We started doing these hypotheticals earlier in the offseason as we were discussing potential keepers. Well now as we get closer to people’s drafts, our own Dan Wade has turned it into a game of Would you Rather Draft.., so I’ve decided to play along. Second base dilemma here again — Rickie Weeks or Danny Espinosa?
For Hector Noesi, cracking the starting rotation with the New York Yankees looked like no easy task. Locked in a death match with the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox for AL East supremacy, the Bombers aren’t in a position to give a second-tier prospect like Noesi a chance to prove his worth in 2012. At most, he figured to toil in middle relief while getting an occasional spot start, much like he did as a rookie this past year.
Noesi’s prospects of piling up important innings changed last week, however, as he was shipped to Seattle as part of the staggering Michael Pineda/Jesus Montero challenge trade. Noesi, 25 later this month, could also eventually be pushed out of the rotation picture with the M’s as higher-upside arms like Danny Hultzen, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker reach the majors. But for now, he has a good chance of winning a spot behind King Felix, Jason Vargas and Japanese import Hishashi Iwakuma. Noesi has garnered a reputation as a quality strike-thrower and will benefit from moving to Safeco Field, but he’ll have to prove he can miss bats with his four-pitch mix to merit consideration in most fantasy leagues.
Francisco Liriano and Jonathan Sanchez have something to prove in 2012.
Both pitchers signed one-year deals on Tuesday, avoiding arbitration with the Twins and Royals at a cost of $5.5 million and $5.6 million, respectively. Both pitchers are in their last year of arbitration and would like to be much wealthier men than they are now this time next year. In order to do that, however, both pitchers need to prove that they are more than they showed in a disappointing 2011.
The good news for fantasy owners is that if Sanchez and/or Liriano is successful in recapturing some of his previous held promise, there is value to be had on draft day. Taking both pitchers and hoping one rebounds is doable in some scenarios — namely, leagues that typically have strong candidates on the wire throughout the season — but for the vast majority of players, that plan exposes them to an unreasonable amount of risk and it virtually guarantees a failure rate no lower than 50 percent. So, which talented, but enigmatic pitcher is going to be the better bet in 2012?
Since 2008, Sanchez has never struck out fewer than 22 percent of the hitters he’s faced and never walked fewer than 11 percent. His FIP has moved less than half a run, maxing out at 4.30 and hitting a low at 3.85; his xFIP has an even smaller range, from 4.36 to 3.94. This is to say, while his ERA has swung from 3.07 to 5.01 and his WHIP has moved 1.23 to 1.45, he has been pretty much the same pitcher during that time.
In a traditional 5X5, the trade-off is pretty clear: Strikeouts for WHIP, with ERA being the factor that swings Sanchez from “survivable” to “more trouble than he’s worth”. Moving to AL isn’t going to help him tip the scales in the right direction, and I don’t see him challenging for 20 wins with this year’s Royals team — though they may be a surprisingly strong contender in a weakened AL Central. While not getting to face opposing pitchers anymore will hurt his strikeout numbers some, his upside is still there; his downside will be somewhat determined by Kansas City’s defense. Unfortunately, KC was one of the 10 worst defenses in baseball last year via plus/minus and no better than average by almost any measure. Still, while the move to KC won’t help him, Sanchez is going to be more or less they same pitcher he has been since coming into the majors.
Liriano, on the other hand, has been an absolute nightmare for owners and drafters. His seasons have been everywhere between tremendous and awful; over the last two seasons, he has been worth 7 WAR, split 6 and 1. His career xFIP is 3.57 despite the fact that he has never had a single season with an xFIP between 2.95 and 4.25. The National Library of Medicine refers to smallpox as “A Great and Terrible Scourge.” With a little reshuffling, we get an apt description of Liriano: Great or a terrible scourge.
For Liriano, it’s not about the slider, it’s about his ability to set up the slider with his four- or two-seam fastballs. In 2010, when he was one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball, he primarily threw a low-90s two-seam fastball, which he complimented with a mid-90s four-seamer and an occasional change up, which kept hitters off balance enough to leave them susceptible to his slider, which generated a 22 percent swing-and-miss rate. In 2011, he lost 2 MPH off of both fastballs and missed fewer bats with both. While his slider remained a huge part of his arsenal, losing the element of surprise that comes with it made it less effective.
Liriano’s switch from throwing predominantly a two-seam fastball in 2010 to throwing almost exclusively four-seamers in 2011 bears further study, but the troubling thing about it is that I can’t find a compelling reason for the switch. If the switch were related to the two bouts of shoulder inflammation he had, then I would expect him to switch back to the two-seamer now that the inflammation — presumably — has gone down. If it was simply a try-it-and-see switch, I would expect that a full season of ineffectiveness would compel him to switch back to the two-seamer again. The problem is, there doesn’t appear to be a single reason for the switch, making it impossible to guess whether he’ll switch back or not.
