Winners Club: It’s Never Too Early for Fantasy Baseball Prep
Good morning! Ja Morant and the Grizzlies can’t stop winning. We’ll get to that and more in today’s newsletter. But first, may I interest you in some fantasy baseball?
MLB and Fantasy Baseball
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You might know Shawn Childs from his weekly fantasy football player projections. Well, the spreadsheets don’t simply stop when football ends—Childs is letting you in on a method to determine players’ values for each scoring category relevant to their production.
“With these scores, a fantasy owner can quickly look at stats to see which players have the most value either by last year’s stats or this year’s projections from any source.”
Allow Childs to prepare you to nail your draft for whenever the ongoing lockout ends.
2022 Top 400 Projected Hitters: Now that you understand the SIscores method, see it in action. It’s no surprise to see Trea Turner, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at the top of this list.
The Story of a Historic Fantasy Baseball Season: Childs tells the story of Phil Dussault, who won hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2021 National Fantasy Baseball Championship. In a two-part series, Dussault’s conquest is documented week-by-week on his way to a big payday.
SIscores Data and ADP for Hitters: Childs analyzed early average draft position data to cross reference it with SIscores projections to find value at each position.
Fantasy Football Recap and Lookahead
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Surely, nothing will change by the time you draft your fantasy football team this summer, right? Well, not exactly, but Michael Fabiano is still looking ahead to 2022 positional rankings with Week 18 performances still fresh in our minds. Jonathan Taylor is poised to be the 1.01, who else joins him near the top of the draft?
Rating Waiver Wire Recommendations: Jen Piacenti advised managers to add plenty of fantasy stars who were out there on waivers this season, but there were also some misses. She goes over the best and worst of her recommended pickups.
Fantastic Fantasy Football Punishments: Tess DeMeyer spoke to a few unlucky fantasy managers who are paying the price for their teams’ poor performances this season.
IDP Season in Review: Matt De Lima recaps the 2022 season with the overachievers and underachievers in IDP formats and lays out his strategy and takeaways from the year.
NFL Playoffs
Super Bowl Picks
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The field is whittled down to 14 prospective Super Bowl champions. Our writers explained which team they’re betting to win it all come Feb. 13 in Los Angeles.
Wild-Card Weekend Odds: Refresh yourself on the latest odds and spreads for the Wild Card weekend matchups this coming Saturday to Monday, courtesy of SI Sportsbook.
Postseason Power Rankings: The Titans earned the sole bye in the AFC and return workhorse running back Derrick Henry, but they’re not even in the top five heading into the playoffs. See how the top 32 teams shake out.
NBA Action
Memphis Logs 10th Straight Win
Photo credit: Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports
Tuesday was rather dramatic around the league. Brandon Ingram sank a game-winning three-pointer to beat the Timberwolves; the Bulls blew out the Pistons by 46 points; the Clippers came back from 25 down to score a win over the Nuggets; and like I said at the top—the Grizzlies won again.
Morant bested Steph Curry’s Warriors on Tuesday night behind 29 points and eight assists from Memphis’ third-year star. Curry posted a 27-point triple-double, but it wasn’t enough to sink the Grizzlies, whose last loss came Dec. 23 against Golden State.
Power Rankings: Memphis shot up to No. 4 in the latest rankings and that was before taking down the top-ranked Warriors. In the East, the Raptors are rising and the Celtics are falling.
College Hoops
Texas Tech Takes Down Top-Ranked Baylor
Photo credit: Chris Jones/USA TODAY Sports
The No. 19 Red Raiders went into Waco, Texas, Tuesday night and beat the No. 1 Bears, 65-62. It was Baylor’s first loss of the season and ended their 21-game winning streak, which dates back to last season. Texas Tech had four players score in double-figures to notch its second top-10 win in four days.
There are no undefeated teams remaining in college basketball as USC also suffered its first loss at Stanford.
That’s everything for today. I’ll talk to you again Friday.
