Here are your results from this week’s round of topical crowdsourcing.

Adrian Gonzalez (Red Sox / Padres)
My vote: 16 / 25
Average: 13.3 / 23.2
Median: 12 / 23
Std Dev: 5.3 / 6.6

Good news: 95% of you read the instructions and voted based on the pick, not the round. These numbers started out around the 15 and 25 marks in the beginning, and slowly crawled their way down as the hours wore on. Perhaps I was a bit bearish with my predictions, because the numbers you all came up with make sense. Essentially, Gonzalez will be taken at the turn in every draft, and I did just that in a mock draft yesterday. If I can start a team with Gonzalez as one of my two cornerstones, I’m happy.

Mark Reynolds
My vote: 10
Average: 7.8
Median: 8
Std Dev: 3

This is probably the farthest I’ve been off thus far. Reynolds is an interesting guy coming off a poor year, and I thought the 10th round was generous enough for owners hoping for a bounceback. I believed a 10th round pick was pretty safe due to his move to the AL East and some expected regression in his batting average. Apparently, I was wrong. If it’s going to cost a seventh or eighth round pick to nab Reynolds, I’m probably staying away. That risk isn’t worth it to me with so many other players left on the board, even with the weak third base class. That’s just me, and I’m wondering if any of you are willing to take that leap of faith with Reynolds?

In today’s edition of ADP Crowdsourcing, we stay in the news and revisit our old voting format.

While Werth and Gonzalez were stealing headlines, Mark Reynolds was dealt to the Orioles in a deal that was a tad surprising, considering the slugger’s reputation around baseball. For some, Reynolds is, and will continue to be fantasy kryptonite due to his extreme power and ability to steal a handful of bases. While his batting average tanked, and simultaneously went in the toilet, his power remained and he blasted 32 homers in less than 600 plate appearances.

However, Reynolds is now a problem child of sorts. He seems to have gotten it in his head that striking out 40% of the time was a-okay, as long as he hit a lot of home runs. So, Reynolds hit as many fly balls as he could last year, instead of focusing on just hitting the ball hard as he’d done in years past. The result was an ugly BABIP and a batting average below the Mendoza Line. With the drop in batting average came a drop in his slugging percentage, which dipped all the way down to .433, which is 110 points lower than his 2009 campaign.

Reynolds will be playing third base for the Orioles, but could slide over to first should prospect Josh Bell show some improvements in the minors next year. Moving from Arizona and the NL West to the tough AL East isn’t going to help Reynolds stock any, but how much will owners care?

Below is a link to the voting form, and please read the wording carefully. This is not where you would draft him, but where you think he’ll be drafted in most leagues. For the voting, we’re assuming a 12-team standard league, using 5×5 scoring.

To submit your vote, click here.

When I first wrote this, Gonzalez was still on the road to being a Red Sox. Then, I edited it when the deal fell through, and again when the deal ended up getting done. However, the question set I had when the deal fell through will lead to an interesting discussion, so I’ll keep it up. The first question assumes Gonzalez plays for the Red Sox (which he now does), while the second one assumes he is still on the Padres. That way we can gauge how far owners expect his stock will rise. We’re also going to use “pick” instead of “round” this time, so we’ll see how it goes. Hope it’s not to complicated.

Due to recent developments, it feels like my hand has been forced and we have to crowdsource Adrian Gonzalez. Playing for the San Diego Padres, Gonzalez has played at least 160 games in each of the past four seasons, making him one of (if not) the most consistent and low-risk picks in fantasy baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

While the deal is not quite official, the San Diego Padres and the Boston Red Sox have agreed in principle to a swap that would send 1B Adrian Gonzalez to Beantown in exchange for RHP Casey Kelly, 1B Anthony Rizzo, OF Reymond Fuentes and a PTBNL. Gonzalez, 28, will make just $6.2 million this upcoming season and is eligible for free agency after the 2011 campaign. Boston has a window that lasts until 2 p.m. Eastern Time Sunday to hammer out a contract extension with Gonzalez. The lefty slugger, who underwent right shoulder surgery in late October, must also pass a physical (CSNNE’s Sean McAdam Tweets that Gonzalez has already checked out medically).

