I’ll spare you my typically wordy, self promoting intro that usually goes here. In no particular order:

1. The Minnesota Twins finish near .500.

Right off the top I know this one sounds crazy, but hear me out. As I wrote elsewhere, not only does bringing in Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes help stabilize the rotation, but at this very second in spring training pitchers who threw nearly 400 innings for the club last year are battling for the No. 5 spot in the rotation (Vance Worley, Scott Diamond, Samuel Deduno, and Kyle Gibson). That represents nearly 45 percent of innings thrown by Twins starters last year. Read the rest of this entry »

An extraordinarily polarizing player in drafts this year is Cincinnati Reds speedster Billy Hamilton. Especially so in 5×5 and traditional leagues, where one could make the argument where Hamilton is almost a Babe Ruth-like talent.

Wait, what?

Well, it’s true. Sort of. Hamilton stole 88 bases between Triple-A and the majors last year. He swiped an ungodly 155 between three levels the year before that. In 2011, 103.

Last year, 12 teams stole over 100 bases, with just four over 120. Hamilton alone — in a best-case scenario, that is — could find himself on that list if the Reds let him run wild.

So while calling him a Ruthian talent is certainly hyperbolic, he’s the kind of talent that alone would easily win a category outright in those traditional style leagues.

Maybe *could* is a better word that would, though. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees bullpen will have a drastically different look in 2014, if for no other reason than that the back end will be propped up by someone other than Mariano Rivera for the first time since 1997. Think about that for a second: Rivera is the bridge from John Wetteland to David Robertson.

Rivera isn’t the only one gone from a bullpen which ranked 20th in ERA, 26th in FIP, but 6th in K/9. Also gone from last year are Joba Chamberlain — addition by subtraction, in the eyes of most Yankees fans — and Boone Logan — just plain subtraction — as well as even David Huff, whose 34.2 innings as a swingman aren’t completely insignificant.

The Yankees didn’t pour any money into the bullpen in the offseason, instead focusing on adding Masahiro Tanaka and retaining Hiroki Kuroda in to an otherwise ordinary rotation. This means that the club will likely have to find somewhere between 150-200 innings out of guys who were non-factors for the Bombers in 2013. That is, previous lower-tier guys as well as minor league fill-ins.

The Closer

David Robertson (9.9 K/9, 2.97 ERA, 35 saves via 2014 Steamer Projections)

After six straight years of 10.0-plus K/9, for some reason Steamer thinks Robertson will take a slight step back as he inherits the closer’s role. It certainly won’t be easy to replace immortality, but in reality Robertson has been nails from the get-go, with a career K/9 of 11.7, an ERA of 2.76, and FIPs that are more or less exactly in line with it. Robertson missed a few less bats last year — still a solid 10.5 per 9 — but found some extra grounders en route to an outstanding 2.04 ERA. To me, Steamer is a bit down on a guy who I think has a shot to be an elite closer right out of the gate. This Yankees team may not be amazing, but I think they’ll be good enough for me to take the over on Steamer’s 35 saves projection. Robertson is legit. Read the rest of this entry »

With the exception of catcher, the Rays bring back the entirely same infield unit from the 2013 season. It’s a fantastic group defensively, but for all intents and purposes there are only two strong fantasy factors.

The Starting Unit

1B James Loney (2014 Steamer Projection .271/.328/.398 | .316 wOBA)

Loney is not one of the strong fantasy factors, though his rebound last year was nothing short of, well, what the Rays do with guys like him. To that end, re-upping with the Rays might have been the smart move. The .299/.348/.430 line from last year is nice, if a bit short on thump for a first baseman, and doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Loney was awesome in the first half (.315/.366/.466), and rather pedestrian in the second (.276/.322/.378). More befuddling yet is that he had a .291 wOBA at home (.261 BABIP), and a .385 mark on the road (.391 BABIP). Projection systems seem to think Loney’s slated for a bit of a bump, but to me there are a lot of entanglements here. My guess is the Rays view him as a +2.5-3.0 win first baseman — largely because I think his defense is viewed in a more positive light than metrics suggest — and that a little regression offensively can be withstood as long as he doesn’t fall back into the 2012 abyss. For my money, he has to hit more like 2013 — or his 2014 Oliver — to even merit back-end consideration in deep leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins infield will not have a drastically different look personnel-wise from last year, but that isn’t to say there hasn’t been some shuffling of the deck chairs.

