Ahem, no. Let’s just get that out of the way.
The fact is, Alvarez is hitting .196/.260/.380 off left handed pitchers and his strikeout rate is 37%. For a bigger sample size, in nearly 300 plate appearances in his career, he’s hitting .205/.279/.348 versus lefties with a 37.5% strikeout rate. That’s Lucas Duda territory, and we know where he is right now. You don’t want him in your lineup versus a left handed pitcher if you can avoid it.
Leading up to Tuesday’s trade deadline each of Major League Baseball’s teams had to decide if they were buyers or sellers. At some point fantasy owners will need to make the same determination and while it’s lovely to be in the money, it’s important to move your assets quickly if you’re not. If you’re selling or have a minor league roster spot open, target Cincinnati’s Robert Stephenson before the rest of your league catches on.
Stephenson joins Californian starters Aaron Sanchez, Taijuan Walker and Joe Ross as one of several high upside pitchers from the area who slipped in the draft in recent years. Now, teams who past over these highly regarded arms are kicking themselves now; their stocks have boomed and each ranks highly on the Bullpen Banter Mid-Season Top 100 and similar lists. Due to his promotion I was able to catch the rising star’s debut with the Dayton Dragons on Minor League Baseball TV and I couldn’t have been more impressed with his development. Read the rest of this entry »
There are so many ways to evaluate the trades over the past week or so, up to and including trade deadline day itself. In the interest of being as niche as possible, let’s look solely at the fantasy values of prospecty types whose roles for the rest of 2012 only could be — or already have been — impacted by the wheelings and dealings.
The players listed below are ranked in a very rough order of how much fantasy relevance they have from today through the end of this season only, based on a combination of their individual talent and their potential opportunity that opened up in the wake of a trade. Given that there’s only two months’ worth of games left, there’s a considerable skew toward players who have already been called up (or who could be soon), even if their current or future skillset rates behind some of the players below them.
Mike Olt! (I add the exclamation point not only out of exuberance at seeing his promotion to the majors, but mostly because I simply cannot hear his name without saying it like, well, this.) After an entire season of destroying Texas League pitching with a .427 wOBA, the soon-to-be 24-year-old top prospect made his debut for the Rangers on Thursday night, hitting eighth and playing first base.
There’s no shortage of excitement surrounding Olt, the 49th overall pick in 2010. Regarded as a fine defensive third baseman, his 28 homers were second in the minors behind only Royals prospect Wil Myers, and so it’s no surprise that when teams were offering pitchers like Zack Greinke and Josh Johnson to the Rangers at the deadline, Olt was the name they all were after, along with Jurickson Profar. Given what rough shape third base is in around the bigs these days, it’s not hard to see why a power bat who can actually field the position was in such high demand, and Texas understandably refused to part with him.
Unfortunately for Olt, Texas happens to have one of the few third basemen playing at a high level on both sides of the ball, and Adrian Beltre isn’t going anywhere for a while. That’s why Olt began to see time at first base and right field as his time in the minors began to wear down, though it’s being reported that Olt would play the outfield “only in an emergency situation” for the Rangers at this point. Other than the occasional day off for Beltre, Olt’s role is expected to be limited to first base and designated hitter, mainly against lefty pitching. Read the rest of this entry »
As you are reading this, I am headed down some highway on my way to Cincinnati. Today’s Roto Riteup is brought to you by summer: baseball and good times.
• I don’t know how many times I can talk about Todd Frazier in an article or mention him in the comment section. I am just such a fan boy. So far he’s making my love of him seem justified, as he has three home runs in past seven games. He’s still horrifically under-valued and under owned. He’s owned in a mere 13% of Yahoo! leagues and 10% of ESPN leagues. If he’s still available, please, for my sake: go pick him up.
Read the rest of this entry »
• Just a few hours after last night’s Bullpen Report was published, the Rangers touched up Angels’ closer Ernesto Frieri for four runs (three earned) on three hits and a walk to be charged with his first blown save of the season. As an Angel, Frieri held opponents scoreless in 26.1 consecutive innings up until July 15th, but hasn’t been his dominant self as of late. The struggles seem to stem from the 1.8 K/BB (2.77 K/BB on the year) and the three long balls he’s surrendered in the last seven outings as his ERA with the Angels climbed from 0.00 to 1.95 over that short time. Despite the recent bumps in the road, Frieri is still the reliever to own in Anaheim, especially with Scott Downs hitting the DL.