Liriano’s WHIP and ERA have fallen mostly into the same range that Sanchez’s have fallen in, the only difference being that Liriano’s FIP and xFIP are typically match his ERA irrespective of what part of the swing it’s in. So, while Sanchez is more or less the same pitcher year-to-year, who gets undone by bad luck or general regression, Liriano appears to be a completely different pitcher, which isn’t so helpful. This isn’t really a failing of xFIP or anything like that, pitchers don’t typically change their fundamentals this way.
There is a chance that Liriano puts everything together in 2012. He has the tools, we’ve seen him do it before, but even in 2010, his WHIP was still only 1.26 and his ERA 3.62. You can get that kind of production elsewhere without exposing yourself to his downside. As to the question of who would I rather have, I just don’t see enough in Liriano that makes him better than Sanchez’s guaranteed strikeouts. Liriano may have the higher ceiling and a similar floor, but until I can discern with more clarity why he completely overhauled his pitch selection from 2010 to 2011, I’m going with Sanchez, then gritting my teeth every time he issues more than 2-3 walks. Time to stock up on mouth guards.
It’s no fun when a hitter leaves Colorado. Not for the fantasy owner and, I’m sure, not for the player himself. Seriously, hitting in Coors’ Field has to be the most fun you can have as a hitter. Just ask Vinny Castilla or Dante Bichette. Unfortunately for Seth Smith he’ll no longer have that luxury as he’s now a member of the Oakland A’s.
Martinez torn his ACL on Tuesday and will likely be done for the season. The true nature of his injury, and therefore his return time, will not be known until he has surgery on his knee. He looks to be basically useless for the upcoming fantasy season. If a some owner has the option to drop him as a keeper, go ahead and let him go. There is no reason to keep a 34-year-old DH/C/1B for the entire season on the DL when some other player, that can contribute, could be kept. I could see him be drafted in all leagues and then stashed on the DL. With most fantasy teams, these DL spots will fill up with players that plan on returning rather quickly, so he may end up back on the waiver wire early in the season.
Today I continue with my projections and have decided to go with the sophomore Diamondbacks first baseman, Paul Goldschmidt. Although the excitement hasn’t truly begun yet, I could already imagine all the preview magazines hyping him as a sleeper, pushing him up draft boards. He is currently being drafted 137th overall on Mock Draft Central and 11th among first basemen.
For those of you in a hurry, the likely answer is to this question is, ahem, no.
But this is such a curiously confounding signing for the Houston Astros that I feel rather compelled to give it a little digital ink.
So — yes, Jack Cust has just signed a one year deal with a club option for 2013, which happens to be the year the Astros will be moving to the American League West. Yes, this is the very Jack Cust who turned in the .213/.344/.329 line with three home runs over 270 plate appearances in Seattle. The same Jack Cust who was picked up by the Phillies and summarily released after six games. The same Jack Cust who historically has been a particularly terrible outfielder, so you have to wonder exactly how he’s going to be used in Houston.
Houston clearly sees some potential in him. Should you and your fantasy squad see the same?
Arbitration settlements are coming in today, and two notable relievers are in the news. Francisco Rodriguez got eight million, and Juan Carlos Oviedo (aka Leo Nunez) got six million. Both are stuck behind closers that should keep their jobs if healthy — do they have any fantasy value?
As the winter draws to an end and we get closer to pitchers and catchers reporting, the Baltimore Orioles have yet to fill the role of their designated hitter, a spot left vacant when the club opted not to offer Vladimir Guerrero arbitration.
Obviously there’s still the ability to sign a DH-type player such as Hideki Matsui, Carlos Pena or Johnny Damon, but according to Buster Olney and MLB Trade Rumors, they don’t seem too high on the idea. If that’s really the case and the Orioles fill the job in-house by using the DH-by-committee approach, then that fact coupled with the recent Nick Markakis abdominal surgery opens the door for a very interesting late round sleeper pick — Matt Angle.
The migration of players from San Diego to Cincinnati continued on Monday — albeit with a stopover in Pittsburgh — as Ryan Ludwick signed a one-year deal with the Reds. Assuming some unforeseen incident doesn’t keep Ludwick from suiting up for Dusty Baker, it will be Ludwick’s fourth club — and third in the NL Central — since opening day 2010.
Since leaving St. Louis at the 2010 trade deadline, Ludwick has struggled to make a real impact for either his team or in a fantasy sense. He hit .228/.301/.358 with 17 HR in the 160 games he spent in San Diego and a slightly better .232/.341/.330 with 2 HR during his abbreviated stint with the Pirates at the end of the 2011. So, is there any hope that Ludwick will return to the kind of production he showed during his four years in St. Louis when he hit .280/.349/.507? Read the rest of this entry »