Right now I am in the middle of writing preseason player profiles for several publications. Like most people, I examine a player’s stat page for most of the information. Additionally, I have access to our database and have created some cheat sheets to help with looking for possible changes in a hitter’s profile to help explain stat changes like a significant bump in home runs. Today, I’ll start with making my hitter sheet available and go over a few players with the information.

I find hitters to be the tougher than pitchers to determine if changes in production are from a new approach or from just plain luck. To help find such changes in approach, I determine changes in several metrics which would point to an overall talent adjustment. The stats I examine are:

Swing based
Pull%
GB%
Hard%

Eye base
BB%
K%

Read the rest of this entry »

A little while ago, a bunch of industry dudes participated in a way-too-early slow mock draft aptly dubbed the Too Early (#2Early) Mock. On Tuesday, I dissected the team I drafted with some limited analysis for each pick. Some people find this helpful, entertaining, what-have-you. Personally — and while a particular owner’s strategy is certainly interesting to ponder — I prefer a more macro characterization of the draft.

There are several ways to approach something like this, the most prominent of which, in my mind, being to comb through each round or to comb through each position. I’ll take the latter route here, identifying a “reach” and a “steal” (or plural) at each position.

I rely heavily on my own projections and rankings come draft day. Alas, I must apply a caveat to this analysis: these reaches and steals are more of, uh, feelings. Like, it feels too late or it feels like a great price. I hope I can support some of these feelings with evidence. I typically hate relying on feelings, given I’m all about doing away with emotion, biases, and impaired thought processes to exploit market inefficiencies. But, hey. Let’s give this a shot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Asdrubal Cabrera has had a number of up and down seasons in the past few years, and from my outside perspective it seems to be, at least in some part, related to a significant quadriceps injury he suffered in 2013 (view the video). Cabrera entered the 2013 season as a two time All Star shortstop, and during the first two months he was off to a pretty standard Asdrubal Cabrera type season: above average offense and mediocre defense.  After this injury, from which he missed three weeks of playing time, he languished offensively for more than two entire months.  From June 26th, the day he returned, until September 4th, he produced a miserable .221/.276/.329 line with .267 wOBA and 65 wRC+. From September 6th on, he went back to his more standard .272/.330/.519 with .368 wOBA and 134 wRC+.  With the benefit of hindsight, we can all agree he likely came back from his quad injury too soon. 

The struggles of the 2013 season may have prepared Cabrera for his 2016 campaign, as it turned out to be very similar to 2013 in many ways.  During spring training, Cabrera suffered another quadriceps related injury, this time to his patellar tendon, the bit that connects your kneecap to your lower leg.  This injury served to plague him throughout the season, leading him to the disabled list in early August after suffering what, to me anyway, looked like a potentially serious injury (view the video).  Similar to 2013, Cabrera came back from this injury exceptionally quickly, this time missing only 18 games, but, unlike 2013, this time came back with a fury. And a new hair color.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all have our Brokeback Mountain players. Not that you have a physical desire for them — more that you “just can’t quit” them. Yes, Brett Lawrie has an eighteen pack and is more yoked than 95% of the players I’ve seen in a clubhouse, but the reasons I couldn’t quit him were more statistical in nature: he was young when he debuted, he had above-average results in terms of contact, power, patience, and speed early on. He had pedigree! And he was yoked.

By now, of course, I’ve managed to ween myself of Mr. FortyHands. Finally. He just got worse as time went on and never lived up to that pedigree. I’m hoping that the script for me and Carlos Correa goes differently.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was bearish on Addison Russell heading into the 2016 season. It had far more to do with his likely placement in the Cubs’ batting order than his actual performance expectations. Because he recorded all his plate appearances from the bottom half of the order, he amassed just 598 of them, despite remaining healthy all season and missing nary a game due to injury. That hurt his counting stats, though aside from his mediocre runs scored total, were still fairly strong from a fantasy contribution perspective. They could have been better, of course. A spot in the bottom half of the lineup had something to do with his rank of just 16 in fantasy earnings among shortstops (17 if you include Jean Segura). So although his home run total jumped from 13 to 21 and ISO spiked from .147 to .179, he was still a disappointment to fantasy owners.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Hot Stove is underway and we’ve got you covered when moves happen. You will see Jeff Zimmerman and me alternating on the coverage of moves. His first piece on the Braves moves, Howie Kendrick, and Kendrys Morales can be found here and you can follow the Hot Stove Implications tag for all of the pieces throughout the winter.

Athletics trade Danny Valencia to Mariners for Paul Blackburn

Valencia is out here collecting teams like they’re Pokémon. The Mariners will be his seventh team since reaching the majors in 2010. He might finally get his first full season of work since 2011, too. Valencia has always raked lefties with a career .873 OPS and only once has he been below .822 (and he had just 56 PA that season).

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been widely known since last winter that this free agent class would be a pretty brutal one, with much of the legitimately intriguing hot stove action taking place on the trade front. Outside of a couple of marquee names available, it’s more spare parts than anything to be had without having to surrender assets. This is especially true as it relates to third base, perhaps to the most extreme extent.

Only seven players that would fall under the third base category are set to hit the free agent market:

• Andres Blanco
• Aaron Hill
• Casey McGehee
• Adam Rosales
• Ruben Tejada
• Justin Turner
• Luis Valbuena

If you’re looking for a stopgap third baseman who can log a fair amount of games at the position and provide legitimate value, that number decreases even more. In fact, we’re talking about a list that probably only includes a small trio of this group: Hill, Valbuena, and, the only legitimate prize of the group, Justin Turner. And even that’s stretching it a bit, as only Turner had enough at-bats to qualify among the offensive leaders at the position in 2016.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eduardo Nunez: 2017 Projection

The 29-year-old Nunez went from being a Twins bench player to a top-40 fantasy player. Looking over his year-to-year profile he was basically the same player he’s been for his career, but he was given a full season of plate appearances for the first time in 2016. For example, his 2016 triple slash line (.288/.325/.432) is almost identical to his 2015 line (.282/.327/.431).

Two small differences, besides the playing time which was a huge difference, were important with his 2016 season. The first was an improving power profile.

I am a little worried the home runs may not be as high playing in San Francisco, but they should be in the double digits.

Read the rest of this entry »

The growing game of Ottoneu has a ton of great features that set the fantasy platform apart from the masses, but few are more unique than the annual arbitration process.  Now concluded across all leagues, arbitration (a 30 day process) unofficially launches what is a very busy off-season for Ottoneu owners.

As a quick reminder, Ottoneu arbitration enables each league owner to “correct” the market value of players whose salaries appear too low.  It’s an economic counter-balance to traditional dynasty rules that often let owners dominate a league for years if they amass the right players at the right prices.  Here is the actual arbitration rule:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you joined me for yesterday’s Way Too Early Rankings, I spent most of the article discussing the ridiculous depth atop the shortstop depth chart. The first seven guys are stars. The eighth guy is Jean Segura (unlisted in the linked article). He’s one repeat season away from joining the fantasy stars of the position.

As with second base, shortstop is typically a place you go in the late rounds for stolen bases and empty batting average. That’s all changed. While it’s not as deep as second base, there are enough high quality options for most leagues.

The breakout seasons of 2016 fell into two categories: young players getting their first shot and mushroom-fueled veterans. You know the one I’m talking about, it’s red with white polka dots. Using these two profiles, let’s try to predict who might outperform expectations in 2017.

Before we continue, I want to be clear about something. Most of what we’re discussing below can be categorized as exceedingly unlikely. I’m just trying to find players who may improve in some kind of predictable way.

Read the rest of this entry »