Happy New Year from everyone at Sports Ethos!

And what better way to ring in the New Year than to make some good ol’ fashioned resolutions?

Well, we know you’re not done eating all those chips, or you’ll go a few days, or even weeks, exercising then that new Peloton you got for Christmas will start collecting dust and used as often as Joc Pederson against lefties (almost never).

Instead, make some resolutions in preparation for the most important time in your life: fantasy baseball season!

Or, what are some resolutions some of the powers that be in baseball should make?

I also want y’all to help us ring in the new year by following all the linked Twitter (or Blue Sky) accounts for all of our contributors and by downloading our new app! Get fantasy baseball analysis of the relevant off season news in baseball and all the happenings in fantasy basketball and football! ! All at your fingertips and it is FREE!

Now, our resolutions:

Jeff Clowers (X/Twitter – @ethosjeff) 

Lars Nootbar will start lifting the ball in the air – A personal fantasy crush of mine for the past few years, I’ve so far been left with nothing but unrequited love when it comes to Lars Nootbaar. I’ve been batting my eyelashes at him for quite some time, but he keeps rebuffing my advances by continually underperforming his elite Statcast metrics. Overall, he posted a pedestrian line of .244/.342/.417 with just 12 home runs and seven steals in 2024 but was expected to provide an output closer to .268/.358/.468 if you instead measured off xBA/xwOBA/xSLG. And even that undersells him, as he exhibited elite ability in Hard-Hit% (91st percentile), BB% (98th) and Chase% (100th)!

So what gives? Why were his actual results so much more underwhelming than his expected stats?

In most situations such as this, the issue at hand is an elevated groundball rate and that rings true in this case as well. Nootbaar currently carries a career groundball percentage of 48.5%, setting a career high in 2024 with a groundball 51.7 percent of the time. But if we zoom in a little, we see that something changed in September. Up to that point, Nootbaar was running a 53.5% groundball rate but that number plummeted to 44.4% in September. It was also his best month by OPS (.986) so if he can keep on top of his new-found resolution to lift the ball and carry that momentum forward into next season, maybe we’ll finally get our kiss at midnight to ring in the New Year!

Chris Rossi (X/Twitter – @ChrisRossi701)

• I won’t draft more than one rookie in redraft leagues.
• I won’t draft a closer until the last few rounds.
• I will not underestimate veterans in dynasty leagues.
• I will take a flier on a few IL stashes (e.g. Jacob DeGrom) but not too many.
• I won’t draft a surplus of steals again

Larry Vannozzi (X/Twitter – @larryv86)

1) I will stop being tempted by first year callups – especially hitters. Sure, a hotly anticipated callup occasionally produces right from the start but more often they struggle. Pursuing these players drains my FAAB, forces me to cut a potentially useful bench player and ends up producing mediocre stats. I promise to resist the urge in ’25!

2) Phillies GM Dave Dombrowski and manager Rob Thomson finally cut ties with backup catcher Garrett Stubbs and see what they have in Rafael Marchán. Can he eventually replace J.T. Realmuto? Who knows, because they keep using lightweight Stubbs while burying Marchán at Triple-A. Stubbs is well-liked in the clubhouse but he’s a career .215 hitter over six seasons with no power (e.g., a 1.2% career barrel rate!) and has thrown out 25% of stolen base attempts. Meanwhile, Rafael Marchán has been given just 121 MLB plate appearances over three seasons and has produced better stats in this admittedly tiny sample (.279 average, 4.3% barrel rate and has thrown out 35% of would-be stealers). Rafael Marchán is out of minor league options – use him NOW!

Scott Burks (X/Twitter – @oregondux2, Blue Sky – @oregondux2.bsky.social)

For me:

I will not draft players I cannot root for, no matter how far they fall in drafts. I will not roster the overrated “look at me” Bryce Harper, who has been called out by teammates for not hustling, fought a teammate and leads all active players in ejections. I do not like the Red Sox or Dodgers, so while they are hard to root for, I try to avoid them if at all possible. While there are players I will not draft, I will go above ADP and draft guys I do like, such as Mike Trout, Ozzie Albies, Manny Machado, Garrett Mitchell, Ryne Nelson, Zach Neto and Spencer Steer.

