The first 5 weeks of the 2011 Baseball Season are history and as typical there are quite a few players who are struggling and a quite a few who are posting MVP type numbers...but who deserves to be where? Welcome to the 1st edition of the 2011 Over/Under achieving rankings report.
For those who are new to Fantistics, here it is: "All Major league Players streak!": The "confusion" comes when these "good or bad" streaks occur during the early portion of the season. "Are they just an aberration or are they a long term trend that will carry through to seasons end?"...luckily, based on our research, we have an answer...in over 80% of the cases among veteran position players, they are a statistical anomaly that will inevitably get "swallowed" and disappear after a full season of games. The formal statistical term is "reversion or regression to the mean", over a full term season (550'ish plate appearance) experienced major league players tend to revert back to their typical category statistics, of course some will exceed and some will decline which is already assumed in our projections.
For the veteran fantasy player, the quandary we often face is trying to figure out which of the first and sometimes second year players are going to maintain their current production. History tells us that over 1/2 of the current "up trending" (over performers) first year players are going to fall into serious slumps after June. As the pros say: "their book is out" (where pitchers from around the league figure out how to get these guys out). Brett Wallace is a rising young star, however his current pace is unsustainable over a full season (.382 BA), please realize that I'm not advocating to sell Wallace cheaply, as we expected Wallace to be successful this season. However we all know that he's not going to maintain a .961 OPS through the remainder of the season (last season only Josh Hamilton had a higher OPS). If you could get his current Roto Value in a trade (Wallace for an underperforming player like Adam Dunn), then it might be foolish not to...if not, he is certainly worth holding on to.
<see the Recommendations, click here>