Read the rest of this entry »
Missing out on Randall Delgado in all of the Ryan Dempster-related mess was surely something of a disappointment for the Cubs, but credit the Cubs’ brass for getting a piece of value in Arodys Vizcaino. The 21-year-old Vizcaino was Baseball America’s 40th best prospect heading into the season and while Tommy John surgery will keep him from building on that promise this season, it matters little to a franchise whose aspirations are for the future rather than the present, and all it cost them was the National League’s fifth best pitcher in the month of July.
Paul Maholm started the season poorly, giving up six runs in both of his first two starts and striking out just four to help soften the blow to owners’ ERA, but then seemed to find a groove. Over his next four starts, Maholm looked like a totally different pitcher, giving up no more than a run per start and actually racking up a few strikeouts. He regressed as expected, though his results were more middling than actually bad, until he was absolutely rocked by the Diamondbacks on June 23.
It was on the back of that outing in which he gave up six earned runs in just over three innings of work without recording a single strikeout that the new Maholm emerged. Over his next 45 innings, Maholm allowed just five runs, walked just nine hitters and has struck out 32, good for a 6.4 K/9 over that span. Sure, 6.4 isn’t actually a good K/9 mark, but almost a full strikeout higher than his career rate.
It’s Maholm’s inability to miss bats that makes me especially wary about his move to Atlanta. The Braves aren’t particularly adept at turning groundballs — Maholm’s specialty — into outs. They’re allowing a higher team BABIP than the Cubs are by a full 10 points, and much of that comes from their outfield defense, which is certainly above average. The move to Turner Field from Wrigley will help Maholm in the sense that he has given up far more home runs to righties than he has to lefties — nine to three so far this year — and his new park is particularly tough for right-handed hitters to homer in, but I wonder if his platoon splits will become more exaggerated in his new home.
While Maholm gives up more home runs to righties, he actually performs much better against them overall, allowing them a .240/.306/.388 line compared to the .304/.377/.476 line he allows to lefties. While Wrigley suppresses left-handed home runs especially early in the season to the tune of a 95 left-handed home run park factor, Turner is far more favorable with a left handed home run park factor of 104. Don’t be surprised if Maholm gets even tougher on righties now that he doesn’t have to worry as much about giving up as many cheap home runs, but equally don’t be surprised if the .853 OPS he allows to lefties climbs even closer to .900 with the shorter home porch.
It is to Maholm’s credit that there isn’t one specific thing he’s changed with respect to his pitch usage that has precipitated this run of excellent form, but it does make me feel like we’ve seen this from Maholm before. Even in the seasons where he’s a solidly above average pitcher on the whole, he tends to fluctuate between runs of being average and then being well above average rather than pitching at or near the same level all year. The takeaway here isn’t that Maholm is going to be a bad pitcher in Atlanta or that owners should be dropping Maholm and picking up Casey Coleman or anything like that, but if there’s someone in your leagues that’s hurting for pitching, Maholm might bring back an oversized return with a month’s worth of good starts bolstering his resume. Theo Epstein and company did an admirable job transmuting Maholm into a solid return, now might be a good time for fantasy owners to do the same before the other shoe drops.
For as far back as I could remember,even before I was bitten by the fantasy bug, the MLB trade deadline was one of the most exciting times of the year. Hearing the rumors, listening intently as deals are announced and just the general wheeling and dealing that takes place as the year’s haves and have nots make arrangements for their respective futures. The experience has intensified over the years as the game has evolved, contracts have become what they are and free agency has taken center stage. And of course, now that I am neck deep in the fantasy racket, it has taken on a whole new life. But sometimes, this euphoric time of year that I long for each summer, can get awfully stressful and if the scales of justice are tipping one way and not the other, I find myself saddened and depressed as my favorite time of year just came up and kicked me in the groin. Read the rest of this entry »
Domonic Brown is back in the bigs. He was once projected by Bill James to go 30/30, so obviously he has the tools to stick in the major leagues. But just as obvious is the fact that he’s not the same prospect he once was. He’s probably the most interesting position player that finds himself with an everyday job after the trade deadline, nonetheless.