In March, Jeff Sullivan wrote a fantastic article about Garrett Richards. Jeff praised his increased strikeout rate from 2014, but more importantly, he pointed out the biggest key to Richards’ improvement: Hitters could no longer pull the ball in the air against him. In 2014, “Richards started to make sense. He’s become one of the easiest pitchers in baseball to explain.”

Unfortunately, that progression vanished completely in 2015, and Richards reverted back into a mystery. He’s back to being one of those frustrating pitchers who possesses great stuff, but can’t seem to put it all together. He’s the kind of guy who passes the eye test, but doesn’t produce the numbers to match it. He just seems like he should be better than he is. So, why isn’t he?

The home-run ball isn’t a huge problem in general for Richards in his professional career. Throughout his six pro seasons, he’s been a little better than league-average in that department, from A-ball to the majors. However, in 2014, he posted a truly elite 0.27 HR/9 rate, and opposing hitters slugged a league-worst (or best, if you’re Richards) .261 against him.

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Welcome to the annual series: ‘A Minor (League) Review of 2015.” This series is a great way to receive a quick recap of the ’15 minor league season for your favorite club(s), while also receiving a brief look toward the 2016 season and beyond. It can also be a handy feature for fantasy baseball players in keeper and Dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Jake Lamb, 3B: Taken in the sixth round of the 2012 draft, I spoke to a front office member of the Diamondbacks that winter and he identified Lamb as someone they thought would turn into a steal. Fast forward a few years and that prediction was right on the money. Injuries have held back Lamb a bit but he’ll likely open 2016 as the club’s starting third baseman. He has some home run pop but isn’t a prototypical slugger. Still, he has an excellent all-around game and should hit for a solid average.

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It’s Holiday time. Here is my Holiday present to you: 2016 Fantasy Baseball Rankings and $ Values using Steamer Projections and NFBC’s Format: (2)c,1b,2b,3b,ss,ci,mi,(5)of,u,(9)p and (17)bench spots.

For review, I’ll discuss the approach after the rankings, but you can check out Zach’s FVARz series of posts as well. Zach and I do a few things differently, but I use this template over others, such as SGP because I like how hands-on it allows you to be when ranking your projections. It allows for both pragmatism (drafting a certain number of players within a specific position for your league format) and objectivity (focusing on the Z-Sum/5×5 value of each player). I will describe below:

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Today I continue reviewing my preseason posts and this time I will bravely recap how my Pod Projection fared against the Steamer projection for Zack Greinke. As we are all well aware, Greinke just so happened to lead all Major League starters in ERA, en route to a second place finish in the Cy Young voting. Sadly, Greinke wiggled his way into a Steamer and I post because Steamer was significantly more optimistic about his performance than Pod was. I guess we know how this is going to go…

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The 2015 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 we’ve yet to look at relievers, let’s prepare for the holiday season by taking a glance at the top 300 overall players.

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Kyle Gibson ranked 64th in Zach Sanders’ end of season rankings, which in terms of real-life utility puts a guy somewhere between Nos. 2-3 starter territory, but depending on the league, on the back-end or streamer landscape based on how many teams you play with or format.

The names Gibson finished in front of aren’t particularly impressive, nor is the fact that he threw nearly 200 innings while many of his contemporaries threw far fewer than that in the 60-69 range. But it’s not like Gibson is certainly a finished product; maybe there’s more than meets the eye?

There are a few inalienable facts about Gibson:

1. He’s incredibly tall
2. He’s older than most think
3. He throws a bowling-ball sinker
   a. It gets a ton of grounders

On the age thing, he’s two years older than Madison Bumgarner and has thrown more than 700 fewer big league innings. And clearly there are mitigating factors here, such as Bumgarner being a high school draft pick and Gibson spending significant time at Missouri. Besides that, Gibson missed a large chunk of time due to Tommy John surgery, so it’s not terribly surprising that he’ll spend his final pre-arb season at age-28. In fact, Gibson was born on the day between Games 5 and 6 of the 1987 World Series — which his Minnesota Twins won. Read the rest of this entry »

My headline would’ve been way better if Todd Frazier was traded somewhere south of Cincinnati. It’s pretty dope, though, right? RIGHT? He was the centerpiece to a three-team trade with the Dodgers, White Sox, and of course the Reds. The Dodgers and Reds each got a three-pack of prospects which we’ll get to shortly, but first let’s focus on Frazier with the White Sox.

Third base has long been an issue for the White Sox. In fact, when they first hired Robin Ventura it was to be the third baseman again, but after informed them that he was 44 years old and wouldn’t be any better than the dregs they were running out there already, he shifted into the manager’s role and they went with Orlando Hudson (50 wRC+ in 51 games) and Brent Morel (11 in 35) before getting the last bit of juice out of Kevin Youkilis for the second half of the season (110 in 80 and then he was done after just 28 games with NYY the following season).

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Welcome to the annual series: ‘A Minor (League) Review of 2015.” This series is a great way to receive a quick recap of the ’15 minor league season for your favorite club(s), while also receiving a brief look toward the 2016 season and beyond. It can also be a handy feature for fantasy baseball players in keeper and Dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Ben Paulsen, 1B: An overaged rookie, Paulsen appeared in 91 games for the Rockies and added another 20 games in the outfield. He took advantage of the friendly confines of his home park, which helped him overcome an ugly BB-K rate of 23-92 in 116 games. Paulsen was almost hopeless against left-handed pitching so you can forget about him playing everyday — he had a 35 wRC+ against them. Newly-signed Mark Reynolds should help ensure the soon-to-be-sophomore first baseman avoids southpaws almost entirely in 2016 — assuming Paulsen makes the roster.

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• Yadier Molina had a torn ligament replaced in his thumb. He had the same procedure done two months ago.

The need for a second surgery means that Molina will not be fully cleared for the start of Spring Train-ing, general manager John Mozeliak confirmed on Wednesday. The Cardinals do expect him to be ready by Opening Day, Mozeliak added, but that will ultimately be determined by how quickly Molina can regain strength in that thumb.

To try to expedite the healing and limit mobility, Molina will wear a full cast for the next several weeks.

“I think by the end of January, the cast should be off and then he’ll begin his strengthening exercises throughout the month of February and March,” Mozeliak said. “The biggest question will be: When will he swing a bat? They don’t feel like any of this should affect how he catches or when he can catch, but to have him ready by Opening Day, [swinging] will really be the test.”

Sounds like Molina’s production level will come down for a bit, but, as always, the full extent is not known yet. Looking at some past similar injuries, 50% of the players took 60-74 days to return which is in line with the Cardinals report. Additionally, no instances exist of the return taking more than 74 days.

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A few years ago, I had a fantasy team that won a title in part thanks to a certain fantasy stud named Mike whose last name just happens to be the name of a fish.* My wife – not exactly a baseball fan, though she spends more time around the game than she might wish – thought I should go all in: cut everyone NOT named after a fish and build a team entirely of fish-themed players.

No matter how many times I tell her this would be nearly impossible, she insists I should try (in much the same way I insist that my son should try putting away his toys when he insists he needs help). So today, I try to build a fish-themed team, and look for other, potentially more successful themes.

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