While trading an elite talent like Gonzalez is painful for Padres fans, the club did get three Top 10 prospects back in the deal. For now, though, let’s focus on how the trade affects Gonzalez’s value.

A disciplined hitter with plus power, Gonzalez has managed to post sublime offensive stats despite taking cuts in a home ball park that’s death to all things lumber. Over the last three years, Gonzalez has batted .285/.387/.523, walking in 13.8% of his plate appearances and posting a .238 Isolated Power.

To give you an idea of how much of an impediment PETCO Park has been to Gonzalez, let’s use one of Baseball-Reference’s many stat head goodies. B-R has a feature that allows us to adjust a hitter’s offensive production for run environment (runs/game), league (AL or NL), and park. Here are Gonzalez’s triple-slash numbers from 2008-2010. The first column has his actual AVG/OBP/SLG stats over those seasons. The second shows his stats in a neutral offensive environment in the NL. And the third shows what his slash line might have looked like had he been playing for Boston.

B-R shows Fenway Park boosting overall offensive production by six percent. StatCorner has park factors by batter handedness, and the site has lefties getting a four percent bump. Homers aren’t easy to come by, but doubles are. By comparison, PETCO has a 91 Park Factor on Baseball-Reference (depressing offense by nine percent), and StatCorner shows the venue harming left-handed hitters 10 percent more than a neutral park.

It should be noted that Gonzalez isn’t your typical lefty power hitter: he crushes pitches to all fields. Courtesy of Greg Rybarczyk’s Hit Tracker Online, here’s a spray chart showing where Gonzalez went deep in 2010:

This past year, he hit 13 home runs to left field (41.9%), six to center (19.4%) and 12 to right field (38.7%). Over the course of his major league career, Gonzalez has hit 36.3% of his dingers to left, 23.2% to center and 40.5% to the pull field.

Clearly, Gonzalez is an upper-echelon hitter. Getting out of PETCO’s clutches will only boost his fantasy value, which was already lofty to begin with. Over the past three years, Gonzalez has been part of an elite class of big league batters. His wOBA, adjusted for league and park factors, was 46% better than average (146 wRC+). Only Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Kevin Youkilis, Miguel Cabrera, Matt Holliday, and Joe Mauer have better marks over that time frame, and Hanley Ramirez is tied with Gonzalez.

Should the trade become official, Gonzalez becomes an even more coveted fantasy option. Also, with Gonzalez taking over at first base, Kevin Youkilis will shift across the diamond and get a bump in value by regaining third base eligibility.

Gonzalez has been an offensive beast despite being shackled by PETCO. Now, we get to see what he’s capable of while swinging in a much more liberating Fenway Park.

Here are the results from this week’s groundbreaking editions of ADP Crowdsourcing, as it was our first time trying out a closer, a player who missed all of 2010, and a top-25 talent.

Joe Nathan
My vote: 8
Average: 11
Median: 11
Std Dev: 4

So, none of us really have much of an idea where Nathan will go, do we? If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Nathan would go somewhere around the seventh round if he were healthy, maybe even earlier if a closer run gets going. But, we just don’t know how he’ll respond coming back from his injury, at least not yet. If we did this with Nathan in spring training, when we have some sort of read on his status, our results would probably be very different. If he looks healthy, an 11th round selection is obviously a steal. But if he’s healthy, you aren’t going to get him in the 11th, are you? Just because of the inherent risk involved, I’m probably not going to draft Nathan this year, but if I did, it’d be in the 10-12 range.

Alex Rodriguez
My vote: 2
Average: 2.21
Median: 2
Std Dev: 1.05

Reader “Jason B” brought up a very good point in the comments on Wednesday, wondering why I didn’t group the selections for A-Rod by pick number rather than round number. I probably should have, but I did want to see how the format worked with an early round talent. I’ll probably try an early round guy soon, and will try out pick number instead of round. But, the old method held up fine, showing that A-Rod will likely go in the early second round, and he probably won’t fall further than the early third. I think he’s a great 1-2 turn candidate this year, and I’d be more than happy to take him there.

Two tidbits of news today might mean two new closers – about par for the course at baseball’s most volatile position. Let’s take quick look at the (possible) moves and what they mean.

