Completed my first fantasy baseball auction of the season last night (14 team, standard 5×5 roto scoring)  Here are the results, feel free to provide your thoughts:

If you believe in the new math, Jonathon Niese hasn’t been too lucky during his short MLB career. And with that in mind, Niese looks like a possible 2012 breakthrough candidate.

Let’s go to the ERA tote board, courtesy of Fangraphs.com:

FIP refers to Fielding Independent Pitching, judging what Niese would be expected to do with average luck and defense behind him. The xFIP number adds a normalized HR/FB rate into the mix. Note how his out-the-door ERA is consistently higher than what the component stats suggest.

Niese had a bunch of under-the-hood stats moving in his direction last year. He pushed his strikeout rate up, he trimmed his walk rate significantly, and he raised his ground-ball rate to a sparkling 51.5 percent (ground balls don’t turn into home runs, other than in Little League). Niese was slightly unlucky in three areas: he allowed a .333 average on balls in play, his strand rate was just 67 percent, and his HR/FB rate was 10.4 percent.

Follow the K/BB rate here, friends, and note that Niese is still just 25. He’s a key name to know for the 2012 season. I won’t be the least bit surprised if he steps into the discussion for an All-Star spot.

Mark Teixeira used to be in the elite class for roto first basemen, but he’s no longer priced that way entering 2012. You’ll need a Top 10 pick to land Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, Joey Votto or Adrian Gonzalez, and Prince Fielder is somewhere in the Top 12-16 in most pools. But Teixeira’s current tag is a downright-affordable 27, and that makes him a downright steal.

Teixeira’s durability and run production have been stable since he hit New York. He’s never played less than 156 games since hitting The Bronx three years ago, and he’s posted 306 runs, 111 homers and 341 RBIs. Who wouldn’t want a stake in those numbers?

Batting average is the tricky element to Teixeira’s value these days. After hitting .292 in 2009, he’s fallen to .256 and .248 the last two years. A curious BABIP dip has driven that trend: although his career BABIP is a solid .296 (around the MLB average), he’s been at .268 and .239 the last two years. A slight tweak downward in his ground-ball and line-drive rates will partially explain the batted-ball movement, but no bona-fide hitter clocks in at .239 without a lot of bad luck.

Nows the time to swoop in and make an easy profit. You can land Teixeira in the late second round or sometime in the third round in most mixers, and that sets you up for an easy profit. The New York lineup is still the deepest in the majors (it’s been second, first and first in runs scored the last three years), and Yankee Stadium remains a tailor-made fit for Teixiera. 2012 Projection: .271-103-36-114-3. Highly recommended.

I did a piece yesterday over at Pinstripe Alley called “Prospect Roulette”. Basically, I posted two nameless scouting reports of similar prospects, and had people blindly vote on which player they preferred. The results were quite interesting to say the least, and really got me thinking.

Here are the results of the first poll, which was closed after five hours:

Prospect A: 53% (139 votes)

Prospect B: 47% (123 votes)

Based on 262 votes

I then revealed the names of each prospect, and my sources. The result of the second poll, with the names of each player, has been drastically different to this point:

Manny Banuelos (Prospect A): 91% (247 votes)
Martin Perez (Prospect B): 9% (24 votes)

Based on 271 votes

A commenter made a really good point that sums up the results very nicely:

its a great example of an economic/psychological theory

You value what you have more than you value what you don’t. They did studies with Duke basketball and the students who won tickets to the final four (Duke has a very intense contest to earn tickets for any game) on average valued the tickets at a much higher price than those students who had not won the tickets. Very few Yankee fans will say someone else’s prospect is better because we have valued our own, at such a greater value.

I couldn’t have agreed more, he was dead on. Still, I was a bit surprised the results shifted so drastically. I had a few things working against me, mainly the fact that I didn’t have control over who was voting on each poll. Some who voted earlier may have no been able to vote later on, and vice versa.

