You know a team failed to make a big offseason splash when their biggest highlight is when some Grammy-winning artist from New Zealand says her big hit was inspired by George Brett signing a bunch of baseballs. But so it goes for the Kansas City Royals as they made just a few minor tweaks to get themselves ready for a run at the playoffs in 2014. One of the tweaks, though, was the acquisition of a new right fielder, somewhat of a problem spot for them last season. So let’s take a look at that move and what fantasy owners can expect from the Kansas City outfield this season. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been an interesting ride for the Twins veteran southpaw Glen Perkins. After about a season and a half’s worth of starts back in 2008 and 2009, the organization apparently decided that they had seen enough. Can you blame them? Sure, he suffered from elbow and shoulder issues that could have hampered his performance, but he also endured two straight years of sub-4.5 K/9 marks! That’s not going to get it done. He then spent the majority of the 2010 season pitching for the Triple-A club.

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It is getting into weekly/daily injury report season for each hurt player until the season starts. All of these reports will be in the spreadsheet unless there is a change is status. Otherwise, not a ton of news this week.

• Cory Luebke will miss all of 2014 with Tommy John surgery. Expect longer than a year for him to rehab since it is his second TJS.

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It isn’t quite fair to say that Clay Buchholz broke out because of his change-up. In fact, Colin Zarzycki found a much more reasonable explanation and wrote about it in his FanGraphs+ player cap. Buchholz also threw the pitch less than he’d ever thrown it before, so it’s kind of weird to focus on it. But the pitch is pretty excellent, and maybe it could have told us that more swinging strikes were on the way. And if it did tell us that, perhaps we can use that knowledge to spot a couple more pitchers that under-performed in the strikeout category last year.

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The Marlins haven’t made the playoffs in a decade or had a winning season since 2009; morever, their record has declined every season  since they last broke even, culminating in a 100-loss season last year in spite of the presence of feared slugger Giancarlo Stanton and a solid pitching staff led by phenom Jose Fernandez. The spell of losing understandably puts pressure on Miami’s farm system to produce, and one member of their organization upon whom a considerable amount rests is 2013 first-rounder Colin Moran. A highly-touted college third baseman out of UNC, Moran was selected sixth overall in the past draft and was polished enough to immediately flirt with the .300 mark in full-season ball; he also was deemed polished enough for the Arizona Fall League after just 42 games of professional experience. In this piece, I’ll look at how Moran projects and if he can eventually help a Marlins team that hit just .231/.293/.335 this past season.

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For a team that’s consistently had a postseason presence in recent years, the Tigers will unveil a dramatically different infield this upcoming season. The organization authored perhaps the biggest trade of the offseason, sending slugger Prince Fielder to Texas for second baseman Ian Kinsler. Futhermore, Miguel Cabrera should transition back to first base, while the door opens for top prospect Nick Castellanos to man the hot corner.

Significant changes, but the unwavering piece of the Tigers’ infield, at least in terms of fantasy production, will be Miguel Cabrera. He’s the best hitter on the planet and is probably the consensus number-two fantasy option behind Mike Trout. He may have captured the Triple Crown in 2012, but his 2013 season was unquestionably better. The 30-year-old superstar hit .348/.442/.636 with 44 home runs, and his 192 wRC+ was the highest of his career by a healthy margin.

There’s not much to offer in terms of fantasy analysis on Miguel Cabrera. He’s amazing. He will provide elite production in all major categories, aside from stolen bases. The other thing to love about Miggy is that he’s accumulated at least 600 plate appearances in 10-consecutive seasons. He’s as close to a sure thing as one can get in fantasy baseball.

Around the remainder of the infield, though, we have some things to discuss. And in general, I’m not excited about what the Tigers’ infield offers for fantasy owners in terms of production and value.

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The draw in Anthony Rizzo is his very impressive power, but a career .174 ISO in over 1200 plate appearances is at least somewhat worrisome when you are looking to draft Rizzo and hoping the power shows at the MLB level.

At the end of last season, J.P. Breen covered Rizzo and what to make of him. Breen did a great job of detailing the struggles Rizzo had against lefties and the fact that he had previously been fine against southpaws. With a 115 wRC+ against righties and a 72 wRC+ against lefties, any improvement at all against lefties would be a huge help to his fantasy value.
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If you look at the individual player pages for each of the projected Detroit starters, you’ll see that the most recent article in which three of them were tagged was written by me. I’ll summarize the guys I’ve already written about this offseason and then cover the other two.

The only Tiger starter that Steamer projects to have a higher WAR than they did last year is Rick Porcello. I’m with Steamer in thinking Porcello can improve, but unlike Steamer, I think the improvement could be more than slight. Porcello improved in a lot of areas last year. Most notably, he went away from using his sinker as much and moved those extra pitches over to his breaking and off speed stuff. That helped him raise his strikeout rate to league average, and it didn’t hurt his above average ground ball rate. In fact, his ground ball percentage was higher than ever last year. He also improved significantly in a couple of areas in which he had really struggled. He didn’t give up hard contact as much as he had in the past as his ISO allowed was one of the 30 lowest in the league. And after the first month of the year, he almost never gave up anything hard to right-handers. He also got much better out of the stretch. His strikeout minus walk rate out of the stretch was about 3.5% before last year but jumped up to 7.3% last year.

It will be up to Porcello to continue to improve in those areas or at least maintain the gains he made last year. But there’s a factor outside his control that could help him improve this year. In fact, it’s something that will work in favor of all Tiger starters. That’s the presumably improved infield defense. Although the pitcher most likely to benefit from that improved infield is Porcello because he’s easily the most ground ball heavy pitcher in the rotation. Below is a chart showing the runs above or below average (DEF) for the Tigers who played the most at each infield spot last year and the Oliver projected DEF for the Tigers most likely to play the most innings at each infield spot this year. Read the rest of this entry »

To paraphrase (horribly butcher?) A Tale of Two Cities, prospects are the best of times and the worst of times for ottoneu owners. At least based on the number of questions I get about them.

The joy of ottoneu is you can sign that Double-A SS with the big bat and hope he develops into a star. The problem is how to find the right prospect. For every Mike Trout, there is an Andy Marte. Actually, for every Trout, there are about a billion Marte’s. And the chances are you, like me, are not a prospect evaluator, which makes it awfully hard to tell the difference.

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After the Indians released incumbent closer Chris Perez at the end of last season, the team was without a stopper heading into the offseason. The team decided to cross that off their shopping list by signing former Brewers closer John Axford. After three seasons of saving games in Milwaukee, Axford lost his job so early in 2013 that he failed to record even one save. Now, Cleveland is hoping that he rebounds and that the mechanical changes he made while in St. Louis not only sticks, but was actually the root cause of his struggles in the first place.

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