On my important teams where there are cash prizes on the line, I will not draft hard-throwing pitchers like Paul Skenes, Hunter Greene, Jared Jones, Garret Crochet, Tarik Skubal, Dylan Cease or Logan Gilbert. Why? Because they were all Top 10 pitchers in 2024 based on average fastball velocity. Of the 10 pitchers that fell in that category in 2023, three did not pitch in the 2024 season due to elbow surgery (Sandy Alcantara, Shane McClanahan and Shohei Ohtani) and Spencer Strider made two starts, going nine innings. Greene threw 150 innings, Tyler Glasnow 134 and Grayson Rodriguez 116, none of the other had more than 100 innings. Those 10 combined for 626 innings, not a good average.

On the other side, I will fill my pitching rotations with guys who throw 170+ innings and are in the same ballpark talent wise as those above. Guys like Zack Wheeler, Hunter Brown, Framber Valdez, Cole Ragans, Chris Sale, Shota Imanaga, Logan Webb, Michael King and Sonny Gray. I tend to be a conservative drafter, as you might have gathered from the above two resolutions. I had six fantasy teams last year and was conservative with every team. I play a lot of draft and hold leagues and rarely pick risky players or prospects. I would rather take Mickey Moniak, who will get some at bats with the Angels, in the 50th round, than George Valera of the Guardians, who may or may not play in the majors this year. I will change it up and will draft at least one fun league (no $$$ at stake) or a FAAB league team where I take a bunch of risks, knowing I can replace them through FAAB.

I will be more aggressive with closers this year. I had six teams last year and was in the bottom third in the saves categories in five of the six leagues. In the three drafts I have done so far, I have drafted Clase and Helsley on one team, Helsley and Tanner Scott (hoping for a closer role when he signs with a team), and took Robert Suarez and Kyle Finnegan in an early draft before Finnegan was let go by the Nationals. I then have been following up with guys who could get saves like David Robertson, Jeff Hoffman, Griffin Jax and Jeremiah Estrada.

I will own a lot of shares of Maikel Garcia. He was unlucky in 2024 with a BABIP of .268 (league average is .291), which is really low for a fast runner like Garcia. He also had a career high hard-hit rate in 2024 of 42.6% (league average was 38.7%) and just a 16.5% strikeout rate. Those numbers spell positive regression. Through 210 drafts on the NFBC site, his ADP is 209. After finishing 152nd on the Fangraphs player rater in 2024, I have no problem picking him at that 160 range.

I will not own any shares of Ryan Walker, the closer for the Giants. He was as lucky as Garcia was unlucky. He had a .254 BABIP and an 82.9% strand rate, both way better than league average. For a guy to come out of nowhere and win the closer job scares me. Being the conservative drafter, I tend to stay away from guys who have great seasons but no prospect pedigree. Spencer Schwellenbach is another player I probably will not have rostered on many teams.

For others:

Rob Manfred will not implement any more silly rule changes. The ghost runner is a joke, it just shows fans how inept teams are at putting the ball in play and using productive outs to score runs. The Golden Batter rule is a terrible idea, and I hope it is never implemented. If this proposed rule existed since baseball was invented there would be no Bill Mazeroski walk off homer in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series; or no Bucky Dent hitting a three-run home in game 163 in Boston in 1978 then winning the MVP of the World Series, no Scott Brosius winning a World Series MVP.

Being an Angel fan, hoping Ron Washington will bat Zach Neto at the top of the order for the whole season. While there were not a lot of highlights for the Angels in 2024, Neto flourished batting second in the Angels lineup. In 49 games he hit 10 homers with 23 runs and 30 RBIS. While batting in the bottom half of the lineup, he played 103 games, hitting 13 homers with 45 runs and 46 RBIs.

