Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is a little bare in the Mets system. There aren’t a lot of surefire studs on the way but there is an interesting collection of toolsy players with potential.

The Graduate: Brandon Nimmo, OF: The Mets didn’t receive much offensive value from their rookies in 2017 but Nimmo was the outlier. Despite a lot of swing-and-miss to his game (28% K rate), he has a lot of patience as witnessed by his 15% walk rate. He doesn’t have the foot speed to take full advantage of his hefty .379 on-base percentage but he still might score a lot of runs if moved to the No. 2 hole in the lineup. He currently possesses more gap pop than over-the-fence power but that could change down the line. Nimmo, 24, has a good shot at a starting gig in 2018.

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Spin rate is becoming ever more important to baseball analysis now that we have access to more reliable measurement devices. Namely, Trackman. But there are other technologies as well which are being used by high school, college, and minor league teams. Trackman is the big name, though, since it has been adopted by MLB, NPB and KBO along with many colleges and even a few high schools.

Trackman uses Doppler radar to measure the movement of the ball. I want to paint a picture in your mind of what this may look like, in the eyes of the radar. Remember, we’re trying to track the ball here. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani will unquestionably be the toughest rank for anyone all year just for the vast number of unknown variables, especially since we’re not even sure where’s going to play yet. In my October SP rankings, I didn’t include Ohtani because we weren’t even sure that he was coming over 100%. Now that the posting system issue is settled and he’s officially coming over, I’ve dropped him into the rankings at 31. I’ve made plenty of changes to the October rankings as I’m in full research mode and will have an update after the New Year, but here’s a look at those just above and below Ohtani:

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For all of the talk of the increase in power in 2017, the number of 20-homer hitters among shortstops decreased from 13 to 10. Yet a few players at the position did have dramatic power surges, and none was more notable than Francisco Lindor’s. He led all shortstops with 33 home runs, besting Didi Gregorius and Paul DeJong by eight (though DeJong and Carlos Correa could have made it a contest if they had approached Lindor’s 723 plate appearances). Not only did he more than double his prior season’s total of 15 home runs, but Lindor increased his doubles from 30 to 44 and his Iso from .134 to .232.

There is not much mystery as to the source of Lindor’s newfound power. While his average exit velocity ticked slightly downward from 88.5 to 88.1 mph (per Baseball Savant), his average launch angle soared from 7.7 to 13.7 degrees. More airborne balls meant that Lindor was hitting for greater distance, but he also made more frequent outs on balls in play. After batting .313 and .301 in 2015 an 2016, respectively, his overall batting average dropped to .273, even though he struck out at the lowest rate of his career. His career BABIP trend reads as follows: .348, .324, 275.
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About a week ago, I compared rankings with some actual ADP. One player which stood out was Rougned Odor. He ranked 47th overall (AVG vs OBP league) and it’s tough to rank a person so high who hit only .204 last season. Steamer projections currently have him back up to a .255 AVG. Acceptable but not great.

Additionally, Odor comes to the plate hacking and rarely walks (4.2% for his career) so almost all of his value comes from his BABIP. If his batted balls don’t fall for hits, he’s not getting on base. Since his value is so BABIP driven, I decided to see what the BABIP bounce-back chances were for low-walk hitters.

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And it’s evident you should now pay attention to him. Jeff Sullivan wrote about Miles Mikolas here — Sullivan does a good job of summarizing Mikolas’ skill set and how he’ll succeed stateside. Which is helpful. But, for fantasy purposes, it doesn’t help us a whole lot in terms of exactly what we should expect. Not that that’s Sullivan’s fault. He doesn’t keep a cross-league projection system in his brain.

So when you see a Tweet like this — from NEIFI Analytics, which FanGraphs has featured previously — it’s hard to ignore:

Congrats, Cardinals. Per NEIFI, Mikolas handily outperforms Jake Arrieta over next three seasons. Massive bargain, fantastic bet to be the most underrated FA of 2017 class.

— NEIFI Analytics (@NEIFIco) December 5, 2017

Then again, there are Tweets like this from ZiPS’ own Dan Szymborski:

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Let’s get this out of the way. The article title is click bait. DJ LeMahieu is a good player with strong two category production – of course he’s rosterable. However, I’m here to explain why he’s less than the sum of his parts. Ideally, LeMahieu is a backup middle infielder on your fantasy roster. Since he’s unlikely to come cheaply on draft day, let somebody else deal with the aches and pains of managing him.

This article isn’t only about LeMahieu. He’s simply a representative example of a particularly difficult-to-manage player profile: guys with no power, no speed, and positive value. Some other examples include Odubel Herrera, Jed Lowrie, Joe Mauer*, and Josh Reddick. It should also be noted that I’m specifically referring to Roto leagues. The following points do not apply to most H2H or points formats.

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We are finally starting to see some moves trickle in during what has been a relatively quiet offseason thus far. The Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Ohtani sagas remain out in front this winter, but at least we’ll have a resolution on the latter no later than December 23rd after Ohtani’s posting and the three-week window he has to get signed. In the meantime, let’s look at the flurry of activity over the last few days:

• To LAA: Jim Johnson and International Bonus Money
• To ATL: Justin Kelly

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Here’s today’s chat transcript which includes a wide range of topics and a lot of focus on dynasty strategy.

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Alas, we have finally reached our final 2017 preseason article recap! Welllll, this one shouldn’t have been the last one, but no one wants to read a recap of my David Dahl Pod Projection, right? So we wrap things up by reviewing my Pod Projection for curveball aficionado Lance McCullers, who was coming off around 200 innings of 3.22 ERA ball supported by strong skills over his first two seasons. Health was a question mark, but there was no doubting his talent. Let’s remind ourselves what I forecasted for his 2017 performance and how he actually performed.

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