The trade deadline is less than five days away plus some closers are getting healthy, so let’s recap some of the recent/potential movement and how it may impact the fantasy landscape…

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As you’re tweaking your lineup here and there, looking for a way to steal some points from your opponents, check out how adding some stolen bases to your squad can help you out.  It always seems to be a very movable category in roto leagues and an often disregarded category in head to head.  Adding an extra stolen base guy can give you a nice cheap way to to boost you in the category while also helping you out in areas like runs scored and even batting average.  Here’s a pair of speedsters that seem to be available in plenty of leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless Keanu Reeves has been working on calling signs, you won’t be able to replace Brian McCann with a player off the wire with his upside. Now that the 27-year-old Brave has had his career year derailed by an oblique injury in the middle of a marathon game, fantasy owners will be looking for replacements. Let’s take a look at some possible pickups. In tiers!

Shallow Leagues
Jonathan Lucroy (38% owned in Yahoo)
Perhaps it was a dropping BABIP that has had Lucroy hitting closer to .250 over the last two months, but if batting average is important to you, he’s one of the better options available in more than half of Yahoo’s leagues. The good news is that the Milwaukee catcher has some upside left — this year. He’s showing a 21.5% strikeout rate, but also a 6.5% swinging strike rate. Last year, those numbers were 18% and 7.0% respectively. It’s possible that since his BABIP (.338) is so close to his xBABIP (.329), his batting average could even rise as his strikeout rate begins to look more like last year’s strikeout rate. His minor league strikeout rates were all much closer to 15%, so this outcome comes close to probable even. The question is his power. A .119 ISO is not going bring you McCann-like rewards. Not many batters have a ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio above 1.41 and a home-run-rate-per-fly-ball around ten percent. Chipper Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Martin Prado and Melky Cabrera do, though. The nice thing is that all of them have ISOs above average. Lucroy might run into a few more home runs in the second half.

Mixed Leagues
Ramon Hernandez (23% owned in Yahoo)
Sure, you can go with the high-power, low-batting average guys like Miguel Olivo and and John Buck. Or maybe even Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who has resurrected his career and is mostly playable despite a bad contact rate. Instead it’s Ramon Hernandez that gets the call here. It’s taken the 35-year-old a long time to finally put up a .300 batting average, but with a .328 xBABIP and a .303 BABIP, it might just be sustainable. The way he did it was by sacrificing his fly balls. A career low in fly ball rate along with a career high in ground-ball rate makes him a different player these days, but don’t expect that 20.4% HR/FB rate to continue. He has a 11.7% career number and his power, as measured by ISO, has been dwindling for a while. Still, even if he won’t play as much as McCann or have the same power, he won’t kill your batting average.

Deep Leagues
David Ross (1% owned in Yahoo)
Well, now you’re just screwed. Just hope he won’t be out long. Ryan Doumit’s rehab has been moved to Triple-A, but he’s probably not back until the beginning of August. Josh Thole might be out there for you as long as you’re not in an NL-only with two catchers — don’t laugh, I am in the AL version — but the Mets catcher is all batting average because of his choked-up approach at the plate. And that approach is even limited in batting average upside. Instead, consider taking the same approach that the Braves might take and pick up Brian McCann’s replacement. If he’s out there, it’s because it’s obvious the lifetime .236/.325/.449 hitter is above his head at .293/.361/.507 so far this year. You don’t need xBABIP to know his .367 BABIP in 84 PAs is not sustainable. Ross has looked great in Atlanta mostly because he’s been limited to facing lefties, too. Interestingly enough, though, the 34-year-old righty has a .331 career wOBA against righties (.334 vs lefties). Everything but his BABIP is looks the same! Take advantage of perceived flaws and pick up the catcher with the .213 career ISO that has been hitting over .270 for the past three years.

It has been just about a year since Jhonny Peralta was dealt from the Cleveland Indians to the Detroit Tigers. It was July 28th, 2010, and Peralta was continuing his slide from the previous season where he saw his production fall in every meaningful category. His work ethic and conditioning were often criticized and given that his listed weight had gone from 180 pounds to a suck-in-your-tummy 215, his future at shortstop seemed rather dubious.

