(A: Both.)

Disclaimer: I wrote this post about Gerardo Parra yesterday afternoon because that’s how things work over here on the West Coast. Between yesterday and this exact moment, Eno Sarris and Paul Sporer posted their most recent episode of the Sleeper and the Bust during which, at around the 45-minute mark, they coincidentally discuss Parra. (Er, Parra is the coincidence, not the podcast.)

Basically, Sarris and Sporer say pretty much everything I write here but in fewer words. So if you want to hear a couple of smart dudes discuss Parra’s rest-of-season prospects, tune in. If for some reason you’d rather engage in in what will be a more verbose, occasionally visual, absolutely not visceral experience, proceed:

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For this post, I will let my deluded ramblings — what my National League outfield analysis eventually and ostensibly becomes pretty much every time nowadays — devolve into stream of consciousness. Because this is a sentence I actually wrote but deleted: “I want to talk about Gerardo Parra.” An alternative I considered: “Let’s talk about Gerardo Parra.”

Point is, I’ve started thinking too hard about simple things and my brain is grinding to a halt. Whatever — let’s just talk about Parra. Let’s have an open dialogue about the guy who, for all intents and purposes, is having a career year this season from an offensive perspective.

Parra’s 129 wRC+ (weighted runs created) easily vanquishes his previous high (106) set back in 2011. It marks only the second time his bat has rated better than average, so you’d be lying if you told me his production thus far in 2015 hasn’t surprised you. To attest: a man who, for six years, averaged eight home runs per 600 plate appearances has hit nine in almost half the time.

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I’m always looking for new angles on National League outfielders. There are only so many of them, and only so many things can be said about the same few juggernauts.

For example, I discovered just now that Randal Grichuk has recorded the fourth-highest wins above replacement (WAR) per plate appearance for NL outfielders behind only Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutchen. It certainly surprised me, and while that’s a storyline in itself, Karl de Vries assessed Grichuk here last month, highlighting reasons for optimism and concern. (For example, his batted ball profile validates his power display but thinks his batting average deserves to drop around 45 points.)

In this same vein, it may surprise you to know the infrequently discussed David Peralta ranks seventh in WAR per plate appearance among NL outfielders with as many plate appearances as him (275) and 10th in aggregate WAR. Those figures account for his defense that, according to the metrics, rates average at best, so his value is driven primarily by his bat.

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As part of some midseason RotoGraphs shenanigans organized by Brad Johnson, the Birchwood Brothers (aka Michael and Dan Smirlock) invited me into the Birchwood Derby, a midseason re-draft league. A post-draft recap seems appropriate, mostly because this was my first midseason re-draft ever.

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For all intents and purposes, Chris Coghlan is having a pretty good season. Drafted in the supplemental first round of the 2006 June amateur draft, Coghlan earned National League Rookie of the Year honors in 2009, hitting .321/.390/.460 with nine home runs and eight stolen bases.

Then he slid into a prolonged funk, floundering for the Marlins (ha… floundering… because the mascot… is a fish… uhhhhhh) before revitalizing his career with the Cubs. After a relatively successful, but still lackluster, 2014 campaign, it seems Coghlan has finally rounded into form in 2015 at the ripe age of 30. Better later than never.

I planned to investigate Coghlan’s success independently. David Laurila, however, transcribed a recent interview with Coghlan during which they talked hitting and posted it yesterday. In it, Coghlan laid bare his philosophy and approach to hitting with refreshing honesty and transparency, creating a unique opportunity to see if Coghlan practices what he preaches as well as how or why it currently works for him.

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One time, I made some bold predictions about the 2015 season. They were, by and large, pretty terrible, as most bold predictions usually go. However, not all of them were complete losses, and it seems appropriate anyway to review them at the season’s midway point. In addition to brief analyses for each player where applicable, I also provided completely arbitrary percentages of probabilities that my remaining predictions will hit.

1. Giancarlo Stanton finishes outside the top 10… outfielders.

Dude swings so hard, he fractures his wrist. It’s incredible, and aside from getting hit in the face by a Mike Fiers fastball last year, Stanton has suffered non-freak injuries in all of his professional seasons that have caused him to miss significant time — hence, the basis of this prediction. He ranks third of all outfielders, according to the ESPN Player Rater, and six weeks of missed time gives me a solid chance here. A wrist injury is by no means a death knell for a hitter’s power, but there’s reason to believe, aside from reasons related to regression, he doesn’t match his production through the season’s first three months — as in he hits closer to 10 or 12 home runs rest-of-season rather than 15 to 20.