Quasi-catcher Ryan Doumit was shipped off to the Braves, and Justin Morneau signed with the Rockies after an August deal sent him to the Pirates. Infield mainstay Joe Mauer is shifting over to first, and the latest reports seem to suggest that newcomer Kurt Suzuki will get the first crack at reps behind the plate catching a largely re-made rotation.

Given this, here’s a peek at the Twins infield situation heading into the 2014 campaign:

The Givens

1B Joe Mauer (2014 Steamer Projection .297/.388/.439 | .361 wOBA) Read the rest of this entry »

After trade talks regarding Brandon Phillips failed to drum up even a modicum of interest –thanks to being owed $50 million over the next four years, of course — the Reds return the exact same starting unit on a position-by-position basis that dominated playing time for the club during the 2013 season.

In fact, if one subtracts catcher, where Devin Mesoraco and Ryan Hanigan split time last year, the Reds return an infield that combined to start 614 of a possible 648 games last year (94.8%).

That isn’t necessarily a good thing, however. For all the grief and guff Joey Votto took from people over his RBI totals, he was the sole survivor in an infield full of offensive disappointments. Read the rest of this entry »

As a group last year, the Mariners outfield ranked 20th in wOBA (.312, tied with Oakland). It wasn’t a group without power (most home runs at 84; sixth in ISO at .165), but that power came with a 22.7% strikeout rate (fifth-highest).

Most of those home runs are gone, too. Raul Ibanez hit 29 of them, and he’s with the Angels. Same with Michael Morse (13, Giants) and Jason Bay (11, idfk). That’s 53 home runs that walked out the door, with just Michael Saunders (12) and what’s left of Franklin Gutierrez (10 in just 151 PA) remaining among those with more than four round-trippers last year.

Outfield was a clear focus for the club this offseason, and in fact may still be until the Nelson Cruz situation plays out. However, it doesn’t appear that Cruz is a great fit for this unit. It isn’t that he wouldn’t likely be an upgrade on paper, but that the Mariners have too much invested — time or otherwise — in players who need to produce or risk being passed over. Primarily, Dustin Ackley and to a lesser extent the Saunders’ and Almonte’s of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the deeper units across baseball is the Dodgers’ outfield group, which boasts four big league caliber starting players and a top ten outfield prospect (per MLB.com’s 2014 rankings) who is nearly ready to ascend upon Chavez Ravine as well.

The Dodgers outfield on the whole hit .271/.339/.408 last year, and that’s with just half a season of Puig and Kemp each, as well as considerable amounts of playing time given to also-rans like Scott Van Slyke (.353 wOBA but limited track record), Skip Schumaker (.301 wOBA), and Jerry Hairston Jr (.244 wOBA). Read the rest of this entry »

Writer’s Note: Perkins ranked 8th on Zach Sanders’ 2013 closer rankings.

Glen Perkins’ rebirth as a pitcher has been nothing short of amazing. Perkins’ days as a starter were nothing to write home about, even when his home isn’t more than about a half hour drive from Target Field.

There’s a reason Perkins’ career K/9 rate is still under 7 — 6.85 to be precise — despite three consecutive years of 9.5-plus K/9. As a starter, Perkins was a bulldog who liked to work inside with a fastball that routinely checked in somewhere between 89-91, sometimes reaching 92 on average. Armed with that, a changeup, and a curve (and later a slider in lieu of the curve), Perkins compiled a 19-12 career record with a 4.81 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, and a Blackburn-esque 4.7 K/9. Read the rest of this entry »

Writer’s Note: Feldman ranked 56th on Zach Sanders’ starting pitching rankings.

Hello friends, just thought I’d chime in with a few notes before the weekend on Scott Feldman as he moves back into the division in which he cut his teeth as a Texas Ranger.

There are a number of things to like — not love, but genuinely have an affinity for, I’d say — about Feldman’s approach. In Feldman’s early years as a reliever, he was more of a low-strikeout, groundball type of specialist. In light of what we’ve seen in recent years with relievers, a bit of an odd trend, actually.

But in recent years, he’s forsaken those groundballs for strikeouts — never a bad tradeoff — while still maintaining a grounder rate healthily above league average. In essence, he’s not far off league average in either respect (slightly above in GB rate, a little below on the whiffs). Read the rest of this entry »