There is a difference between a bad year and a disappointing one. Plenty of players were terrible this year, but since no one expected anything less, no one was disappointed, and that’s not really where the confusion lies. When a player is expected to do great, amazingly wonderful things and instead only does good, above-average things, it’s not uncommon to hear that he had a bad season when the reality is that his production was adequate, it was just not as good as expected. (There is, of course, the third category of player who was expected to do well and in fact does very badly. At that point, either branch of criticism is fair game; take it away, Dr. Zoidberg!)

Given the expectations heaped on him after 2011’s tour de force, Alex Avila definitely had a disappointing season, there’s not much disputing that, but did he actually have a bad one? That largely depends on whether or not the driving number of your league is average or OBP. In any holistic sense, Avila was an effective enough offensive player. His wRC+ of 104 isn’t going to win him any awards, but it does mean he was slightly above average offensively speaking at a position where it’s still acceptable to hit poorly provided the player defends and/or commands the pitching staff well. So, given that he stayed healthy enough to qualify for the batting title and finished with an above-average wRC+, why is Avila ranked 20th out of the 26 catchers who qualified in Zach Sanders’ rankings? Read the rest of this entry »

2012 wasn’t supposed to look anything like 2011 for the Miami Marlins as they added a whole mess, and I do mean mess, of new salaries to help inaugurate their new digs in downtown. But for all their trouble, the Marlins finished 69-93 having been outscored by their opponents by some 115 runs, which was actually slightly worse than 2011’s 72-90 finish with a -77 run differential.

2013 won’t look much like 2012 whether the Marlins manage to extricate themselves from the cellar of the NL East or not simply by virtue of the roster shuffling that has already started. Despite signing a rich deal last winter, Heath Bell was one of the very first players moved this offseason, and Ozzie Guillen wasn’t far behind him out the door. In fact, about the only things that really came as advertised were Giancarlo Stanton, the home run monstrosity and Jose Reyes. Read the rest of this entry »

Why was there so much excitement in Minnesota for Trevor Plouffe this year? Here are a few names to keep in mind: Danny Valencia, Joe Crede, Brian Buscher, Nick Punto, Michael Cuddyer, Corey Koskie, the illustrious crew of Twins’ third basemen since 2000. While Plouffe’s 106 wRC+ ranks just about dead average for that group, five of the six years better than his belong to Koskie, who was the Twins’ last offensively acceptable third baseman and who left the team in 2004. Valencia’s half-season of success in 2010 gave fans — and likely the team as well — hope that they had found a long term answer, but by June or July of 2011, it was clear that Valencia was another in the line of replacement level replacements. It looked, for more than a fleeting moment during the summer, that Plouffe would be the answer the Twins have been looking for. Read the rest of this entry »

In Zach Sanders’ end-of-the-year ranks, Rickie Weeks finished as the 13th best second baseman overall, making him rosterable in any league larger than a 12-team and NL-only leagues of pretty much any depth. While that’s a fair assessment of how Weeks performed over the course of the whole season, it’s not really the best way to look at the way Weeks got there. Consider this:

Weeks from opening day to July 24 (394 PA): .190/.305/.333, 9 HR, 6 SB, 114 K
Weeks from July 25 until the end of the season (283 PA): .282/.360/.488 12 HR, 10 SB 55 K Read the rest of this entry »

Going into the season, Davey Johnson, Mike Rizzo, and the rest of the Washington Nationals’ decision makers certainly expected to get strong production from their first basemen and that’s exactly what happened. Nationals’ first basemen combined to hit .285/.355/.547 with 40 HR, 118 RBI, and even a single, solitary stolen base. That .902 OPS was the third highest mark in baseball behind the Tigers — the honorable Prince Fielder presiding — and the Reds pair of Joey Votto and Todd Frazier, though the Nationals were the only team to break the 40 home run barrier. So all went exactly according to plan as Washington changed the old saying around to “first in war, first in peace, first in the NL East.”

Except it wasn’t nearly so simple as that. Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike some of our other awards where there was very little dissension in the ranks, the Rotographs staff were pretty split as to who would be our Hare for the National League. For those who missed Eno’s introduction, the Hare is essentially the best sell-high player of the season. I’m not sure what it says about the NL that there were just too many good options; I went in thinking that it would be Bryan LaHair in a runaway, but once I started thinking about my options, he barely remained in my top three. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Josh Johnson will make fewer starts than Johan Santana

Johnson made 31 starts this season, which is his highest total since 2009. The league leader made 34 starts and was not named Johan Santana, though if you anagram the letters in “Bruce Chen”… you get Bee Crunch, which isn’t going to help my cause here. Santana, as it turns out, made just 21 starts and succomed to lower back inflammation that ended his season. His shoulder is fine, which has to be a relief to the Mets, but it does me no good.

Verdict: Swing and a Miss Read the rest of this entry »

The season, sadly, is drawing to a rather rapid close for everyone, but for some players, it has already ended. In April or May, season-ending injuries bring to mind things like a torn UCL, a horrific knee injury, or a blown out shoulder; now that it’s October, a bruise in the wrong place could be enough to shelve a player until spring training starts. It’s a little depressing, frankly, but all good things must end and this end means the playoffs are nigh.

Before we get there, however, there is a little matter of the fantasy season to finish. For anyone still contesting a title, here are the players I would avoid playing if at all possible.  Read the rest of this entry »

There were certainly some compelling candidates for the 2012 Fantasy Zombie in the hitters division, but after the top choices, the field wasn’t actually all that deep. Plenty of hitters surged to great seasons, but of those that did, very few were coming back from either bad injuries or the true pits of previous poor performance. There is no such problem with the pitchers.

More of these candidates are coming back from major injuries than are simply rounding back into form after a trip to the abyss, which makes sense given that it’s easier for an injury to cost a pitcher a full season than it is for a hitter to miss the whole year. Four of the five have had Tommy John surgery at some point in their career, and three earned their spot on this list with their performance following that procedure. Jake Peavy, the only one of the four not to have his UCL replaced, could have been on this list last year as well, since he was working his way back from a detached lat, which remains one of the most painful injuries I’ve ever encountered.

Irrespective of what put them under the knife, here are five strong contenders for the pitching edition of Fantasy Zombie 2012, but there are surely others who deserve a nod and a handshake. As before, if there’s someone you feel I’ve missed, leave it in the comments! Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the Melky Cabrera saga, the 3.1 PAs per team game a player needs to qualify for the batting title is firmly ingrained in our collective conscious. I’ll admit, I had to look up the qualification for the ERA title — 1 IP per team game, for those who also didn’t know — and while it isn’t as easy to parrot on command, it makes sense even if it’s a bit arbitrary. Rookie of the Year criteria are a little odd as well, but again, more or less make sense, but what about Comeback Player of The Year?

It’s never really been clear whether a player has to actually come back from something specific or if being rotten one year and then excellent the next qualifies as a comeback. The introductory press release offers no help, stating only that “This exciting new MLB-sanctioned award, which will be presented annually to one player each from the American and National Leagues, will recognize those players who have re-emerged on the baseball field during a given season.” The Sporting News, who present the more well-known version of the same award, seems to have similar criteria for their prize. Read the rest of this entry »