Piggybacking off of Howard Bender’s post from earlier last week, I am going to follow up with three more players that I wouldn’t draft this year either. Sometimes guys fall to you and you have almost no choice but to take them, but these are three guys I won’t be following closely on draft day.

Adam Lind: While I like his opportunity to rack up the RBIs in the middle of what should be a potent Toronto lineup, most of Lind’s game is lackluster and worrisome. Yes, he has hit at least 20 home runs in each of the past three years, but his dwindling average and poor on base skills lead to plenty of easy outs on Lind’s end. In leagues that account for average he is bad and if they account for OBP he is worse. With only one season with a wRC+ over 100, Lind is a below average hitter compared to the league and is far below average compared to first basemen. His best traits, his homers and his RBI total, are not even tremendously impressive.
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As someone who drafted and trusted Matt Thornton last year with one of my closer spots, I made sure to pick up his handcuff after that awful first week for the White Sox’s left-handed reliever. I was extremely happy with what Santos provided the rest of the way through, specifically during the first part of his closer tenure in Chicago. Over his first 20 innings, he recorded six saves and allowed no runs.

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After batting exactly .300 with over 20 home runs and 20 steals in two consecutive seasons, Shin-Soo Choo’s fantasy value was at an all-time high entering last year. I was all aboard the Soo Choo train, and owned him throughout his frustrating injury plagued season. The Korean outfielder hit just .251 with eight home runs and 12 steals in 358 plate appearances. It was a disappointing season, to say the least.

The poor season was certainly unfortunate, but this may be the perfect time to take advantage of his cheap price and acquire him at a discount. A broken thumb last season seems to be the biggest reason for his struggles, along with a DUI and an oblique injury. The thumb injury would have the most correlation with the poor numbers though, as his plate discipline numbers remained consistent with past performances but his power and BABIP both dropped.

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Matt Garza’s first four seasons in the Major Leagues were all very comparable. His ERA fluctuated between 3.69 and 3.81 while his FIP was between 4.18 and 4.42 in each season. Garza’s performance was becoming easily predictable, until he altered his pitching style last season.

Last year, Garza got away from the fastball and sinker heavy approach that he utilized in Tampa Bay. It seems as though Tampa instills a primary pitch philosophy, in which they utilize their four seam fastball, two seam fastball, or sinker more frequently than most teams. During Garza’s time in Tampa Bay, from 2008-2010, the Rays finished eighth in combined four seam, two seam, and sinker rate at 60.7%.
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Eno Sarris published the staff’s reliever rankings earlier today, and now it’s my turn to dissect them. I have written a ton of articles on relievers since coming over to RotoGraphs in late January, so if you want to look at my specific feelings on certain relievers, you can just click my name over on the right hand side of the screen and see my in depth thoughts.

– The first thing I noticed on these rankings is how close John Axford and Joel Hanrahan are. I have commented on this a few times this year and see Hanrahan as an undervalued reliever, with the only slight against him being the possibility for a future trade.

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The Cardinal’s new manager, Mike Matheny, officially named Jason Motte closer a few weeks ago, but pretty much everyone expected him to land the gig even before the announcement. Motte finished last season in the role and had a solid postseason as the ninth inning man under Tony La Russa, with an 8-1 strikeout-to-walk rate and a 2.19 ERA in 12.1 October innings.

More than just being a useful closer, Motte has developed into a top notch pitcher. He has seen his K/BB rate increase in each of the past three seasons, from 2.35 to 3.00 to 3.94. It appears that he is getting more comfortable on the mound each year removed from his transition from catcher to pitcher, which is a logical reason for his continued improvement. He also ditched the curveball that he threw 11% of the time in 2009, which was a rather ineffective pitch.
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When Brennan Boesch got off to a great start in 2010, I was one of the many who pointed out why he was certainly due for a regression in the largest way, and you probably were too. On July 9 that season, Boesch was hitting .345/.402/.600 with 12 home runs, 48 RBI, and 34 R. He was extremely useful in fantasy over that stretch, but most who follow advanced stats knew that the performance was bound to decline.

His BABIP at that time was .390, which was the first sign that the season seemed inauthentic. On top of that, Boesch was coming off of a season at double-A in which he posted a .318 OBP and a 5.8% walk rate. He had also never appeared on Baseball America’s list of top-10 Tiger prospects. He slowed down significantly after that date, hitting .166/.237/.227 for the remainder of that year.
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He is not going to strikeout many batters, he relies heavily on a sinkerball while the Tigers have assembled one of the worst infield defenses in recent memory, and Steamer projections have him at a 4.42 ERA this year. Even so, I still see reasons to believe that Doug Fister may duplicate last year’s performance.

The main reason for my support of Fister is how different his repertoire was last year compared to the previous year and a half of his Major League career.
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