Last winter, the Yankees signed Raul Ibanez to add some power off the bench, despite the fact that he was coming off a dreadful 2011 with Philadelphia — managing only a .289 OBP in his age-39 season. Ibanez’ best days remained far behind him, but he basically delivered as well as the Yankees could have hoped – despite playing lousy defense in far more time than expected due to Brett Gardner’s injury, he had a huge platoon split (.812 OPS against righties) and he took advantage of the short porch in Yankee Stadium, hitting 14 of his 19 homers there.

Ibanez has since moved on to Seattle, and all winter the Yankees have been staring at a huge hole at designated hitter, unable to do better than some potentially horrific combination of Eduardo Nunez, Russ Canzler, & Juan Rivera. With that in mind, the news that the Yankees are going to sign Travis Hafner – another righty-killing, defense-averse slugger well past his prime — to be this year’s Ibanez makes a ton of sense. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, the Diamondbacks finally managed to find a new home for Justin Upton, shipping him along with third baseman Chris Johnson to Atlanta for Martin Prado and four prospects. That’s a loss for AL-only fantasy players who were hoping the talented young outfielder might end up in Seattle or Texas, though he remains a must-own in all formats. (Well, most formats; if your league counts “grit”, he might be merely fodder for the waiver wire.)

While most of the attention is on Upton joining brother B.J. and incumbent Jason Heyward in what’s suddenly a star-studded Braves outfield, his former mates in Arizona suddenly find themselves with a very different squad than the one that ended last year including Upton, Johnson, & Chris Young – and a lot of questions just got answered in the desert. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday evening, Oakland, Seattle, & Washington came together for a three-way trade that seems like it could be a win for all parties involved. That’s perhaps intentionally misleading – the Mariners are getting killed on this trade, and rightfully so – but this is RotoGraphs, and so we need to look at this deal with an eye on fantasy. Seen in that light, all of the moving pieces here leave us with a few players who might get a slight boost in their fantasy value. Read the rest of this entry »

As our very early mock draft moved into rounds 6-10, we saw an expected run on starting pitchers. With the true aces like Justin Verlander & Clayton Kershaw well off the board, this is where you’ll see the second-tier guys coming down, the type of pitcher you don’t want to overdraft but that you also can’t really live without. Jack Moore kicked off the sixth round with Cliff Lee, and by the time the first of my two swing picks at 6.11 came up, Madison Bumgarner, CC Sabathia, Jordan Zimmermann, Adam Wainwright, & Chris Sale had gone as well. I finished off the round with Jered Weaver as my second pitcher behind Stephen Strasburg – yes, he’s a bit overrated, but it’s hard to argue consistent wins and ERA in fantasy, especially with that offense supporting him – and then with guys like Johnny Cueto, Matt Moore, & Roy Halladay still on the board, I kicked off the seventh round with a potentially high risk/reward pick: Kris Medlen. Read the rest of this entry »

As you have probably seen, we here at RotoGraphs have been doing a very early slow mock draft over the last few weeks. So far I’ve learned two things:

1. Second base gets really, really ugly after the first seven or so players come off the board.
2. There’s more question about Ian Kinsler’s value than you’d think.

There’s little argument that Robinson Cano is the consensus top second baseman available, and Kinsler, Dustin Pedroia, Brandon Phillips, Jason Kipnis, Ben Zobrist, & Aaron Hill are generally seen as the cream of the remaining crop, in various orders. But once you get past that group, it thins out quickly. Do you want to be the one hoping Marco Scutaro can repeat his shocking late-season resurgence, or seeing if Rickie Weeks can rebound from an atrocious campaign, or praying Dan Uggla can find his lost power, as I was? Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the 2012-13 offseason, the Seattle Mariners had one absolute mandate: improve an offense which had finished last in the American League in runs scored in each of the last four seasons. But after striking out on Josh Hamilton, Nick Swisher, and every other offensive free agent with a pulse (unless they become the unlikely landing spot for Michael Bourn), this is the sum total of the new bats Seattle has been able to add so far this winter: Robert Andino, Jason Bay, Raul Ibanez, & Kendrys Morales.

