Hank Blalock is really good…when he plays at home.

In his career, Blalock has hit .306/.375/.531 with 77 homers in 397 games. On the road, Blalock has hit .244/.299/.402 with 50 homers in 390 games.

Fortunately for Blalock, he is currently still a member of the Texas Rangers. Although the Rangers have many corner types, Blalock appears to be in line for a lot of plate appearances, probably at first base (assuming Chris Davis can handle third base). If he plays every day for the Rangers, he can probably continue to put up decent numbers – the type of numbers he has put up over the last 2-3 years (think ~.270 with ~25 homers or so). For those of you who play in leagues with daily updates, you can take advantage of Blalock’s drastic splits, benching him for road games but making sure that he’s in your lineup for all games in Arlington (this could work in leagues with weekly updates too, but it won’t work nearly as well).

However, Blalock’s numbers have been artificially inflated by his home park, and if he is traded his overall (and fantasy) numbers will suffer. While he may not be as bad as his road numbers indicate (after all, most players play slightly worse on the road, and his road numbers don’t take into account any games in Arlington), his overall numbers will suffer significantly if he’s traded to, say, Minnesota (or just about anywhere else, really).

In my experience, Hank Blalock’s reputation exceeds Hank Blalock’s production. Back in 2004, Blalock hit 32 homers; since then, he’s hit 63 homers total. Blalock was the Next Big Thing after his 04 season, but he simply hasn’t lived up to his reputation, and he’s had plenty of opportunities to do so. While I will admit that Blalock has some upside, he’s so far removed from his excellent 2004 season and simply hasn’t shown any improvement (let alone any ability to replicate his 04 season). That, combined with his drastic home/road splits, makes me very wary.

Again, that’s not to say that Hank Blalock is without value – that’s simply untrue. The key is his perceived value – is he perceived as being more valuable than, say, Paul Konerko? Or Conor Jackson? Or Carlos Pena? I’d much rather have those three than Blalock, but some others in your league may disagree.

Don’t be afraid to have Blalock on your team. Just make sure you value him appropriately and don’t draft him too early.

Brian Fuentes recently inked a contract with the Angels to replace Francisco Rodriguez as closer. And as weird as this may sound…the Angels may have upgraded.

I won’t argue the merits or drawbacks of Rodriguez (although I have in other places). However, Fuentes has quietly been very good over the last couple years.

Last season was particularly good. Fuentes struck out nearly 12 batters per nine innings, while walking 3.16. He also allowed only three homers in 62 innings – although this is mainly due to an inordinately-low homer rate, as only 4.5% of his fly balls became homers. However, in his career, only 8.7% of his fly balls have become homers, so even though he tends to allow a lot of fly balls, he doesn’t allow too many homers.

Last season seems like it’s somewhat of an outlier in Fuentes’s career – but not by that much. His career strikeout rate is 10.24 per nine innings, and his career walk rate is 3.82. It’s fair to assume that Fuentes won’t quite approach last season’s peripherals or ERA, but it’s very reasonable to assume that Fuentes will strike out more than one batter per inning and will post an ERA in the 3.50 – 3.80 range (if that seems high, keep in mind that Fuentes will be moving to the more difficult league, even if he’s also leaving Coors Field in the process).

The key to Fuentes’s value in fantasy leagues is his situation. Fuentes signed a big-dollar deal to be The Closer for Los Angeles, a team which has thrived on having relievers in set roles. Therefore, Fuentes’s job is very safe – even if he pitches poorly in back to back outings, he’s unlikely to be relieved of his closer duties permanently. Furthermore, Fuentes has relatively little injury history, so even though he’s risky by definition (most relievers are fairly risky), he’s not a huge injury risk.

Additionally, although this may seem somewhat counterintuitive as a positive for Fuentes, the Angels aren’t going to be very good next year. Their offense overachieved in 2008 and they have lost Mark Teixeira and Garrett Anderson, leaving their offense as potentially one of the worst in the American League. This actually bodes well for Fuentes, because it means that the Angels aren’t going to blow many teams out. Rather, when they do win games, chances are the games are going to be close, leading to a lot of save opportunities for Fuentes. This is what allowed K-Rod to rack up so many saves last year, despite being no better than average at converting save opportunities into saves.

