This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
If you are anything like me, you are enjoying a daily battle with the Immaculate Grid game now hosted by Baseball-Reference. The game is simple; use nine guesses to fill the coordinates on a 3x3 grid. Most of the challenges are players who played for certain teams, but the game will throw curveballs such with awards or certain statistical benchmarks. For example, the grid for September 3rd looked as such and I was able to successfully fill it and earn a rarity score of 28 (the lower, the better) using some baseball knowledge from my youth:
I kicked off Labor Day weekend watching some baseball with my mom and stepfather, who happened to live just down the street from the oft-mentioned friend Rob McCabe. He walked down to join us watching the Rays and Guardians matchup while I waited for my son to get out of work. In our discussion, he mentioned what I thought was a brilliant idea and the driver behind this week's column installment: what if we had a Roto version of Immaculate Grid?
Thanks to the Rotowire stat engine, the NFBC ADP reports, two Excel exports and some XLOOKUP magic, this is possible although not as automatically refreshed and available as Immaculate Grid is each day at 9am Eastern Time. I went home and played with the concept and came up with the first iteration of a Roto Immaculate Grid challenge to help frame out where we have been able to find late power, steals, and
If you are anything like me, you are enjoying a daily battle with the Immaculate Grid game now hosted by Baseball-Reference. The game is simple; use nine guesses to fill the coordinates on a 3x3 grid. Most of the challenges are players who played for certain teams, but the game will throw curveballs such with awards or certain statistical benchmarks. For example, the grid for September 3rd looked as such and I was able to successfully fill it and earn a rarity score of 28 (the lower, the better) using some baseball knowledge from my youth:
I kicked off Labor Day weekend watching some baseball with my mom and stepfather, who happened to live just down the street from the oft-mentioned friend Rob McCabe. He walked down to join us watching the Rays and Guardians matchup while I waited for my son to get out of work. In our discussion, he mentioned what I thought was a brilliant idea and the driver behind this week's column installment: what if we had a Roto version of Immaculate Grid?
Thanks to the Rotowire stat engine, the NFBC ADP reports, two Excel exports and some XLOOKUP magic, this is possible although not as automatically refreshed and available as Immaculate Grid is each day at 9am Eastern Time. I went home and played with the concept and came up with the first iteration of a Roto Immaculate Grid challenge to help frame out where we have been able to find late power, steals, and saves this season. I present to you v1.0 of Roto Immaculate Grid:
Challenging, right? What if I gave you some hints and showed you how many possible answers there are in each spot of the grid?
That probably does not help you much, but go ahead and make some guesses before scrolling down to see the possible answers in each square. I will put some space between this paragraph and the answers for those up to the challenge.
This...
Is..
Rather...
Challenging...
Isn't it?
Ready for the answers?
Here you go!
Late Power
This has been a tough year for late power, with just five players popping at least 25 homers this season being selected after pick 199 in Main Event drafts. Jake Burger went undrafted and now has 30 homers between his time with Chicago and Miami. The other four players had previously hit 20 homers in a season but all had their recent flaws pushing down their draft status. Other names such as Justin Turner, Josh Jung (depending on when he returns), Triston Casas, Ketel Marte, Brandon Nimmo, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Spencer Torkelson, Nolan Gorman, Brent Rooker, Lane Thomas, Jack Suwinski, Max Kepler and Jeimer Candelario could also all join this club by the end of the season.
It feels like we say this every season, but getting your power early has to be a priority in drafts because there are only so many late power darts to throw, leaving most teams with limited options late.
Late Speed
Late speed is always there in the drafts, but with good reason because those players come with other categorical flaws. However, the new environment this season has produced more late speed than anyone expected, and some of those late round speedsters have also added some power as CJ Abrams has 15 homers in his surprising season while Ha-Seong Kim has added 17, Josh Lowe 18, and even Bryson Stott has found 14 homers in his bat. Maikel Garcia, Harrison Bader, Brice Turang, Lane Thomas, Tommy Pham, Myles Straw and Corey Julks could get to 20 steals by the end of the season as well. Speed has been everywhere this year, so teams which eschewed speed at the draft table have been able to make up for it as long as they didn't wait around too long to notice the rapid change in the running environment.
Late Saves
Eight relievers taken at pick 200 or later have already earned 15 or more saves for a variety of clubs. Evan Phillips, Craig Kimbrel and Adbert Alzolay have done so for playoff contending teams while the rest have managed to do it on mediocre to terrible teams. Alzolay has certainly impacted the fortunes of solid speculators while Estevez and Finnegan are littering several top performing teams as we learned last month.
May I humbly suggest you construct your own Immaculate Grids as you begin you prep for the 2024 fantasy season? I found this to be a very helpful study guide to begin my look into what late-round players were moving the needles in these particular counting categories and will continue to use this as a learning tool or a challenge game with other fantasy managers in the coming weeks and months.
