2020 Asset Group Analysis – (PW,AV)
(Photo by Kyle Emery/Icon Sportswire)
Asset groups are how BABS assembles players with comparable skills and then reviews how the marketplace ranks them. The philosophy is that, if several players are comparable, they should be valued at about the same level. As described in Chapter 2 of The BABS Project 3.0, that’s is not always the case, It is here where we can uncover numerous opportunities to build profit into our rosters.
(PW, AV)
| ADP | R$ | BATTER | Pos | Tm | PT | Pw | Sp | Av | * | Pk | Rg | Sk- | Inj | Ex | Nw | Ag | Pk | Rg | |
| 13 | $32 | Arenado,Nolan | 3 | COL | F | PW | AV | ||||||||||||
| 21 | $28 | Rendon,Anthony | 3 | LAA | F | PW | AV | * | Nw | ||||||||||
| 36 | $22 | Meadows,Austin | OD | TBR | F | PW | AV | inj- | e | ||||||||||
| 96 | $13 | Cruz,Nelson | D | MIN | F | PW | AV | Ag | Rg- | ||||||||||
| 114 | $11 | Castellanos,Nick | O | CIN | F | PW | AV | Pk+ | Nw | ||||||||||
| 147 | $9 | Dahl,David | O | COL | F | PW | AV | inj- | e | Rg- | |||||||||
| 169 | $7 | Turner,Justin | 3 | LAD | F | PW | AV |
Middle of the order run-producing types are coveted commodities. This asset group provides a plethora of opportunities to grab them at various price points.
Nolan Arenado and Anthony Rendon are the premium targets here, and that’s reflected in their sticker prices. Arenado’s Coors tax makes him more expensive. Rendon’s skills intimate that the only difference in their final stat lines could be as little as a couple of wall-scraping home runs or wind-blown doubles.
Austin Meadows offers the upside of a Rendon or Arenado at a slightly discounted price. Perhaps the market has given some consideration to his experience and injury liabilities. Picture that! A young breakout star gets a sober rendering.
What follows is a tale as old as time. It’s a short yarn, and the main character is BABS:
We spend so much time trying to find differences between players in order to rank them that we ignore the fact that most of them actually have very similar skill sets. Yes, the numbers they put up might be all over the board but that’s a “numbers” problem, not a skills problem. Players are more alike than they are different.
BABS addresses this by grouping players with like skills profiles together, in Asset Groups. In this way we can see players who should be valued similarly.
Which brings us to the “criminally underpriced” section of this asset group. Nelson Cruz has his age and positional inflexibility to deal with, but what about Nick Castellanos? If the range of outcomes in the group are such that Castellanos could put up numbers on par with the Arenados and Rendons, why the tepidity? We’d be hard pressed to find a more BABSian player than Castellanos on the entire master spreadsheet.
Lucky for us, BABS delivers two more examples in this same class. Both David Dahl and Justin Turner are projected for full-time plate appearances, though Dahl checks in with multiple liabilities. Tuner is clean and figures to be in the middle of a fantastic Dodgers lineup. At the cost of a 10th rounder or later, the price is right with these two.
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