All in all, Brian Fuentes is a low-risk, above-average reliever who is likely to have a lot of save opportunities. Furthermore, he’s unlikely to be removed from the closer’s role if he struggles a little bit, and he should post solid numbers, even if they regress from last year’s numbers. Fuentes is likely to be available after the “top tier” of closers have been taken, and is the exact type of pitcher you should be targeting.

This advice, of course, depends on the size of your league. If you’re in a 14-team NL only league, you are almost certainly going to have some middle relievers on your team. However, in most 10- or 12-team mixed leagues, you generally are best off avoiding middle relievers altogether, with two exceptions: 1) you expect that they will become closer soon, and 2) it’s late in the season and you can gain ground in ERA or WHIP. Other than that, however, middle relievers should be avoided.

Why? Because they really don’t add much to your team. If a middle reliever gets a win or save, it’s usually a fluke – it’s almost impossible to predict how many wins a guy like Rafael Betancourt will have in 2009, for example. And even the best middle relievers usually only pitch 60-70 innings. So even if you stumble onto a fantastic season by someone like Betancourt, his impact upon your team is minimal, because he’s only pitching 60-70 innings. It’s a very rare middle reliever who is worth having on your team – someone like Mariano Rivera in 1996, or Octavio Dotel in 2001 or 2002. These pitchers are few and far between, and “typical” middle relievers just don’t help you enough to justify a roster spot.

Again, it’s not that someone like Betancourt or Scot Shields isn’t a good pitcher; rather, it’s that their roster spot can be better spent on someone else. In many leagues, you can manipulate matchups so that the roster spot is occupied by a rotating assortment of waiver wire starters who have favorable matchups (in pitchers’ parks and/or against bad offenses). These pitchers may not be particularly good, but if you manipulate their matchups they can provide a heck of a lot more value than even a very good middle reliever.

As mentioned above, middle relievers are generally acceptable when you have reason to believe that they will become the closer very soon. They are also acceptable down the stretch run (generally August and September only), if your team is in the position where you stand to gain points from even a small improvement in ERA or WHIP. In this situation, the small amount of innings that a middle reliever will provide is particularly beneficial. However, in all other situations, middle relievers are almost always a waste of a roster spot.

WHIP is a silly thing. Some people like to refer to it as a newfangled Moneyball stat, alongside VORP and tRA. But WHIP is old-fashioned, and not particularly indicative of player skill. Of course, pitchers who don’t walk anyone and don’t give up hits tend to be better pitchers, but we don’t need WHIP to tell us how good these pitchers are. WHIP is a byproduct of many other stats, and therefore should essentially be ignored when assessing pitchers.

That’s right: ignore WHIP. Because if you draft good pitchers, they are almost certainly going to have good WHIPs. In fact, there are very few pitchers whose WHIPs differ dramatically from their ERA and strikeout ability. And often times, when there is a significant difference between WHIP and other statistics, it’s a fluke, and unlikely to be repeated the next season.

It follows that pitchers with low ERAs tend to have lower WHIPs as well. Pitchers who have low ERAs tend to either get a lot of strikeouts or a lot of ground balls – or, failing this, they at least drastically limit their walks. Having a good WHIP is a byproduct of these three other skills: avoiding balls, missing bats, and inducing grounders. If you look for pitchers with these skills, their WHIP will follow.

The only exception for this is the mid-season tweak rule. Somewhere around July 1 (there’s no exact date, but the later the better), all bets are off: you need to tweak your roster accordingly, and most of what you read before the season can be thrown out the window. If there is one pitcher who has a particularly good WHIP and your WHIP is very high, there is nothing wrong with trying to obtain that pitcher – just be careful that the WHIP is for real, and not the byproduct of unsustainable luck.

In general, though, if you acquire a pitcher who avoids walks, gets strikeouts and induces grounders, that pitcher will have a more than respectable WHIP as well. And you won’t even have to look at that category.

Due to a combination of a tremendous strikeout mark, a solid ERA and a nice WHIP, Carlos Marmol had a fantasy value of roughly $6 in a 12-team mixed league last year. That figures to go up substantially in 2009 as he takes over the closer’s role for the Cubs with the departure of Kerry Wood.

Some owners will be wary of Marmol, due to the fact that he hasn’t been a closer for a full season previously. Others will point to his high walk rate, while some will be scared off by his FIP, which was nearly a run higher than his actual ERA. There are also questions about his stamina, as a rough patch in June was attributed to fatigue.

