2014 Pod Projections: Manny Machado
Today’s Pod Projection is the Orioles young third sacker, Manny Machado. In his first full season, the sophomore accumulated a mightily impressive 6.2 WAR. Unfortunately, his season ended with a serious knee injury that required surgery. As a result, he may not be ready for opening day and the uncertainty is reducing his draft cost.
2014 Pod Projection Index:
Plate Appearances: 600
Last season, Machado recorded 710 plate appearances, which tied for the seventh highest total in baseball. Remaining healthy (nearly) all season, while batting second for a solid lineup contributed to the inflated total. But his recovery from surgery now clouds his outlook and it’s anyone’s guess when exactly he’s healthy enough to be in the lineup. Of course, even when he does return, you never know if he will have additional health problems during the season related to the knee.
K%: 16.3%
It’s a smidgen worse than the 15.9% mark he posted last season, but a sustaining of the improvement he made from his 2012 debut. He generally posted mid-teen strikeout rate marks in the minors and posted slightly above league average Contact% and SwStk% marks.
GB%/LD%/FB%: 46%/20%/34%
This distribution is essentially his career average that includes his 2012. The line drive rate is a bit higher due to the fluky low 13.9% mark he posted in 2012 that is dragging down his average.
BABIP: .300
This was one of the areas Machado seemingly got lucky in as he hit pop-ups at the eighth highest rate among all qualified hitters. As we know, pop-ups are essentially automatic outs, so it’s difficult to maintain a high BABIP when such a high rate of your batted balls are assured of finding gloves. Machado posted the highest BABIP among all qualified hitters with at least a 15% IFFB%. Of that group, the unweighted average BABIP was just .286 (Machado posted a .322 mark). Furthermore, he posted sub-.300 BABIP marks at every minor league stop (excluding his small sample stint at Low-A in 2010). While all this seems to suggest that maybe a .300 BABIP might actually still be too high, he did hit a solid rate of liners and has enough speed to take advantage of his ground ball tilt.
HR/FB Ratio: 9.5%
He posted a somewhat disappointing 7.9% mark last year and generally didn’t show a whole lot of home run power in the minors either. However, his xHR/FB rate was a much better 12.6%, as he pulled the ball frequently and tended to mix in shorter fly balls with longer bombs, which lead to more homers than if he had consistently been average. While many will predict that some of his American League leading 51 doubles will turn into home runs, research suggests that this does not actually happen. Still, given his age and pedigree, one would assume his power will increase.
Runs and RBI: 72 and 66
He was at 88 and 71, respectively, last year, but with the decline in plate appearances comes a decline in these counting stats. The Orioles lineup could look a bit different this year with question marks at the bottom of the lineup given their second base and left field battles.
SB: 6
Machado was successful on just six of his 13 stolen base attempts last year. I am projecting a better success rate this season, but given his recovery from knee surgery, assume he will run a bit less frequently.
Below is my final projected fantasy batting line, along with the other systems for comparison.
| System | AB | AVG | HR | R | RBI | SB | K% | BABIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pod | 558 | 0.268 | 15 | 72 | 66 | 6 | 16.3% | 0.300 |
| Steamer | 434 | 0.268 | 12 | 59 | 52 | 7 | 15.2% | 0.294 |
| Oliver | 560 | 0.288 | 14 | 72 | 73 | 9 | 15.5% | 0.322 |
| Fans (31) | 578 | 0.284 | 15 | 82 | 65 | 6 | 15.9% | 0.318 |
There’s some disagreement over his batting average, while the home run projections are remarkably close (extrapolating the Steamer projection to the same number of at-bats yields about 15 home runs as well). Oliver is certainly unaware of Machado’s knee injury, as it is not only projecting a better success rate on the base paths, but also the same number of attempts in 110 fewer plate appearances.
While the knee surgery has calmed the hype a bit, I still feel that Machado is massively overvalued. I’m not sure what drafters are expecting, since it’s clear I’m not that much more pessimistic than the other systems. Machado’s NFBC ADP is 113th overall, yet my projected line valued him as just the 203rd most valuable player in a similar 15-team league format.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
I think people are excited about his long term projection more than single season. Great keeper league asset, not so much as a one year player.
I just traded him in Brad’s home league (for an equally priced $15 Rizzo); I think, especially in keeper leagues, people think youth and pedigree and don’t think that it might take some time for the fantasy results to emerge. With any sort of inflation, that makes him not really keeper-worthy, and this year – even before the injury – I felt that his esteem was also influenced by his real-world value (e.g. awesome defense). He doesn’t run, he doesn’t hit a significant number of bombs, etc. And while BB% only matters in OBP/OPS leagues, his at the MLB level suggests he has some work to do. I’m not saying he isn’t really impressive, just not for this year, anyway. I’d rather have a sure thing at first, a position that – and I could be wrong – seems thinner than one generally assumes.
Is rizzo really a sure thing though?
Rizzo seems to have the same pedegree/potential/hype issues as Machado, if not worse.
At least in my leagues, Rizzo was hyped going into 2013, and when he only put up an ok year, the hype has fizzled. Also that year in those leagues, Machado was relatively ignored, but his first full year seemed to pump up his name value. As for being sure, I don’t know, having a 287 FB distance, solid walk and k rates, and health, is, well, pretty sure. I’m not saying he’s all that (he isn’t), but one less position to worry about going into the draft. At that price, he doesn’t have to win a league, just not lose it, and I think he’ll be fine at that.
Despite all the reasons for regression you listed, I noticed Zips, Oliver and the 31 fans expect Machado’s wRC+ to increase next year, with Steamer projecting the essentially the same as 2013. His walk rate should increase considering his 10.24% ML BB%, as should his power as he goes into his age 22 season and his HR/FB rate normalizes from 7.9%.
He’s certainly overvalued as a fantasy player, probably because so much of his real-life value comes from defense. Interestingly, the knee injury will probably affect his defense more than offense, which justifies the projection consensus that his defensive value will roughly halve.
A.L. only keeper league. Traded Machado for T. Walker. Our league would require owner to extend Machado 5$ per year to keep him long term. Ex. 3yrs= 15$-L3. I have Walker for 2yrs at 5$.
Then traded Walker for K. Suzuki 2$ cheap catcher, Middlebrooks 5$, and 2- top Minor draft picks in 2014. Have A.Sanchez, Quintana and Salazar on staff with plenty of options in Auction this year. Verlander, Sale, Price etc.
Cool story.
trying to wrap my head around the hype with Machado. talking longterm here- if he’s not projected to be a 30+ HR guy or a guy that will steal 15+ then he’s David Wright without the speed or Longoria without the power. so it sounds like at best we are we talking about a good Ryan Zimmerman – 25HR with a BA north of .300?
what am i missing here, Zimmerman is not elite and barely a keeper in most formats unless his value is great. is it worth carrying Machado for another 3+ years to get a line of 25/90/.305/6. that’s very good but hardly elite at anything but BA.
If he moves back to shortstop at some point those numbers are elite.
There’s a decent chance that at some point in the next 10 years he hits 30 HRs and slashes something like 330/400/500 while eligible at short (I’m not trying to be precise). That’s a pretty valuable season, but if he already costs $15 and that season might not happen for 6 years, I think he’s over-valued.