Carl Crawford ranked #64 in our end-of-season outfield rankings, just above A.J. Pollock, who is only valuable for defense, Matt Joyce, who’s a mildly interesting platoon player, and Ichiro Suzuki, who retired in 2009.

Objectively, that’s not that great. In a 12 team league with three starting outfield spots, it’s well below starting-caliber. But in this specific situation, we can put objectivity on hold for just a second to acknowledge that Crawford actually managed to stay on the field long enough to even find a home in the rankings. Victory! A minor victory, perhaps, but a worthwhile one nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was Leonys Martin day. In the introductory paragraph of that article, I noted that Martin was worth roughly the same $12 as Bryce Harper. So for today, let’s talk about Harper.

Let’s tackle the platoon issue first. Harper’s story has the same flow as Martin’s, albeit with massively different expectations. He’s shown substantial platoon splits, but it’s hard to draw any hard conclusions since he’s only seen lefties in 360 plate appearances. Martin is still young which led to the conclusion that he could learn to hit lefties passably. In Harper’s case, he’s incredibly young – he’ll be entering his age 21 season in 2014.

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Episode 81
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss yesterday’s blockbuster trade and the outfield crop.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 38 min of joyous analysis.

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The real baseball aspect of the trade which sent Prince Fielder to Texas and Ian Kinsler to Detroit has been covered in detail here at FanGraphs. I will give a look at how the trade affects the fantasy value of the players affected.

Winners

Jurickson Profar, Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus playing time– The three-head Texas infield monster needed to be broken up. Many people thought Kinsler would have been traded or moved to the outfield last off-season. Kinsler and Andrus now don’t have to have give up atbats to Profar. Basically, the trio would be splitting up about 1350 PA three ways (450 PA each if evenly divided). Now each hitter can hope to have over 600 each if they remain healthy. Kinsler may see a small production drop because of the new home park (92 vs 101 RHH HR PF) not being as kind to right-handed hitters, but it will be off set by the increase in plate appearances.

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It was a historically bad year for the Miami Marlins offense. Over the summer, Bradley Woodrum shared with us where the team ranked in history among the weakest attacks of years past. But at that time, the team’s wRC+ was 78. The team actually finished the season with a more pitiful 72 mark, which tied the 1981 Blue Jays for lowest mark in his last graph. Unfortunately, Giancarlo Stanton was part of this offense and this fact hampered his fantasy value. But breathe a sign of relief folks, I will not be using the words “lineup protection” anywhere in this post (besides in this sentence)!

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On the one hand, Leonys Martin represents the kind of tepid, five category production that owners in 12-team leagues can expect to find at some point on the waiver wire. On the other hand, he was worth nearly as much as Bryce Harper in 2013, clocking in at about $12. Which leaves us to ponder: what should we do about Martin?

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A fluke might not be repeatable, but it is nevertheless something that happened. And something that happened in 2013 was Raul Ibanez was pretty good — which not many people outside of the Ibanez family and maybe Jack Zduriencek thought was likely. It was such an oddity, it generated a post titled, “I’m Old and I’m Swinging For the Fences” which should win some kind of post header award in my opinion.

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The 2013 season was a season unlike anything we’ve seen from Coco Crisp. Rather than accrue the majority of his value via his steals, his stolen base numbers were cut nearly in half from his 39 bags in 2012 to just 21 this season. This year Crisp launched a career high 22 home runs, including his 100th career home run (where the present author can be seen celebrating at the 0:38 mark and again at 0:52. And yes, that is a Kurt Suzuki shirsey).

                 
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I’m not really sure what is driving the obsession here, but count me in here for a third time discussing Cardinals 1B/OF Allen Craig. The first time I wrote about The Wrench, back in late January, I questioned the almost unbearable hype he was getting that pushed his ADP to a level that almost ensured he wasn’t going to live up to everyone’s expectations. As I said back then, I wasn’t dogging him as a player as much as I was criticizing the hype machine and those who mindlessly followed it, ultimately driving his ADP to somewhere between the late third and early fifth rounds. I just didn’t see him as a player worthy of such a high draft choice, and certainly not at a position as deep as first base or the outfield. Read the rest of this entry »

If you had a fantasy playoff league, Shane Victorino helped you win RBI and any mythical HBP category, but he sure killed you everywhere else. While his (way) up and (way) down playoff run is likely what everyone will remember from 2013, the rest of it was certainly interesting from a fantasy standpoint.

Victorino’s first season in Boston was supposed to represent a bounceback from a 2012. His 93 wRC+ that year (his last year in Philly that also included a stopover in Los Angeles) dropped below 100 for the first time since 2007. Some of that was BABIP but it didn’t help that the power dropped (by a lot) and the BB% and K% rates trended the opposite direction. Cue suppressed value headed into 2013 drafts.

Signed by Boston to a somewhat controversial 3/$39 million contract in the offseason, Shanf took his antics to right field, a position he hadn’t permanently manned since 2007. His .308 wOBA during the first month of the season caused a degree of consternation in Beantown (and more fuel for the offseason skeptics), although he seemed to get better as the weather warmed up (.327 in May, .341 in June).

Most people (myself included) love to wonder “what would happen if (insert terrible switch hitter here) just gave up and started hitting from their better side, even against same-handed pitching?” Read the rest of this entry »