Smart fantasy owners will use all of these fears to acquire Marmol cheaper than he should go in an auction or later than he should go in a draft.

While Marmol has not closed previously, he converted seven of eight save chances last year (one of his two blown saves came in the seventh inning). The walk rate is definitely a concern, but as Francisco Rodriguez has shown the last few years, a high strikeout rate can offset a poor walk rate. Most of Marmol’s poor outings came between May 31 and July 2. But whatever was bothering him then was quickly rectified. After the break he had a 1.29 ERA with 16 BB and 44 K in 35 IP.

The Cubs also have former Marlins closer Kevin Gregg and former college football star Jeff Samardzija in the bullpen. They may siphon off some saves during the year, but in 2008 Wood had 34 of the team’s 44 saves. Since the Norm Charlton–Heathcliff Slocumb fiasco in 1997, manager Lou Piniella has displayed a strong preference for one closer in his next 10 seasons at the helm. Not once in those 10 years have two relievers on a Piniella-managed team reached double digits in saves.

Wood had a $19 season in 2008 and was a top-25 pitcher overall as the Cubs closer. I might be a tad more conservative than that for Marmol, but I would expect that to be a ballpark figure of his worth in 2009.

Several years back, Daniel Cabrera was one of the more intriguing young arms in the American League East. A hulking 6-9, 270 pound righty who missed plenty of bats (and often the strike zone) while generating some grounders, Cabrera appeared to be Baltimore’s best hope at cultivating a home-grown starter to front the club’s rotation. If you squinted really hard, you might have even seen a Carlos Zambrano starter kit on the mound for the O’s.

After a wobbly introduction to the big leagues in 2004 (0.85 K/BB ratio, 5.10 FIP in 147 IP) in which his upper-90’s heater often missed the mark, Cabrera turned in an impressive campaign as a 24 year-old during the 2005 season. The Dominican Republic native punched out 8.76 batters per nine innings and kept his infielders busy with a 52.7 GB%. His walk rate remained tenuous at 4.85 per nine innings, but the overall result of those whiffs and grounders was a tidy 4.02 FIP. With 96 MPH cheese, Cabrera figured to establish himself as Baltimore’s ace if he could pare those free passes down to a more reasonable level.

Instead of building off of that promising season, however, Cabrera seemed to take a step backward in 2006. His K rate climbed all the way to 9.55 per nine innings (3rd among all starters tossing at least 140 frames), but his already-high propensity to issue ball four rose to an untenable level: 6.32 BB/9. After posting an above-average groundball rate in ’05, Cabrera found his pitches being lifted more frequently, with just a 40.7 GB%.

His FIP was still a decent-looking 4.20, but that figure was held down by a low home run/flyball rate: after surrendering a homer on 10.4% of his flyballs in ’05, Cabrera lucked into a 7.6 HR/FB% in 2006. If we adjust for that HR/FB rate by using Expected Fielding Independent ERA (XFIP) from The Hardball Times, we find that Cabrera’s XFIP rose from 4.20 in ’05 to 4.83 in ’06.

In 2007, Cabrera essentially made a trade-off, swapping some strikeouts for (relatively) improved control. His K rate fell to 7.31 per nine, with his walk rate falling from cartoonishly bad to just mediocre (4.76 BB/9). The result was a nearly unchanged strikeout-to-walk ratio, as Cabrera posted a 1.54 K/BB that mirrored his 1.51 showing in 2006. His groundball rate recovered (49.5%), but Cabrera didn’t experience the same good fortune with the longball, surrendering 1.1 HR/9. His FIP rose to 5.01, with his XFIP ticking up slightly to 4.89.

If the 2007 season was a disappointing showing from a stagnating pitcher, then 2008 was an unmitigated disaster for the 27 year-old Cabrera. Once a high-octane, high strikeout hurler who walked more than his fair share of batters, Cabrera lost the velocity and strikeout portions of that equation while still showing little ability to paint the corners. In 180 innings, the big righty saw his K rate plummet to 4.75 per nine innings, while his walk rate remained a ho-hum 4.5 per nine.

Once capable of reaching the upper-90’s with his fastball on a consistent basis, Cabrera averaged a more tame 92.6 MPH in ’08, down nearly 4 MPH since his solid 2005 campaign. Cabrera has actually become more reliant on his heater despite its loss of zip: after throwing his fastball about three-quarters of the time in 2006 and 2007 (an already lofty rate), he used his diminished heat 82.5% of the time in ’08. No other starter in the majors relied on his fastball as much as Cabrera.

