For the past year-plus, Kendrys Morales has been an expert in worst case scenarios. Injure yourself in a walkoff celebration, miss a full year in the aftermath, and see your team promote a promising young stud and acquire the best player in the league — both at your position — and you can come to define the term.

Are things looking up now? Teammates like Peter Bourjos raved at the power Morales showed in his first live batting practice in over a year on Monday. What if he gets it together? What might a best-case scenario for the 28-year-old switch-hitting Cuban first baseman look like? How could things break just right for him?

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On MockDraftCentral.com, there have been more than 450 drafts completed to date, while there is plenty of disagreement on who should get taken when, there is a clear break between the top five and everyone else. The five guys atop the list are the only five to have garnered a number one overall pick (other than an over-aggressive Robinson Cano selection) and the only five who haven’t fallen outside the top 10. All five have an average draft position (ADP) below 4.75 and no one else is below 8.5.

Matt Kemp, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Jose Bautista, and Troy Tulowitzki have established themselves as the top options in the minds of the populace. I am not one to argue with the populace, and if I had a top five pick, I would use it one of these five – but I do think the masses have drafted these five in the wrong order.

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As Eno Sarris alluded to it yesterday, but the defections of Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder to the American League have left behind an ugly scene at first base in the Senior Circuit. Joey Votto is clearly the best player at the position in the National League now, and the gap between him and the second best first baseman might be bigger than the gap between the number one and two players at any other position. With Ryan Braun likely to miss the first third of the season, the decision for first overall pick in NL-only leagues is down to Votto and Matt Kemp.

The second best fantasy first baseman in the National League is up for debate, though I only see two realistic candidates: Lance Berkman and Mike Morse. Ryan Howard would certainly be in that mix if we knew he was going to be in the lineup on Opening Day (we don’t), and as much as I like Freddie Freeman and (particularly) Ike Davis, they’re a notch below those those guys at the moment. Paul Goldschmidt, Michael Cuddyer, Todd Helton, Yonder Alonso, and Lucas Duda are below those guys, and then it really starts to get ugly.

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How many times have we heard this before…?

“It’s just a stupid game.”

“I always thought I’d end up with someone who played sports, not watched them on their computer.”

“What do you mean you can’t come to my sister’s rehearsal dinner because you have a draft?”

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I aim to please. In trying to come up with a topic for today’s post, I read the applause to Jeff Zimmerman’s 2B ADP article, and in particular the plea to see a similar post for all positions. Well what readers want, readers get. Although I have periodically taken a look at Mock Draft Central’s ADP results in past weeks and covered some early overvalued and undervalued pitchers, here is how the entire set of AL pitchers are being drafted.

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Mock Draft Central is currently running mock drafts and I will look at how second basemen are being taken in those drafts. Besides the data Mock Draft Central provides, I have added in the approximate round the player would have been taken in a 12-team draft and the difference between the earliest and latest the player was drafted. First, here is a list of the second basemen with their draft stats:
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Yesterday, I started this series by looking at one of the most disappointing position players in all of baseball last year — no, not Alex Rios, Pedro Alvarez — so it’s only fair to look at pitchers next.

A player can be disappointing or overrated without actually being bad, it’s really more of a question of the expectations he was facing going into the season. Brian Matusz was disappointing to be sure, but he was also just flat out bad. Like Alvarez, he had shown some promise in 2010 when he went 10-12 with a 4.30 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP and the expectation was that he would build on that in 2011. Instead, he posted the highest ERA since 1901 by a pitcher who made at least 10 starts, 10.69, and added a WHIP of 2.11. Matusz has a host of other associated stats that make him look terrible, but perhaps the most telling is his OPS+ against. Opposing hitters posted an OPS+ of 204 against him; no hitter has posted a full season OPS+ of 200 or greater since Barry Bonds did it in 2004. Matusz turned every opposing hitter into Bonds circa 1993. Read the rest of this entry »

There may not be a better value pick among closers this year than Jordan Walden. While much of the closer buzz is around Craig Kimbrel, Walden appears to be a poor man’s version of the number one roto reliever. While at lesser rates, Walden can also provide a high strikeout total, tally up saves, and accrue a superb ERA. Even though Walden is one of six projected closers with a strikeout rate at 26.5% or higher, it is doubtful that he ever reaches the 100 strikeout barrier as Kimbrel did in his rookie season. However, that does not mean that the two are entirely dissimilar.

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Boston’s right field just may have become a little more fantasy friendly as the club signed Cody Ross to a one year, $3M contract the other day.  Initial plans are likely to platoon Ross and Ryan Sweeney, but if both perform as they have done so in the past, Ross should end up with the lion’s share of starts while Sweeney is relegated to a late-inning defensive replacement-type role.  That would certainly put Ross on the map for both AL-only and deeper mixed leagues.

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