I put a lot more stock in the first set of poll results, because it’s a far more accurate reflection of how incredibly close the prospects in question (Perez and Banuelos) actually are in real life. Most industry pundits prefer Banuelos over Perez at this point, although it isn’t by much.

Baseball fans should be passionate, and should want to cheer for the players on their favorite team. It’s what makes being a fan so pure, and something all of us enjoyed so much as kids, and ever more as adults (the addition of alcohol to fandom usually enhances the experience).

Writing about baseball and competing in high-level fantasy competitions changed that for me, though. Probably because my ego is too big, and I always want to be right, or be victorious in every league I compete in. While I enjoy sharing my opinions and interacting with those who take the time to read my writing, covering baseball on a seemingly daily basis, has taken most of the “fan purity” I enjoyed so much out of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining here, I love being so involved in baseball. I just never truly realized how disconnected I was as a fan until actually stepping back and thinking about it.

Now that I’ve reflected, I need to start preparing the afternoon’s nonsensical piece, to get me out of this deep-thinking funk. Good thing people never get tired of reading about how much women lust over “Sexy” Rexy Grossman and his cannon of an arm…

It’s been a magic carpet ride for the Giants, with gigantic wins in the last four weeks. Start with the critical victory against the Jets in Week 16, the Victor Cruz Agent 99 Special. Then invite the Cowboys to town for a beat-down in the de-facto NFC East Championship Game. Swiftly dispatch the Falcons in the Wild Card playoffs, giving them two points almost as a courtesy. And then head to Green Bay and shock the world with a decisive throttling of the 15-1 Packers, the consensus Super Bowl favorite.

The 2007 parallels are everywhere, and why not? That team was a so-so group for most of the regular season before hitting its best stride at the end of the year.

Peaking at the right time is a beautiful thing. But what causes a team to peak in the playoffs? How can you control it, if you can control it at all? If the Giants could get maximum performance anytime they need it, why not do it in November and early December, when critical games demanded it?

Maybe there’s no logical answer to this question. But here are some possible reasons why the Giants are playing their best ball right now.

– Health. Getting the defensive line intact and Hakeem Nicks back in the fold, among other returnees, has been gigantic.

– Cohesion Takes Time. The 2007 team had a new defense installed, and it was a mess early in the year. It was superb in the second season. The underrated part of the current team is the secondary, a unit that’s been playing very well of late after several rocky weeks. Football is the ultimate communication game, and sometimes it takes a unit a while to learn how to best play with one another.

– Leadership. Eli Manning’s cool hand and Tom Coughlin’s big-game experience cannot be understated. Manning is as unflappale as it gets; you could probably rear-end his car on the Long Island Expressway and he’d just shrug his shoulders and calmly inspect the damage. Coughlin’s resume as a big-game coach speaks for itself; he’ll have his guys ready to go.

Some critics might be shouting out “arbitrary endpoints” as they read this piece – after all, the Giants completely laid an egg in Week 15′s home loss to Washington. But others might see that loss as a good thing, a chance to refocus, a chance to circle the wagons and heighten the urgency. There are no definitive answers in this type of exercise.

A lot of peaking is luck, of course. You can’t really control injuries. Green Bay’s layoff may have hurt the Packers on Sunday, along with some other factors that had nothing to do with New York’s fine play.

But the harder you work and the better you prepare, the more lucky you allow yourself to be. I don’t think it’s an accident that this team has figured out a way to come together at the right time.

Following are complete fantasy football rankings based on this week’s matchups for all the major positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, K, team defense). They are based on a combined yardage/scoring system (4 points for a passing touchdown, 6 points for a rushing/receiving touchdown, one point for every 25 passing yards, one point for every 10 rushing/receiving yards).