With waning stuff that led to a nasty 5.61 FIP and 5.41 XFIP, Cabrera was pretty easy to make contact with this past season. He hit the DL in September with a sprained elbow, after barely cracking 90 MPH with his fastball during two ineffective late-season starts. Courtesy of Josh Kalk’s pitch F/X tool, let’s take a look at the difference in Cabrera’s arsenal between 2007 and 2008:

2007

Fastball: -5.16 X, 10.06 Z, 4.2 Swinging Strike%
Slider: 6.16 X, -0.9 Z, 18.5 Swinging Strike %

2008

Fastball: -8.49 X, 8.02 Z, 3.2 Swinging Strike%
Slider: 0.68 X, 1.13 Z, 13.5 Swinging Strike%

(X is horizontal movement. A negative X number means that the pitch is moving in toward a right-handed hitter, while a positive X means that the pitch is moving away from a righty hitter (in to a lefty). Z is vertical movement- the lower the Z number, the more the pitch “drops” in the strike zone.)

Cabrera’s fastball was never a big swing-and-miss pitch to begin with (the average Swinging Strike% for a fastball is about six percent), but batters whiffed at the pitch even less in ’08, as the offering tailed in on the hands of right-handed batters more but featured less vertical break. Cabrera’s slider, a pretty lively pitch in ’07, didn’t have near as much jump this past season and saw a five percent dip in swinging strikes. Perhaps in an effort to preserve his elbow, Cabrera mixed in his slider just 15.3% of the time in ’08, down from 23% the previous year.

Basically a one-pitch starter with an occasional hanging slider, Cabrera saw his Contact% rise considerably. He was once pretty difficult to put the bat on the ball against, but hitters made contact with 87.6% of pitches thrown by Cabrera this past year, up from 81.9% the previous season. Those figures are a far cry from the mid 70’s contact percentages that Cabrera compiled in 2005 and 2006.

That high-80’s contact figure placed Cabrera among groundball machine Aaron Cook, as well as recently retired control artists Mike Mussina and Greg Maddux. Suffice it to say, Cabrera does not fit in among this group. And, not only are opponents putting the ball in play often against him, but they just plain don’t chase his offerings out of the strike zone. Cabrera’s 18.9 O-Swing% in ’08 was by far the lowest rate among all starters.

Despite receiving a major-league worst 5.38 FIP from the club’s starting pitchers and resorting to allowing Steve Trachsel to make eight starts, the Orioles cut ties with Cabrera this off-season by non-tendering him. Scooped up by the pitching-starved Washington Nationals, Cabrera will team with the equally enigmatic Scott Olsen in hopes of reviving the promise of years past.

It was pretty easy to be optimistic about Daniel Cabrera’s future following his 2005 showing. However, he stagnated for two seasons after that, before doing a Wile E. Coyote style cliff dive in 2008. Perhaps an offseason of rest will heal his elbow and restore his stuff, but it’s best to just pass on Cabrera at this point- 2005 seems like an awfully long time ago for this hurler.

Last season began well enough for Aaron Harang.

In fact, through his first 11 starts, he was having a normal, Harang-like season. Check it out:

Harang had a 3.50 ERA, more or less what we’d expect given those peripherals. But then, Dusty Baker made an interesting decision.

On May 22, Aaron Harang made a start on normal rest. Then, on May 25, Baker brought Harang into a tie game in the 13th inning. Harang proceeded to pitch 4 shutout innings, striking out 9 and throwing 63 pitches in the process. Harang’s next start was on May 29.

Starting pitchers have been known to pitch an inning out of the bullpen between starts, but Harang threw 63 pitches – in a tie game, no less. Of course, Harang has had a rubber arm over the last couple of seasons, having pitched over 200 innings in three straight years. If anyone could handle the added workload, it would be Harang, right?

Apparently not.

After the bullpen appearance, Harang had a 7.31 in his next eight starts. Here are his accompanying peripherals:

His strikeout rate was approximately the same, but he walked one more batter per nine innings. His homer rate also skyrocketed. The question is: was Harang unlucky – thanks to a very-high BABIP and homer rate – or was he hurt?

Well, Harang was placed on the DL on July 9 with a strained right forearm. He was then activated on August 10. However, he struggled mightily in his first two starts, giving up a total of 16 runs in 7 1/3 innings. After that, though, Harang seemed to regain his past form. Check it out:

He posted a 2.83 ERA over these eight starts.