Chicago White Sox Non-Tender Bobby Jenks
Jenks actually put up the second-best strikeout rate and the second-best groundball rate of his career last year, and though he missed some time with injury, he reversed a mini-trend in his velocity when he showed the third-best fastball velocity of his career. All of this, added to some really poor luck on batted balls (.368 BABIP) and moderately bad luck stranding men on the bases (65.4%), and he had one of those seasons where his overall stats (4.44 ERA, 1.37 WHIP) were out of line with better-looking fielding-independent numbers (2.59 FIP, 2.62 xFIP). Hey, it happens a lot in 50-inning stretches out of the bullpen. In any case, though he’s twice crossed the 2.0 WAR threshold, he probably wouldn’t have been worth the $10 million an arbitration panel may have awarded him, so it made sense for the White Sox to let him go.

Or, it makes sense because they already have a better, cheaper option in place. Matt Thornton may only have one pitch, and he may have had a reputation for blowing saves in the past, but he works that one pitch well, did decently when given save chances this past year (three saves, none blown in September), and only costs $3 million this year. Judging from his three straight years with double-digit strikeout rates and walk rates under three per nine, he should make for a solid buy at closer in 2011 drafts. Only health can keep that fastball from booming.

Jenks should also make a fine buy for a team that isn’t forced to pay him $10 million. Perhaps the Rays would like to look at him as their closer on a short-term, low-money, make-good deal? That would make three new closers possibly minted today.

The Angels Close to Signing Hisanori Takahashi
Given the history of the Angels, this one is far from a lock (the deal’s not even done yet). They’ve run through back-end bullpen options like popcorn at a blockbuster over the past few years, and they still own one of those would-be closers, Fernando Rodney. On top of that, Takahashi can start or relieve, and his overall stats are not so overwhelming that they scream ‘closer.’

But that’s not to say he couldn’t easily end up being a great bargain closer in 2011. For one, the Angels starting staff is full. Jered Weaver, Dan Haren and Ervin Santana are locks, Joel Piniero should be fine, and the number five can easily be (under)manned by Scott Kazmir and Trevor Bell. Also, Takahashi’s numbers were much better in relief. In 57.1 relief innings, he had a 9.42 K/9, 3.45 BB/9, 2.59 FIP and 3.54 xFIP. Those numbers actually rivaled those of Francisco Rodriguez and led AmazinAvenue to award Takahashi the title of Best Reliever for the past season. So it looks like the Angels want him as a reliever, which is good, since Tak2 hasn’t always been the most durable of pitchers.

Now the question is if the Angel’s management will have Tak2 close over Rodney. Given that the incumbent hasn’t struck out a batter per inning for a couple years now, and hasn’t ever shown a walk rate better than average, the answer should be easy enough. Then again, he has almost seven miles of fastball velocity on Takahashi, and gas has made better men than Mike Scioscia go a little loopy.

Today’s ADP Crowdsourcing comes from a suggestion by RotoGraphs’ own Mike Axisa. Snaps for Mike.

Alex Rodriguez’s 2010 had some ups, but it also had more than it’s fair share of downs. He started out his season with a very lackluster April, but bounced back and had an outstanding May, when he hit 5 homers and had a .330 batting average. Then in June, he was down again, but he did have some decent power numbers during the month.

July and August were really scary, because A-Rod had a LD% in the single digits, yet still managed to hit 10 homers in those two months. A-Rod ended the year with a bang, hitting 9 bombs in September with an average just below .300, giving some of us hope for a much better 2011.

A-Rod is 35 years old (36 towards the end of next season), and with his recent injury history, it’s not a surprise to see his production dip a bit. But, who are we to say a season with 30 HR and 125 RBI is bad? It just seems like it because of the problems A-Rod had in the middle of his season.

Believe it or not, A-Rod ended 2010 as a top-5 third baseman, and I don’t think anyone realizes it. However, he never would have done so without his outstanding September, and those numbers came right when fantasy owners needed them most. Will the average owner buy him based on his name value, last year’s overall production, or will they let him fall this year? That’s for you to decide.

Below is a link to the voting form, and please read the wording carefully. This is not where you would draft him, but where you think he’ll be drafted in most leagues. For the voting, we’re assuming a 12-team standard league, using 5×5 scoring.

To submit your vote, click here.