Last Updated: 11/23/11

* = check status

Quarterback
1. Aaron Rodgers, GB at DET
2. Cam Newton, CAR at IND
NOTE: Mistakes happen but stats are still rich.
3. Drew Brees, NO vs. NYG
4. Matthew Stafford, DET vs. GB
NOTE: Finger didn’t hold him back.
5. Tony Romo, DAL vs. MIA
NOTE: Healthy again, playing at high level.
6. Tom Brady, NE at PHI
7. Matt Ryan, ATL vs. MIN
8. Eli Manning, NYG at NO
NOTE: Love the Giants when pushed against a wall.
9. Philip Rivers, SD vs. DEN
10. *Ben Roethlisberger, PIT at KC
11. Tim Tebow, DEN at SD
NOTE: It’s ugly, but fantasy points are consistent.
12. Josh Freeman, TB at TEN
13. Carson Palmer, OAK vs. CHI
14. *Vince Young, PHI vs. NE
15. Andy Dalton, CIN vs. CLE
NOTE: Showed a lot with Green out.
16. Matt Moore, MIA at DAL
NOTE: He’s been solid of late.
17. *Jake Locker, TEN vs. TB
NOTE: Pushed ball downfield more than Hasselbeck did.
18. Joe Flacco, BAL vs. SF
19. *John Skelton, ARI at STL
20. Mark Sanchez, NYJ vs. BUF
21. Curtis Painter, IND vs. CAR
22. Alex Smith, SF at BAL
23. Christian Ponder, MIN at ATL
NOTE: Rushing yards are a bonus.
24. Caleb Hanie, CHI at OAK
25. Tarvaris Jackson, SEA vs. WAS
26. Rex Grossman, WAS at SEA
27. Matt Leinart, HOU at JAC
28. Colt McCoy, CLE at CIN
29. Tyler Palko, KC vs. PIT
30. Sam Bradford, STL vs. ARI
31. Blaine Gabbert, JAC vs. HOU
32. Ryan Fitzpatrick, BUF at NYJ
(more…)

Otherwise, why would the Giants play afraid against the Patriots on Sunday as they seem set to according to the Wall Street Journal’s Aditi Kinkhabwala, who provide the money quote herself:

That’s right, the fourth-ranked passing offense (the Giants) is playing the NFL’s worst-ranked passing defense (the Patriots), and the plan is to run the ball. So how about waiting until next week?

We harken back to the summer when Eli Manning said this on the Michael Kay Show:

“I consider myself in that class and Tom Brady(notes) is a great quarterback, he’s a great player and what you’ve seen with him is he’s gotten better every year and he started off winning championships and I think he’s a better quarterback now than what he was, in all honesty, when he was winning those championships.”

Snickering followed.

But here are the facts this year with Manning: 5th in completion %, 2nd in average gain, 6th in TD%, 8th in lowest INT%, third in QB rating, so….

You want Brady in those same categories? 4th in completion %, 3rd in average gain, 2nd in TD% and 19th in INT%. Who’s better? I’d say Eli is having the better year, though it’s close and maybe you discount the INT% and give it to Brady. But if you do you are splitting hairs.

Yet here is a summary of the Giants’ plan:

“The more you run the ball, the longer you keep the ball, the better chance you have to win,” left tackle Will Beatty said. “You want to keep the ball out of their hands. You do that by running the ball.”

The Patriots should be just as worried about keeping the ball out of Eli’s hands. But they don’t need to worry because the Giants, apparently, are going to do that for them.

From today’s Journal.

After a shaky rookie season, Wilson traveled to Arizona this to see first-hand how Revis trains physically and mentally. Wilson seems to have regained his confidence this season as he is finally playing up to the potential the Jets saw when they make him a first-round pick in 2010. Quarterbacks have thrown passes to the receiver defended by Wilson 21 times this year for a passer rating of just 41.5, fourth best among the 83 cornerbacks targeted at least 20 times in 2011. As a rookie, he allowed a 91.1 rating on the 41 passes—71st among the 92 qualifying cornerbacks.

Makes you wonder, “Who the hell is Brice McCain?” Here’s some background.

