What should baseball general managers make of Melky Cabrera? The same question could be asked of fantasy owners. How can we predict, with any confidence, what type of season Cabrera will produce next year? The Blue Jays felt confident enough to give Cabrera a two-year, $16 million contract. And, honestly, Cabrera doesn’t have to be all that good in order to live up to that contract, as my colleague Jeff Sullivan recently explained. But fantasy owners are hoping for more than just a decent performance from Melky going forward. Based on his recent history, how he’ll perform is really anyone’s guess.

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On Saturday night, the Marlins followed up their latest salary dump by welcoming back Juan Pierre. With Logan Morrison expected to become the team’s starting first baseman, assuming he’s not traded as well, Pierre should see everyday at-bats in left field. With every other lead-off option now gone, Pierre will likely hit atop the lineup on a regular basis.

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The trade between the Toronto Blue Jays and Miami Marlins that involves approximately 37 players (give or take a few) and is still in the process of being, well, processed by the Commissioner’s Office has already been covered aplenty on the parent site, including here, here and here. And now there’s a report that the Jays will sign Melky Cabrera for $16 million over two years. What follows, then, is a very focused angle on a pair of transactions that have been and will continue to be ceaselessly talking-headed, ink-spilled and Interwebbed to death this week and next: A breakdown of the impact on the fantasy values of a handful of Blue Jays prospects.

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On a different website, I’ve made my opinions pretty clear: Joe Mauer should not catch much longer. But luckily for most fantasy owners — myself included — there seem to be no indications that the Twins will move Mauer off the backstop position anytime soon. This season, Mauer graded out as the third-best catcher at $17, trailing only NL stalwarts Buster Posey and Yadier Molina, who incidentally finished first and fourth respectively in the MVP balloting on the senior circuit.

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David Price was awfully good in 2012. So good, that he earned himself some hardware which has been hotly debated in recent days. Fortunately, I’m not here to contribute to that conversation (argument). I’m simply here to wonder if we’ve yet to see the best from Price, and if not, what we might reasonably expect in his follow up to a career season.

Looking back over the last twelve American League Cy Young winners, it appears that it’s more the norm to underperform your Cy standard. This is far from scientific, it’s merely an observation, and a small sample observation at that:

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During the 2008 World Series a few friends and I began calling Carlos Ruiz “Babe Ruiz”. The light hitting 29-year-old catcher in his second season was destroying the Tampa Bay Rays. He hit .375/.500/.688 in the five games compared to .219/.320/.300 during the regular season. We were miffed and upset that our beloved Rays were getting destroyed by Carlos F’ing Ruiz.

He’s come a long way since then.

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It seems as though Carlos Santana has been all figured out. I don’t mean that opposing pitchers have figured him out — that certainly isn’t the case. While pitchers struggle to get him out, various projection systems have him absolutely pegged.

The following table is a combination of various pre-season projections as well as his final line. The accuracy is pretty remarkable.

Everyone give a cap tip (and a follow) to our friend Dan Szymborski. He and his system came the closest to Santana’s actual numbers, but none of the projection systems were too far off base.
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Owners who hopped aboard the Mike Napoli bandwagon in 2011 (and stayed on it through injury) were handsomely rewarded with excellent value from a traditionally weak position in fantasy. 2012 drafts saw this value reflected in his pre-season rankings, and Texas’ offensive backstop slash first-baseman hybrid was coming off the board first among catchers and 44th overall (at least, in ESPN drafts). And owners who paid the high price for Napoli’s Arlington talent were correspondingly not shocked to see him slip all the way to 13th in Zach Sanders’ End of Season Catcher Rankings – most of them probably grumbling about burning a fourth-rounder or double-digit auction dollars on a guy who saw practically everything drop across the board from 2011 to 2012. Runs down from 72 to 53, runs batted in dropping similarly to 56 from 75, average crashing from 0.320 to 0.227 and even Napoli’s taters tailing off from 30 to 24 in only 15 less plate appearances. An all-around down year.

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The Marlins decision to overturn the majority of their roster on this week created ample opportunity for their minor leaguers to help your fantasy team earlier than expected.

In the outfield Giancarlo Stanton is the sole survivor of the team’s firesale leaving gapping holes center and left field. Top hitting prospect Christian Yelich will start the year at Double-A Jacksonville and his progression to be the Marlin’s everyday leftfielder will face little resistance. One can expect Yelich to post a high batting average, more than a dozen steals and moderate power. He’s an excellent player that fantasy owners in nontraditional leagues will love. I’m very high on Yelich and if it weren’t for the homerun suppression in Miami I would predict him to be a 25 homerun guy down the road. His swing is that pretty.

The best prospect the team received from Toronto was Jake Marisnick. Marisnick profiles best in a corner but their players’ lack of defensive ability has rarely stopped the Marlins from getting their bats in the lineup (See, Morrison and Coghlan). Marisnick struggled mightily in 247 Double-AA plate appearances so I expect him to return to Double-AA as Jacksonville’s centerfielder. However, he did play well in the Arizona Fall League so while its unlikely it wouldn’t be out of the question for Marisnick to breaks camp with the Fins. Ultimately, I question how good he will be. He’ll be playing outside his optimal position in a park the suppresses power. In addition to his general athleticism, power is his best attribute but his hit tool is lacking, leaving me questioning his ability to tap into his power.

The final outfielder stationed in Jacksonville will be Marcell Ozuna. I haven’t seen Ozuna play so it’s hard to comment on him other than saying his power could be very enticing to the punchless Marlins.

The Marlins could go in many different directions for their new infield but I expect Yunel Esobar to play shortstop and the recently signed Kevin Kouzmanoff to play third. Kouzmanoff, 30, is hardly special so he’ll face pressure from former first rounder Zack Cox. Cox was a standout at the University of Arkansas but I’ve long been on record as one who doubts his ability. Still, he has far more upside than Kouzmanoff if he can put things together.

This trade left the quality of the Marlins’ rotation in shambles. Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle were swapped out for Henderson Alvarez, leaving the rotation will little depth and experience. Top prospect Jose Fernandez wasn’t challenged during his short Jupiter stint so he too should be in Jacksonville. The Fish will cap his innings somewhere below the 165 mark but he could provide a very boost to your August and September statistics should be as impressive as many predict him to be.

Watching Justin Nicolino this year I saw a deceptive lefty with good control but not an impact fantasy asset. His upside is a number three starter but I project a back of the rotation innings eater. Helpful for the Marlins, not so much for you.

There are many other prospects who were affected by this deal too but there isn’t enough space to discuss them all. With so much youth and uncertainty on this roster fantasy owners should keep a close eye on the Marlins and similar teams.

Russell Martin hit a career-high 21 homers in 2012, backed by a .192 ISO that was eighth-best among catchers with 350 plate appearances. On the surface, that sounds like the mark of a pretty good season, yet Martin was ranked only 18^th in Zach Sanders’ end of season catcher rankings, behind even non-starters like Ryan Doumit, Jordan Pacheco, & Jesus Montero. He was behind Brian McCann, who suffered through the worst year of his career while fighting injury, and he was behind former teammate A.J. Ellis, who made a splash in Martin’s old home of Los Angeles.

You probably know where this is going: Sanders was in no way wrong to rank Martin as low as he did, even despite the power. In nearly every other way Martin has continued his freefall from his outstanding first few years in the bigs, and it’s difficult to see him rebounding at this point. Going back to the question Howard Bender asked here in February of “Should You Trust Russell Martin?”, well, no. Remember, this is how Bender phrased his worry about Martin after the catcher’s first year in the Bronx: Read the rest of this entry »