Adrian Gonzalez was pretty fantasy baseball valuable this year. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ first baseman wasn’t, in the preseason, expected to be quite so fantasy baseball valuable. That made him a good deal. He was 11^th on the RotoGraphs consensus rankings list at first base coming into the 2014 campaign and finished as a top-five commodity after it.

A-Gon is kind of boring, to many fantasy baseball players. I recall conversations prior to the season in which folks basically said as much. He had the look of a reasonable consolation prize if you missed out on the sexier first basemen. A big reason was that he’d seemed to have lost the ability to contribute significant power production, which made the evaluation understandable, but which also seemed a little premature. Mike Podhorzer acknowledged that he had no notable explanations for his “bullish” ranking of Gonzalez but that folks just seemed to be undervaluing him, and Pod was right.

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It’s time to dust off those ottoneu rosters. Offseason arbitration begins today and will run through November 15. While you don’t need to make your selections immediately, it’s never too early to start formulating your plan of attack.

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You likely spent a late first round or early second round pick for him, paid $30+ to secure his services or were giddy about protecting him at a low cost in your keeper league. And then he made your heart sink. Chris Davis ranked 20th among first basemen and amazingly was outearned by the likes of teammate Steve Pearce and power-starved James Loney. This was not the follow-up we expected.

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• Jon Roegele at The Hardball Times examined the recovery success rates for Tommy John surgeries. Here are a couple of the major points.

To summarize, this examination of Tommy John surgery has shown that while the overall success rate has not seemingly improved over time, in recent years players have been able to get back on the field in the same league faster than they did when the surgery was less common.

And

As far as attrition goes, there is naturally a downward trend for return rates as players age. Comparing Tommy John survivors to all major league pitchers (injured and non-injured, in the last column) shows that recovering from the surgery tends to occur at around the same rate as typical pitchers manage to stay in the league for a given age range. Some age bands are better, some worse, but with sample sizes this small for Tommy John patients it is hard to make a definitive statement in this regard.

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It’s quite possible Albert Pujols’s obituary was written a little too soon. I wrote him off; not entirely, but basically. Projection systems liked him fairly well early on; I didn’t, mainly due to injury concerns. Perhaps, that’s indicative of the leagues I play in, and their setup – OBP leagues mostly, where he hasn’t been quite as valuable lately. Either way, I didn’t want much to do with King Albert this season. I owned him in one league – an Ottoneu points league, purchased for $23 ($400 budget). I wish I had owned him in more. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Howard has always been a charged topic on FanGraphs. He’s long been considered among the worst “values” in real baseball. Whatever complaints you may have about WAR, you probably agree it’s good enough for a quick and dirty analysis. Howard has posted -1.0 WAR over the last three seasons (yes, that’s a negative) and just 1.5 WAR over the last five seasons. Clearly, we’re not talking about a very good real world player. I won’t bother you with how much he’s been paid for that nonexistent production.

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Like seemingly every Royals hitter at some point in the last couple of years, we have been waiting for a major Eric Hosmer breakout since he debuted in 2011. He teased us with his power potential by posting a .303 ISO over about a third of a season at Double-A back in 2010, all the while making excellent contact at most of his minor league stops and even showing some speed. A first baseman who might not only sock 20+ homers, but also swipe some bags and hit for a strong batting average? Fantasy gold!

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Cory Rasmus

Why I watched: Outstanding in the bullpen, but transitioning to starting rotation.

Game(s) Watched: 9/28/14 vs Mariners

Game Thoughts

• His fastball was between 90-93 mph and was straight. It had the illusion of a rising fastball and over the course of the season has only generated a 32% GB%. He seems to only throw this pitch at the edges of the strike zone and will throw the slider or change when he needs a called strike.

• His change and slider are a tough to tell apart. They both come in at 85 mph, but the slider drops and runs more than the change. The change has been his bread and butter with a 52% GB% and a 27% SwStr%. The slider’s results have been worse than the change with a 41% GB% and 13% SwStr%. He has used the change more this past month.

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A couple months ago, Landon Jones wrote this column about Anthony Rizzo’s impressive adjustments in 2014. In that piece, Landon focused on Rizzo’s improvement against fastballs, as well as his altered approach. Obviously, not much has changed since Landon wrote that article, so I’m not going to bother retreading any territory he already covered (especially since I agree with his analysis).

However, there is one area of Rizzo’s game that I feel we could certainly talk a bit more about, and that’s his newfound ability to hit southpaws. This has always been my big reservation with Rizzo, stretching back to his days as a prospect, and it wasn’t so much a bat-speed issue for me, as it was concern regarding his swing plane.

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*Updated 10/23/2014 with Position Tiers ($5.00 USD).

The 2015 Steamer projections are up on FanGraphs! “Steamer” uses playing time projections from our depth charts, but right now there are important players (Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester for examples) missing actual projected playing time. I therefore went into mensch-mode and manually updated Plate Appearance and Innings Pitched projections – very manually, but at least somewhat rational. What I did for these players was go into their “Steamer 600” projections and took their HR, R, RBI and SB per Plate Appearance projected rates (W, SV, SO per Inning Pitched for pitchers) and outputted associated counting stats connected to the quantity of Plate Appearances/Innings Pitched.

*To see which players I manipulated, go into the “P” and “H” tabs in the below embedded file: click on the “…” tab to the left of the current depicted tab. I highlighted all names and counting stats per plate appearance or innings pitched that I edited in Yellow so that I can associate some accountability with the end-rankings. I edited a few catchers’ PA totals even though Steamer already had totals for them (Lucroy, Mesoraco, etc.). I also edited Troy Tulowitzki‘s and Carlos Gonzalez’s PA totals, because…well, you know. I could spend all month editing the PA totals, but I’m not that much of a mensch.

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