So what does it all mean? Well…

On the one hand, Harang’s peripherals didn’t really change too much throughout the season, even after his bullpen stint. His walk rate rose, and it’s very possible that fatigue caused him to lose control of his pitches. However, his strikeout rate remained high, and it’s possible that his high BABIP and high homer rate could be more attributed to bad luck in a small sample size rather than anything else.

On the other hand, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that Harang’s ERA changed drastically directly after his outing in the bullpen. If he did indeed lose control of his pitches (as evidenced by the higher walk rate), it’s not difficult to surmise that he was also grooving an inordinate amount of pitches, leading to a higher BABIP and higher homer rate.

After he returned from the DL, his first two starts were awful, but this can be very easily be attributed to the fact that he wasn’t yet fully healthy. In his final eight starts, Harang more-or-less returned to “normal” form. His BABIP was actually a little low, and his strikeout rate was lower than before. Again, it’s difficult to tell whether this is significant or the product of a small sample size.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the bullpen stint somehow screwed Harang up. It’s very possible that his 7.31 ERA was inflated partly due to bad luck, but it’s also clear that Harang was not as good of a pitcher after the bullpen outing as he was beforehand. It’s also clear that Harang was pretty much back to “normal” after returning from the DL (well, after his first two starts). This is further evidence for Harang actually being injured.

For next year, it’s fair to expect Harang to return to his normal numbers – his numbers before 2008. That means that he has the potential to be very undervalued going into drafts next year. There is, of course, a caveat: namely, the possibility that Harang is not fully healthy. This seems unlikely, however, given his performance over the final eight starts of the season.

Aaron Harang plays for a mediocre team, in front of a poor defense, in a hitter’s park. However, he is also a very good pitcher who is likely to put up numbers that are much better than his 2008 line. It’s reasonable to expect an ERA between 3.50 and 4, and a strikeout rate somewhere around 8 batters per nine. Harang is probably going to be undervalued in your league, and is an excellent sleeper.

A lot of highly touted prospects begin the year in the minor leagues, but make an impact by the end of the season. If you know where to look and you are willing to be patient, you can take advantage of prospects.

For example, Jay Bruce was very highly touted coming in to 2008, but the Reds didn’t call him up until late May (probably to prevent him from becoming a Super Two player down the road). However, when he did come up, he made a big impact, smacking 21 homers. Those of you who were patient with Bruce received an infusion of power starting in late May – almost as if you acquired a power hitter for free.

Francisco Liriano is another (rather extreme) example of when patience pays off. Back in 2006, Liriano began the season in the bullpen, and many fantasy players gave up on him, despite his solid performance out of the pen. Those who were patient were rewarded with 16 phenomenal starts down the stretch. Of course, most youngsters aren’t able to perform at the level that Liriano did, but many of them can make a positive impact on your team.

The key to prospecting is figuring out what players are likely to be called up, and what players are not. For example, Jason Heyward is one of the best prospects in the game, but is very unlikely to make it to the majors this year. Meanwhile, Matt LaPorta is on the brink of a call-up, and could provide immediate value once he makes it to the show.

Furthermore, unless you play in a particularly deep league, you should understand that very few prospects may a huge impact in fantasy leagues right away. Often times even highly touted prospects fail in their first stint in the majors (remember Cameron Maybin in 2007 with Detroit?), and just aren’t worth stashing away. You have to find guys who are both on the cusp of major league action, as well as likely to have some impact when they do make it. Players like this for 2009 include LaPorta, Jordan Schafer, Tommy Hanson, Colby Rasmus, Michael Bowden, Andrew McCutchen and Dexter Fowler.

Prospects can add a lot of value to your team, but don’t get caught up in overvaluing what could be rather than what actually is.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa is considering the option of using rehabbing starter Chris Carpenter as the club’s closer for 2009. With former closer Jason Isringhausen likely on his way out of town as a free agent, after a disappointing 2008 season, the club is left with just younger pitchers with true closer experiences (in the minors and college). The club recently lost out on former Colorado closer Brian Fuentes, who signed a two-year contract with the Los Angels Angels.