The Baseball Gods will keep superstars like Mike Trout, Ronald Acuna, Jr. and Spencer Strider healthy all season long. It would be nice to hear more about Tommy Edman and Tommy Pham than Tommy John. Hoping superstars in the twilight of their careers like Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado return to form for one last time.

Nathan Baker (X/Twitter – @nbakerngb)

I will stop prospect hugging in redraft. Part of the negative that comes with MiLB research is familiarity with the players, and it’s easy to become infatuated with the possibilities of greatness while ignoring the reality of the fairly pedestrian 50th percentile outcome. Maybe I’ll just put more time into my dynasty league.

Dave Dombrowski will stop neglecting the obvious depth needs of his team, only to be faced with a laundry list of foreseeable issues at the deadline. Obviously the Phillies outfield is poor, but signing a couple of cheap veteran position players and a starter would cost less than $20 million all in, and would prevent the inevitable scenario of Johan Rojas having high leverage at bats, or Taijuan Walker/Seth Johnson/Tyler Phillips making August starts. In a division that promises to be as competitive as ever, it’s important that he maximizes their closing window and prioritizes his veteran MLB team of stars over his dysfunctional farm system.

Jim Crane will stop pearl clutching over long-term deals and start retaining Houston’s stars. Astros fans deserve to see their best players retained after a decade of success, and the strategy of pivoting to players in their mid 30s on medium term contracts won’t yield better outcomes then shopping at the top.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will take the training wheels off of their starters. The Pirates have understandably been cautious with Paul Skenes and Jared Jones, but with more young blood on the horizon, it’s time they remove innings limitations. We know that broad pitch and innings limits do not effectively reduce risk of injury, so why not allow Skenes in particular to do what made him special in college, and let him go 8 or 9 innings, 120+ pitches on occasion. With the likelihood of a six man rotation, he’ll have plenty of starts on a week of rest, so why not prep him for what you’ll want him to do in a playoff scenario?

The Baltimore Orioles will afford actual opportunities to their crop of young position players. The constant promotion and demotion of their prospects does not benefit them in the slightest, the organization needs to decide who they view having a future in Baltimore, and trade the surplus. Keeping Coby Mayo, Heston Kjerstad and eventually Samuel Basallo in the organization without a spot will just see their value evaporate; they’ll be better off dealing them all for elite tier talent if they won’t give them a chance to play every day.

Paul Williamson (X/Twitter – @PaulW_34, Blue Sky – @paulw34.bsky.social)

Consider the following condition for the much maligned “Golden At-Bat” rule – I had a similar reaction to Scott and many others when I first heard the idea of a “Golden At-Bat”. I thought it was a Savannah Banana idea. But as I got to thinking, why don’t we make the offense ‘earn’ the GAB? The idea is simple. If the offense gets three (or four or whatever number) of batters on-base consecutively, then they get to use the GAB. Ideally, this will help reduce the number of intentional walks as that would count as one of those consecutive runners. Maybe it will give managers a pause before they decide to walk Aaron Judge in the ninth.

I will not be taking a closer in the top-100 of picks – In early NFBC drafts, guys like Jhoan Duran and Andres Munoz (who get used too much outside of the ninth inning) are getting drafted ahead of Logan Webb, Aaron Nola, Max Fried and Tyler Glasnow. The only category that Duran and Munoz would beat them in is saves. They don’t get the volume for enough strikeouts, nor is their volume enough to make such a major impact on your ratios to be a real league-winning pick. And leagues are won and lost with these crucial picks early in drafts. Why would I pass up on a starting pitcher than can give me top-15 production in round nine (all of those arms could do that). just so I can secure ONE category? Emmanuel Clase is going ahead of Garrett Crochet and I just don’t understand. Lucas Erceg, Pete Fairbanks and Tanner Scott are all beyond pick 100. Hell, Trevor Megill (as of now is projected to close out games in place of the traded away Devin Williams and was excellent in his stead already) is going 250 overall. It just goes to show you can get excellent value and get saves after pick-100.