Expectations weren’t sky-high for Jonathan Lucroy coming into 2013. For many, Lucroy represented a solid fallback option once some of the bigger names came off the board, with an ADP somewhere in the 120’s. His projections looked something akin to .270/.330/.400 with double digit home runs and 50/50 runs and RBI. Not thrilling, but nice. You could check off that pesky catcher position and move on to other issues.
Jean Segura wasn’t the best fantasy baseball player in 2013. He might not have even been the best shortstop for fantasy teams this year. But given the context of projections with the overall production, Segura pretty much destroyed any reasonable expectation from the preseason.
You could consider this a post about the now and the future, depending on your perspective. If you’re still in a dogfight this late into the season, well bully for you. If you’re in planning mode for next year’s draft or who you’re going to keep, well big warm hugs and “you’re a participant” ribbon to you. As a father, I’ve discovered that there’s no losers anymore, only degrees of totally not winning. I digress.
I was trolling the glorious Fangraphs leaderboards, desperate to find someone to start this week in a Yahoo-style innings blowup and I was quite surprised to find a Houston Astro that emerged among the top 25. The top 25 of anything, for that matter. But lo, Dallas Keuchel shone brightly like an All-Star representative from a team undeserving of All-Star representation.
On June 28, Jean Segura was on pace to hit .332 with 23 home runs, 94 runs scored, 67 RBI, and 50 stolen bases, placing his performance among the elite shortstops in recent years. And that was after he had cooled significantly after a white-hot start. Today, his pace suggests he’ll finish up at .298/13/79/53/48. That’s nothing to scoff at, and it significantly outperforms even the most pre-season projection for him. But it most certainly points out that something has gone awry from the end of June to where we currently stand.
Any conversation about keepers is always contextual. That is, keeping a player is highly dependent upon their price relative to performance. Duh, right?
I’ll admit that I’m a Ryan Zimmerman owner and about July 1, I’d made up my mind that I was no longer planning on keeping him on my squad and started thinking about other options in the future at third base. And then, of course, Ryan Zimmerman did what he’s doing and that’s hitting the snot out of everything. And now I’m left with a bit of a dilemma.
It would probably be unfair to say that Pablo Sandoval was responsible for the miserable season the San Francisco Giants are having, but it’s certainly true that he hasn’t really helped too much. Early season projections posited a productive year for the Panda — with Steamer suggesting a .298/.358/.502 slash line with 20 home runs and 80 RBI. His body of work to date has his numbers looking so bad that one wonders if he will crack the top 15 options at third base this off season.
I tend to wonder if Jason Kipnis believes in Karma. After starting the season batting .200/.269/286, he might have been wondering just what he did to piss off the delicate balance of the universe. Kipnis was a consensus ranked #4 second baseman back in March and by the end of April he was actually popping up on waiver wires.
Then, it seems, he got right with the world, or his chi, or whatever one might believe in. From the beginning of May to the end of June, Kipnis went all berzerker and hit .333/.421/618 with 11 home runs, 14 stolen bases, and 47 RBI in just over 200 at bats.
I’m not intending to hurt the feelings of three quarters of you all, but this post is mainly for those of you fortunate to be in serious contention for money and/or bragging rights and/or special unnamed prize. Or whatever else you might be playing for that I probably don’t want to hear about. Chances are, if you’re still coming to Rotographs in late August, you’re at least sniffing the top third of your league or perhaps your day job lacks any level of mental stimulation.
I tend to use innings pitched as a gauge as to whether a team has an inflated win or strikeout total (ahead of pace) or if there’s a team lurking, behind pace in innings. It can put standings into context. This applies in leagues with an innings limit, of course. The rest of you can just move on. But if you’re up there still shaking a menacing fist at the leader of your league, or if perhaps you are the leader, I encourage you to just blow up your innings now.
Back in July, Mike Petriello gave us a nice background on Ivan Nova, so I’ll spare you his biographical introduction. At the time, it was July and Nova had looked pretty solid in a handful of starts, but the dreaded small sample size kind of loomed. But since that time, he’s just continued to confound opponents and he appears to be emerging as one of the more shrewd waiver wire acquisitions of the 2013 season. What’s interesting is how different he has been this year versus his career.
From 2007 to 2011, Dan Haren was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Over those five seasons, he averaged 5.4 WAR, winning 73 games in more than 1100 innings pitched. In fantasy baseball, Haren might not have been profiled as a classic #1 starter, but he was typically among the top 12 pitchers off the board, and if he was your #2 starter, you were pretty well set up.
In 2012, things started to go south, and they went so in a hurry. His fastball velocity was off dramatically, his strikeout rate continued to fall for the third consecutive year, and he was simply much more hittable. His results weren’t awful, but they just weren’t the old Dan Haren: 4.33 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, and a 19% strikeout rate. Pretty much the definition of a spot starter. Single handedly disproving the contract year phenomena, Haren couldn’t even find a suitor as a free agent until the Nationals took a one-year flyer on him in December of 2012.