Nelson Cruz got a one year deal with the Orioles last year and had a career season. He had career highs in Home Runs, RBIs and Runs. Most people considered him an after thought on draft or auction day. He ended up as one of the great buys of the 2014 season and he paid his owners handsomely. Well, he is a free agent again and he is probably looking at worse (or a lot worse) home run numbers depending on where he signs.

His 40 league leading home runs where completely unexpected. Or were they? I am just going to look at his home run totals using Inside Edge batted ball data.

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Your first instinct when hearing the Jason Heyward is now a Cardinal might be to discount him in fantasy circles. After all, his power has been waning already, and now he’s moving from a park with a 100 park factor for lefty home runs to one that has a 96 park factor (or 97 and 92 respectively if you use StatCorner’s numbers).

But it’s not that simple.

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I felt very strongly about Marcell Ozuna coming into the season, writing a lengthy piece in which I wondered if a balky wrist was to blame for his 2013 power outage. I also used one of my “Bold Predictions” to claim that the 23-year-old would hit more than 20 homers, one year removed from hitting just three long balls in 291 plate appearances.

I’ve already had the opportunity to pat myself on the back for getting this one right, so let’s dig into how Ozuna transformed from our preseason No. 85 fantasy outfielder into the season’s No. 27 player at the position. (As I noted in my Bold Predictions recap column, his average fly-ball distance increased by a ridiculous 36 feet, from 255.5 feet last year to 291.5 feet in 2014, which is a pretty darn good place to start.)

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The ottoneu offseason is great simply because it’s an actual offseason. All other popular fantasy platforms fall into a winter coma unless the commissioner moves the league to a spreadsheet. While other leagues are snoozing, ottoneu arbitration season is over and trade season has just begun. Today’s lesson isn’t about the trade market, it’s an exhortation to avoid an ottoneu faux pas.
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I told you Corey Dickerson was going to go 25/10 this season and while he missed those milestones by one homer and two steals, you should have listened to my prognostication! Of course, I failed to do so myself, as I drafted Dickerson in a total of zero leagues. That proved to be a mistake, as Dickerson completed a breakout year that resulted in fantasy earnings ranking him 15th among outfielders and 37th overall. That’s pretty crazy for someone ranked as our 77th best outfielder in our preseason consensus.

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The 2014 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. While the RotoGraphs crew will continue to break down the outfield class, this is an excellent opportunity to look at the overall rankings.

The players were ranked based on their 2014 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and standard 5×5 roto fantasy leagues, where only one catcher is started. Players are listed only at their primary positions from 2014.

One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth. These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. A player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

This year, I’ve added in RotoGraphs’ preseason consensus rankings so you can see what we thought of each player coming into the year. This ranking can be found in the “Pre” column, and our individual preseason top-300 ranks are broken out. “EOS” of course stands for End Of Season, and the rest should be self explanatory. With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

My list of pitchers I want to look at is getting a little thin. Let me know if you have any suggestions. I have access to MiLB.tv  so I can also look at some minor leaguers.

Jeremy Hellickson

Why I watched: Recent rumors of him getting traded.

Game(s) Watched: 9/19/14 vs White Sox

Game Thoughts

• His two stop windup drives me nuts. Here are three examples at the 25 sec to the 50 sec mark from his start before the one I watched.

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I guess I could have said Austin Jackson hates rain since everyone thinks it pours 365 in the Emerald City, but then again, Safeco Field is civilized enough to have a roof so inclement weather doesn’t really apply. Digression. The point is, Austin Jackson, after the post-non-waiver-trading-deadline thing was pretty bad as a member of the Seattle Mariners. And in fantasy circles, pretty bad is generally accepted as being something one wants to avoid should one like winning shiny things. The question of course is was his level of badness, in a non-Michael-Jackson badness way, some product of dumb luck? Or is he going to, as Mike Tyson once said, “fade into Bolivian.”

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Santana ranked 26th on Zach Sanders’ rankings, behind Drew Stubbs and ahead of Lorenzo Cain.

The Twins have been painfully short on innovation the last four years — not incidentally all 90-loss seasons — but one of the most creative things the club has done was moving infielder Danny Santana from the infield to center field.

The beginning to Aaron Hicks’ career has not been pretty, and with the Twins’ pre-Fuld outfield loaded with trudgers like Josh Willingham, Chris Parmelee and Oswaldo Arcia, it was clear the club needed another option in center. In fact, even with Sam Fuld around both he and Hicks suffered concussions right around the same time — necessitating another option out there.

Santana came up in early May and stayed up for good. He played shortstop for about the first week and then was pretty much a full-time center fielder with the exception of a couple spurts at short — one a little ways down the road and then to end the season.

And that might be where Santana, whose minor league track record clearly doesn’t match what he did this year, will end up. The early indications from new Twins manager Paul Molitor is that Santana will likely be the club’s regular shortstop, which not only creates a second hold in a ghastly Twins outfield — left field being the other — but displaces the erstwhile Eduardo Escobar, who in fact had a rather nice season at that spot (.275/.315/.406). Read the rest of this entry »

Entering 2014, A.J. Pollock was seen as a league average hitter with excellent center field defense. The combination ensured that he would see plenty of action with the Diamondbacks. His ability to steal a few bases marked him as a useful, if unexciting, fantasy option.

Pollock looked like a fantasy monster early in the season. He posted a healthy .316/.366/.544 line in 177 plate appearances through the end of May, when a broken hand sidelined him for three months. A .370 BABIP and .237 ISO buoyed his numbers. Upon returning from injury, he hit .273/.326/.386 in 95 plate appearances which is more in keeping with his career numbers.

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