	MIN	10	1.42	0.68	0.74
Nick Markakis	OF	BAL	10	1.67	0.65	1.03
Bobby Abreu	OF	ANA	11	1.99	0.44	1.55
Mark Reynolds	3B	BAL	11	1.12	0.41	0.71
Juan Pierre	OF	CHW	12	1.04	0.29	0.75
Pablo Sandoval	3B	SF	13	1.08	0.14	0.94
Drew Stubbs	OF	CIN	14	1.17	-0.02	1.18
Denard Span	OF	MIN	16	1.23	-0.39	1.62
Brett Gardner	OF	NYY	17	0.73	-0.58	1.30
Ted Lilly	SP	LA	23	2.17	-1.60	3.77
Rajai Davis	OF	TOR	26	1.09	-2.03	3.12
Angel Pagan	OF	NYM	27	0.92	-2.20	3.12

We see 6 players on this list that are at least 33 years old.  The general fantasy baseball public expects less of a player as they get up there in years but these are players that Marcels thinks may have another good run or two left in them, based on their aging regression model.  So, while the public has built a coffin for Vladimir Guerrero and Bobby Abreu, Marcels encourages you to cash in on another year of cheap production out of them.

Marcels points out that a lot of speedsters can provide nice value later on as well.  While steals can certainly be located early in drafts, you can grab guys such as Juan Pierre, Drew Stubbs, Brett Gardner, Rajai Davis and Angel Pagan much later on and build a team of guys who can singlehandedly win the SB category for you.

It's interesting to note that 11 out of the 17 names on this list of undervalued players are outfielders.  If you theoretically avoided outfielders until the seventh round then picked Hunter Pence, Torii Hunter, Bobby Abreu, Nick Markakis and Juan Pierre as your starting outfielders, you would have an outfield that is projected to produce over 8.5 roto points above average and you could still stock your bench with talent such as Drew Stubbs, Denard Span and some of the speedsters mentioned earlier.  That's a sneakily formidable outfield without using any early picks on the position.

So, one lesson that Marcels reminds us of here is that there is a deep talent pool at outfield and we don't need to land stud outfielders in the first few rounds. In addition to that, while trying to land the next big thing is tempting, don't forget about older players who still have another year or two left in the tank.  And, the final lesson is to remember that stolen bases can be had very late in drafts so don't fret about trying to get them early.  There's a number of ways to get value in your drafts and the players above represent a list that Marcels thinks will have good value according to their current draft spot so be sure to keep them in mind on your draft day.

Posted in: 2011