Tony Gonzalez, forward turned 2nd all-time receiver

Forgot about this piece I wrote earlier this week for the Journal:

But it’s not just Gonzalez and fellow star veteran Antonio Gates. League-wide, tight ends have been getting 21.6% of all attempted passes so far this season, up from 15.6% 10 years ago. Wide receivers (58.4%) will surely always get the majority of the targets, because of their big-play potential and since there are more of them on the field at once. But tight ends have quietly passed running backs (19.9%) over the past couple of years as the quarterback’s second-favorite option.

Just a decade ago, tight ends like Tony Gonzalez — so athletic that they could have been classified as super-sized wide receivers — were the exception. Today, they are the NFL rule.

In 2001, Gonzalez sent scouts searching for players with comparable size (6-foot-5, 247 pounds) and speed when he accounted for nearly a quarter (24.3%) of his team’s receptions versus the league average of 14.4%. So despite ascending last week to second in all-time receptions (behind Jerry Rice), Gonzalez ultimately may be remembered more for changing the modern passing game. Heck, it’s no longer even enough to have just one tight end too athletic for linebackers too cover and too big for defensive backs. The Patriots have two, Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, second and third on the team in catches despite Hernandez missing two games.

A decade ago, teams threw 2,471 passes to tight ends. This year, they are on pace to be targeted 3,773 times — a 53% increase. Receptions on these attempts are set to rise by 52%. Yardage is on pace to increase most of all — 71% compared to 2001. And the pace for tight end touchdowns is up 43%.

While passing totals this year are on a record pace, the increased production from tight ends is more of a cause than a symptom. The percentage of the catches and yards allocated to them has grown dramatically over the last 10 years, too. So it’s no surprise that the people already engraving Gonzalez’s bust at Canton may soon need to make a deletion. New Orleans’s Jimmy Graham (6-foot-6, 260) is on pace for 103 receptions, one more than Gonzalez’s 2004 record for the position.

Time for the weekly look around the spreadsheets, trying to learn something about our local football teams.

– Tom Coughlin is 9-6 after his bye week as a pro head coach, 4-3 with the Giants and 5-3 with the Jaguars. Maybe it means something, maybe not (he is a .557 coach for his career, after all). Andy Reid, for what it’s worth, is 12-0 after the bye. Rex Ryan is 0-2.

– Shonn Greene was on the field for 29 snaps Monday against the Dolphins. He ran the ball on 21 of those snaps.

– Can Eli Manning keep playing sharply through the second half of the year? He’ll have to beat his career trend to do so. His cumulative QB rating by month: 91.3, 85.5, 76.3, 74.3. His YPA has a similar trend: 7.7, 7.1, 6.6, 6.4.

– In terms of production, Jake Ballard has been a Top 5 tight end over the last three weeks. He’s caught 11 passes for 186 yards and two scores over that span.

– When it comes to winning third down, the Jets defense is the best in the league: it’s allowing a conversion just 28.6 percent of the time, best in the NFL. The Giants rank eighth at 34.1. Things aren’t as rosy with the offenses: the Giants are 27th (31.5 percent) and the Jets are 20th (34.6 percent).

– Victor Cruz played just 24 snaps for the Giants in the victory over Buffalo. Mario Manningham saw 53 snaps.

– Hakeem Nicks has been targeted 50 times in 2011. He’s yet to drop a pass.

– Mark Sanchez’s 2011 QB rating jumps to 93.5 when he’s out of the shotgun.

– Only the Titans are running the ball less effectively than the Jets and Giants these days. Tennessee is at 3.0 yards per carry, while the New York teams are at 3.3, along with Cleveland. Dallas comes next at 3.4 YPC. Then again, the ground game isn’t a cure-all: the Eagles lead the NFL at 5.7 yards per tote, and Minnesota is fourth at 5.1.

– Eli Manning has a 126.5 QB rating this year when playing with three wide receivers. Get Cruz on the field, men.