Everyone who knows LaRussa knows he’s not likely to give such a key role to a pitcher like Chris Perez or Jason Motte, with just 41.2 and 11.0 innings under their belts, respectively. Perez, 23, collected seven saves in 2008 with St. Louis and blew four save opportunities. Motte, 26, collected one save and did not blow an opportunity.

Perhaps LaRussa is looking for the next John Smoltz, another talented right-handed veteran pitcher, whose effectiveness and durability were derailed by injuries to his arm and shoulder. Smoltz was 34 when he became the closer for the Atlanta Braves. Carpenter will be 34 as of Opening Day 2009. Smoltz had been in the Majors for 13 seasons; Carpenter will have been in the Majors for 12.

Smoltz and Carpenter have similar repertoires at this points as starters. Based on small sample sizes from 2008 (just four games for Carpenter, and six games for Smoltz) both utilized fastballs and breaking balls as their two main weapons, although Carpenter favored the fastball (52.7%) about 10 percent more than Smoltz. Both pitchers averaged out around 91-92 mph. Smoltz used his slider (37.5%) about 10 percent more than Carpenter. They also have curveballs and change-ups that they mixed in, although the Cardinals righty used his curveball far more often in his last healthy season (2006: 22.2%). Carpenter also used a cutter 2.9% of the time, while Smoltz has a splitter that he used 8.6% of the time in 2008.

Obviously, comparing the above numbers does not solve the question of whether or not Carpenter will be an effective closer but it is kind of interesting to compare the two players on a somewhat superficial level. There are enough similarities with the two players to suggest that Carpenter could be an effective closer, if he can handle the rigors of pitching on back-to-back or back-to-back-to-back days. It also won’t be hard to top Isringhausen’s 2008 season after he saved just 12 games and posted an ERA of 5.70.

Whether he pitches out of the bullpen or the starting rotation, the Cardinals definitely need to figure out how to get the best value out of Carpenter, as he is signed through the 2011 season (with a club option for 2012) at $14 million or more a season. Carpenter would certainly be a sleeper choice for Fantasy owners if he heads into the 2009 season in the bullpen.

Year in and year out, Ichiro is a model of consistency. He has had over 200 hits and a batting average over .300 every single season he’s been in the majors. He’s also scored at least 100 runs every year, and stolen at least 30 bases. That being said, what can we expect from 2009?

The short answer, of course, is more of the same. When a player is this consistent for this long, the best predictor of his performance is his past performance. With that in mind, Ichiro is also getting older – he’ll be 35 next year, and even though he is a unique player, he’s not totally immune to the effects of aging. In fact, this is already beginning to show up in his batting average.

In 2008, Ichiro hit “only” .310 – the second lowest batting average of his career (in the North American Major Leagues, that is). However, he managed this batting average despite a higher-than-expected BABIP – his actual BABIP was .330, but his expected BABIP (according to a new model I introduced) was .307.

Before you tell me that Ichiro is unique, hear me out: yes, I agree that Ichiro is unique, but this new model attempted to incorporate many of the elements that make Ichiro unique – such things as hitting to all fields and speed, two elements of which Ichiro makes particular use.

I wouldn’t disagree that, even though the model has attempted to incorporate the unique aspects of Ichiro’s game, it hasn’t fully succeeded. Here are Ichiro’s expected and actual BABIPs since 2005:

Note the average: since 2005, the model has underrated Ichiro’s BABIP by approximately 23 points. Now, I think this is somewhat unfair, as the average is severely skewed by Ichiro’s incredibly-high BABIP in 2006, which was well out of line with even his own already-high numbers. But if we assume that the ~23 point difference is correct, well…that means Ichiro’s BABIP in 2008 was completely luck free.

What’s perhaps more interesting to note is the downward trend of Ichiro’s expected BABIP – it has declined each year since 2005. This goes along with conventional aging patterns – Ichiro was 31 in 2005, and as he exited his prime, his expected BABIP slowly dropped.

This suggests to me that Ichiro’s batting average is a lot more likely to go down than it is to rise. Of course, it’s certainly possible that he has another flukey BABIP year that allows his BA to rise once again, but this is increasingly unlikely as he gets older. Even though Ichiro’s .310 batting average was the second lowest of his career in 2008, it doesn’t appear that this was a fluke, but rather was indicative of him slowly getting older. That doesn’t mean Ichiro won’t have significant value in fantasy leagues next year – after all, he’s still shown that he can steal 40+ bases and hit over .300 – but don’t draft him expecting a resurgence to the AL batting title.