For the first time in 14 seasons, Bobby Abreu failed to record double-digit totals in both home runs and stolen bases.  He picked up 21 steals this season, but his power fell off considerably as he only hit 8 home runs and posted his lowest ISO (.112) since his very first cup of coffee with the Astros in 1996.  And for the second consecutive season, he posted a batting average in the .250’s, also reminiscent of his late 90’s time in Houston.  Now, no one wants to be the one left holding the bag when the bottom falls out on a star player, so the question that fantasy owners must ask themselves on Draft Day 2012 is, “Is he done or can we squeeze one more productive season out of him?”

Read the rest of this entry »

With the core background work done on my hitter evaluations, I have decided to apply the process to second basemen for 2012. This ranking is based off of all player’s stats given the same number of PA. This a look to see which players are the most talented. You can follow the process with this spreadsheet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I covered the players who went undrafted and finished as some of the top offensive players of the year, as well as those players who were drafted, but who were unable to provide the type of value their owners expected.

The last piece of the puzzle is, of course, the players who added value. Obviously it’s important to get good value out of your top few pick, but these are the players who take a team from good to stacked. The only player in this set who was consistently drafted before pick 100 was Curtis Granderson, who was typically the 91st or 92nd pick, meaning it would absolutely have been possible in a 10-team to draft Miguel Cabrera and Matt Kemp early, then supplement them later with Granderson, Carlos Beltran, and David Ortiz, while using the middle rounds to stock up on pitching.

Obviously we can all construct an ideal draft after the season’s over; hindsight is a harsh mistress that way. If you weren’t able to draft perfectly, these are the players who helped soften the blow of a mistake like Carl Crawford, Joe Mauer, or Kendrys Morales in the early rounds. The number in parentheses is their ADP minus their oRank. Read the rest of this entry »

After a sub-par 2010 and an injury riddled 2009, Jose Reyes burst back onto the scene in a big way this season. The 28-year-old had his best season per wOBA, finishing with a mark of .386, 20 points above his previous career high. He was great in the fantasy world as well, ending the season as the 29th rated player according to Yahoo! after coming in 103rd in 2010. The season likely wasn’t as good compared with his 2006-2008 years when he finished with more home runs, RBI, runs, hits and steals, but relative to league average it was a fine effort. When trying to predict what he’ll do in 2012 there are a few factors you need to consider.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is a grind. It’s 162 games played nearly every day over a six-month period. By extension, then, the fantasy version of this unending onslaught of a sport can be — and often is — just as overwhelming.

Look, it happens: Late-summer hits and the portion of your brain that was tending to your fantasy baseball team on a regular basis instead shifts its focus to other things, like vacation, fantasy football or the hot chick named Tiffany who spent the summer as a lifeguard at the local beach and hung out all the time at your favorite bar.

That’s why, unless your team was good enough to be in contention all the way down to the stretch run, chances are, you missed out on a few things as the season wore on, particularly into August and September. That’s when the non-contenders tend to check out (if they haven’t done so weeks before), but it’s also about the time that even those chasing after that elusive championship start suffering from tunnel vision as their eyes become focused solely on the prize.

Now that we’re a couple weeks removed from the crush and rush of the final days of the fantasy season, allow me to point out a batch of American League outfielders who performed better than you might have realized, thanks to end-of-season surges or new opportunities. There just might be a nugget or two in here that you didn’t notice the first time around. You know, while you were too busy ogling Tiffany.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not news to say that Clayton Kershaw had a fantastic 2011, and we’ll know on November 17th if it was good enough for the Baseball Writers Association to hand him any hardware because of his efforts. What’s been so interesting to research is how Kershaw has evolved over the last four years from a very good 4-win player to an elite 7-win player.

Kershaw has been good pretty much from the moment he arrived Los Angeles, but even throughout very successful 2009 and 2010 campaigns, he had his limitations. His walks were out of control, he struggled against right handed batters, and because he pitched like he was trying to strike out every batter, his pitch counts kept him from going deep into games. It’s almost as if Kershaw systematically addressed every single one of his shortcomings in the off-season to become something of a superhero version of himself.

What follows is a graphical homage to his ability to adapt, and to just be freakishly good.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Lee is best known for the 6 year, $100M contract he signed with the Astros. While he has not lived up to it as a player, he has be a serviceable fantasy option. His home run power has been going down steadily and it is degrading his fantasy value.

The 35-year-old is seeing his power numbers take a nose dive over the past few years. His home run total have gone down each year starting in 2006 with 37 HR and ending with 18 in 2011. The drop in power can be attributed to his inability to hit the ball as far. Here is a graph of his home run and fly ball distances over the past 4 years with a LOESS averaging curve added:

Read the rest of this entry »

In my first two parts of this series, I looked at the stats to be examined when evaluating hitters and projecting Runs and RBIs. Today, I am going to take a look at projecting plate appearanes (PAs) and stolen bases (SBs).

Plate Appearances

With projections, I find the most error and room for improvement is with playing time. An owner needs to have a hitter playing and accumulating as many PAs as possible. The more PAs, the more counting stats they can hope to generate.

Read the rest of this entry »

On a team accused of aging quickly — though the space-time continuum has something to say about that — Domonic Brown is the youngest, most exciting offensive piece. But now he’s spent two seasons on the quad-A shuttle and all he has to show for it are some mediocre-looking statistics. Is he still on his way up? Is he a decent keeper?

Read the rest of this entry »

When Jonathan Lucroy singled in the 7th inning of Sunday’s NLCS to plate an insurance run for the Brewers, I couldn’t help but think about what a nice surprise he was this year and the prospects of going back after him in next year’s draft.  With a .265-12-59 batting line, no one would dare protect him in a keeper league despite an obvious low cost.  However, in deeper fantasy leagues or leagues that require you to start two catchers, he could end up one of those staples; a guy you quietly draft every year and get solid, not phenomenal but solid, production from without concern.

Read the rest of this entry »