Cleveland had decided that Peralta wasn’t going to be worth the $7.25 million option they had on him for 2011 and the Tigers decided that having half their team on the trainers table wasn’t getting them any closer to a pennant. And thus, the “other” Giovanni Soto was sent to Cleveland for an underwhelming Peralta, hitting just .246 with seven home runs over 91 games. The general reaction was a bit of a shrug of the shoulders.

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Exactly one year ago today, Tigers outfielder Brennan Boesch was hitting .312/.376/.530 — good for a .907 OPS. What happened next is not for the faint of heart.

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There are certain catchers out there — Joe Mauer, Victor Martinez, Brian McCann, Miguel Montero, just to name a few — that are automatic starts for you.  They get left in your lineup, through good starts and bad, because you know, for the most part, the level of overall production you’re going to get.  But for those that don’t own a top-rated backstop, sometimes you have to play the waiver wire and go with the hot hand.  With that, we’ll leave the top guys out and talk about some risers and fallers at the catcher position that you may want to put in, or take out, from your lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacoby Ellsbury – After spending much of 2010 on the DL, Ellsbury has had a nice break out season in 2011. The main reason for his increase in production has been the ability of the 27 year old to more hit home runs. In over 1500 PA before 2011, he hit a total of 20 home runs. In less than 1/3 that number of PA this season, he has hit 16. I believe the spike in home runs is not caused by a change in his batting profile and can not be sustained.

Note: I am gone for the week and scheduled and wrote this article ahead of time so some of the stats may be a couple days old.

There are several items to look for to see if a batter has changed in order to hit more homes. The keys are making contact with the ball more, hitting more fly balls, the direction he hits those fly balls and how far the balls travel.

First, he is putting the ball in play about the same as in the past, maybe actually a little less. His BB% (7.5%) and K% (13.5%) are both a bit higher then his career averages (6.9% and 12.1%).

The second key is that his OFFB% this year (22.9%) is a bit higher then his career value (19.8%). These fly balls have been leaving the yard more often as seen by a jump in his HR/FB% from a career number of 7.8% to 15.2%.

An increase in home runs can usually attributed to hitting the ball further or hitting the ball into shorter corner OF porches. Jose Bautista did both of these two to accomplish his recent break out.

First, here is a look at the angles (-45 is the LF line and +45 is the RF line) of the fly balls and home runs, Ellsbury, a left handed hitter, has hit over the last 3 years. A LOESS averaging curve is added to look for trends.

He has been turning on the ball a bit more in 2011 than in the 2 previous seasons. It is not the at the level that that some hitters do, but it is an improvement.

Finally, the average distance of his outfield fly balls and home runs can be examined to see if he is actually hitting the ball further.

This season Ellsbury has not hit the ball any further than in previous seasons, actually less so.

Conclusion:

There has not been a huge change in Ellsbury’s home run talent this season in my opinion. He is hitting more fly balls and more into the right field corner. On the other hand, he is hitting the ball less and a shorter distance. He may have been unlucky in hitting home runs in previous seasons and this season’s totals is a regression to the mean or this season could be his career year. Either way, I would expect his season home run total to be in the low teens in the future.

As hard as it is to concentrate with our fearless leader’s struggles on our minds, we must soldier on. Today, we’ll take a break from the National League outfield (don’t drop Nate Schierholtz until you know where Carlos Beltran will end up and what the Giants will do to fit him into the gargantuan holes in their lineup, since he could end up with the bigger part of the platoon with Cody Ross) to instead have some fun with the new statistic on our site. Yup, it’s SIERA time.

The thumbnail about SIERA is that creator Matt Swartz found that strikeout rate interacted with a pitcher’s BABIP and HR/FB. He also found that elite ground ball rates lead to better BABIPs. Because of these interactions, some pitchers should be compared to other excellent pitchers in those categories instead of being tied to the league average. We might find some aces that look better with SIERA, for sure, but it’s worth running the list in order to see who SIERA likes best. Another weapon in the fight against the luck dragon. Expect fabulous FIP-SIERA and xFIP-SIERA posts later in the week.

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Young players all around today, three of ’em for your fantasy squad…

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Zack Cozart | SS, Reds | 4% Owned (Y!) | 4% Owned (ESPN)
Prior to hyperextending his elbow during Saturday’s game against the Braves, Cincinnati Reds’ shortstop Zack Cozart was providing his ball club with great production in an area of need. Initial x-rays of Cozart’s arm came back negative, and while we don’t have a definitive time table for a return, his injury was much less serious than it could have been.

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