Setting aside Andino for the moment, the trio of Bay / Ibanez / Morales would have been a fantastic group to have in 2009, when all three had career years, each hitting 34 or more homers with a wOBA at .378 or higher. Unfortunately for Seattle, it’s 2013, not 2009, and all three have fallen off markedly over the last few years due to age, injury, or both. While you can make an argument for taking a chance on any of the three, compounding the situation of collecting the entire set is that designated hitter is arguably the best position for each of them. That’s going to be complicated on a Seattle roster which already has two catchers who are around more for their bats than their gloves in Jesus Montero & John Jaso, a first baseman who hits like a middle infielder in Justin Smoak, and out-of-options 1B/DH Mike Carp. Read the rest of this entry »

Before there was Stephen Strasburg, there was Jordan Zimmermann. After missing part of 2009 and nearly all of 2010 with Tommy John surgery, Zimmermann was placed under a strict innings limit for his age-25 season in 2011. Despite performing well, he was still shut down after he crossed the 160 inning threshold, and was not seen again after August 28.

For Nationals fans hoping that GM Mike Rizzo made the right call in shelving Strasburg at a similar point in his recovery this year – it was of course less of a lightning rod for Zimmermann, since he’s not Strasburg and the 2011 Nationals weren’t nearly as competitive as the 2012 version – the tremendous success of Zimmermann in his first year with the reins off has to be seen as a cause for great optimism. Read the rest of this entry »

Along with several other members of the FG/RG family, I’m currently participating in a twelve-team 5×5 mock draft, just to reset expectations for the upcoming season. With the first pick of the sixth round, as the 12^th starter taken — and ahead of guys like CC Sabathia, Chris Sale, & Jered Weaver — a pitcher was selected who didn’t get his first win until July 4 and ended up with only six on the season.

We’re talking about Cliff Lee, of course, and he is still awesome.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last December, the Brewers won the posting for 30-year-old Japanese outfielder Norichika Aoki. The fee going back to his Japanese team was only $2.5 million; the deal he eventually signed in January was for another $2.5 million, but spread over two years (along with a team-friendly $1.5 million option for 2014). Aoki was so lightly thought of that he wasn’t really even in competition for a starting job in a Milwaukee outfield that already featured Ryan Braun, Nyjer Morgan, Carlos Gomez, & Corey Hart. When Eno Sarris posted our initial thoughts about him in January, the most optimistic view was mostly, “well, at least Braun’s suspension is going to open up 50 games worth of playing time.” As we of course later learned, even that didn’t happen, leaving Aoki’s situation uncertain at best.

So when we say that expectations for Aoki were low entering the season, that might even be overstating it. Fantasy players routinely ignored him in drafts, and for good reason. What was the point in bothering with a largely unknown import who was expected to get little playing time, especially after – fairly or (mostly) unfairly – the last Japanese position player, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, had flopped so spectacularly? Read the rest of this entry »

Headed into 2012, Mark Trumbo stood pretty close to the top of the “most overrated lists” from the perspective of most advanced baseball sites. Yes, 29 homers, 87 runs batted in, and a second-place finish in the Rookie of the Year ballot in 2011 looked really nice on the surface, but you didn’t have to look too hard to see signs of concern beyond that. The ugly .291 OBP stands out, of course, but the high strikeout rate and total inability to take a walk were even more concerning. Of the 145 qualified hitters in 2011, only two had a lower BB/K mark, and beating out Miguel Olivo for anything should hardly be a cause for celebration. It wasn’t hard to think that pitchers could exploit that weakness in Trumbo’s second time around the league, especially when he would also have to contend with attempting to learn a new position. With the imported Albert Pujols and the recovering Kendrys Morales taking most of the first base / designated hitter time, Trumbo was asked to try to convert to third base.

This all made for a very uncertain forecast for the 26-year-old Angel, one that tempered many expectations… and then he defied us all by getting off to a crazy hot start. By the end of a phenomenal May, Trumbo was sitting at .348/.396/.632, and while third base hadn’t quite worked out, his bat was reason enough for the Angels to cut Bobby Abreu and minimize Vernon Wells in order to give Trumbo regular playing time in the outfield corners. Over the next two months, the average and OBP dropped as you’d expect, but the power remained, with 17 blasts over June & July along with a place on the American League All-Star team. Read the rest of this entry »