Probability: Read the rest of this entry »

NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

I’ll own up to it: ranking Carlos Gomez first last month was careless of me. I blindly assumed production from him when his peripherals advised otherwise. Josh Shepardson recommended cutting bait in keeper and dynasty leagues. Frankly, the long-term outlook at this moment isn’t great.

Also, I’ll own up to undervaluing Justin Upton. That was also a strangely careless oversight. Frankly, I love five-category contributors, and so should you, so I don’t know why he didn’t excite me more.

I’m going to undertake the impossibly difficult task of creating tiers by Coen Brothers films. This will probably be harder than ranking the outfielders, so go ahead and have your “so the guys in the bottom tier are actually the best?” jokes locked and loaded.

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It took a dominant 11-strikeout, zero-walk performance from Taijuan Walker for the fantasy world to finally take notice of him. I don’t have ownership trend data to exemplify this, but I do have an anecdote: he was available in every league I’m in before the start, and he was owned in every league I’m in shortly after it.

The truth is Walker had demonstrated progress, described here by Eno Sarris, in his prior four starts, notching 27 strikeouts to three walks in 29 innings. Someone who hadn’t been paying attention to Walker probably wouldn’t have noticed: his ERA prior to the recent five-game surge stood at 7.33, and he had completed the sixth inning only twice in nine games. Once a hyped prospect, he looked like a 22-year-old who still needed seasoning to reach his potential.

No longer, as you will probably have to give up an asset of value to acquire Walker from a fellow owner now. The price may not be too steep given his poor ratios (4.94 ERA, 1.39 WHIP), but this is likely the highest they’ll be for the rest of the season.

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A month before the season started, I introduced a model that predicts a Minor League hitter’s chances of Major League success based on his statistics during his most recent AAA stint. I will use that same model now to update the list of the National League’s top MLB-ready outfield prospects, the key term here being MLB-ready, not prospect — the goal is to identify players who scouts may not love but stats do.

The model looks at how a hitter once performed in AAA and compares it to his known career outcome, ultimately calculating probabilities that a certain career outcome will occur. These probabilities can then be applied to current Minor League players in order to project their currently unknown career outcomes. I discuss the model’s nitty-gritty, as well as its similarities with and potential shortcomings to Chris Mitchell’s KATOH, in the link provided in this post’s first sentence. Both models share the same goal and their methodologies are almost identical, so their results can be considered comparable; mine simply takes a more subjective approach, as I will explain shortly. This is not a turf war.

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When I decided to write this post, I already knew I would investigate which pitchers experience the largest platoon splits. I know this kind of information is helpful for daily fantasy sports (DFS), and I had yet to see someone undertake this task, although perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough. I would take a relatively simply metric, sure to ruffle the feathers of the nitpicky, and compare its magnitude against lefties to its magnitude against righties for all pitchers. The largest differences between the two rates would warrant my attention. So, too, would the smallest. (Indeed, the absolute smallest would.)

However, I got distracted, as I am wont to do. I walk into a grocery store needing bread and milk and leave with paneer, sprouted tortillas, maple bacon Kettle chips and a 32-ounce bottle of sriracha. Really, I get distracted every time I sit down to write, and I rarely write the piece I originally intended to. My point: I get distracted by things.

Things like Chris Archer, who seems to be the Major League Baseball equivalent of the The Most Interesting Man on Earth.

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We gather here today to mourn the loss of one of our dearly beloved. Jorge Soler‘s chances of earning the National League Rookie of the Year award recently walked off into the sunset, fading into a distant memory, albeit a fond memory at that. In light of Joc Pederson’s performance thus far, however, we maybe gather here today to mourn something that never existed. My heart struggles to understand how we could have possibly loved but never lost.

It seems like just yesterday that Soler was the Chicago Cubs’ safest prospect. As much was argued — nay, commanded — by our very own Scott Spratt. Indeed, another of our Scotts, surname Strandberg, once spoke of the Cubs’ embarrassment of prospect riches by leading with Soler’s name rather than Kris Bryant‘s or Javier Baez‘s or Addison Russell‘s or Arismendy Alcantara‘s or Albert Almora‘s or Kyle Schwarber’s. I think that the fault is neither Scott’s nor Scott’s; the greater fantasy baseball community had its eye on Soler. Indeed, I tabbed Soler as my NL ROY favorite. So, too, did Eno. We are all fallible.

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