Yesterday, we published the final 2016 second base rankings and dollar values. So let’s review my preseason Pod’s Picks and Pans at the position, where I identified those second base qualified hitters I was most bullish and bearish on compared to the rest of my fellow RotoGraphs rankers.
I thought it may never be done. But Eric Hosmer finally cleared that impenetrable 20 home run barrier after many seasons of hardcore flirting. You see, Hosmer hates worms. So much so, that over 50% of the balls he has put into play over his career have been of the grounder variety. Those worms have likely learned not to pop out of the ground when he’s at the plate. But all those grounders come at the expense of fly balls. And a low fly ball rate has capped Hosmer’s home run potential. Until this year.
It was no secret that I was a big Wil Myers fan heading into 2016. He appeared on my 8 Hitters With Major HR/FB Upside list, which, in part, led to my bold prediction that he’d hit 25 homers and knock in 90 runs. He made me look good. Thank you Wil. But aside from staying healthy, there was another part of his fantasy performance that surprised even the most bullish of the optimists — a hefty 28 steals.
Heading into the 2016 season, two of the biggest questions we asked related to expectations for the newest arrivals from the KBO League of South Korea — Byung-ho Park and Hyun Soo Kim. Though obtaining historical statistics was easy, translating them from KBO to MLB is a challenge. At the beginning of February, I laid out my process in creating a projection for each, by first obtaining their career statistics, turning them into ratios, and then translating them as best I could into a 2016 MLB projection. Since this is first base week here at RotoGraphs, this article will focus on Park, with Kim’s review coming when we move on to outfielders. So let’s review Park’s performance and how that compared to my forecast.
Yesterday, we published the final 2016 first base rankings and dollar values. So let’s review my preseason Pod’s Picks and Pans at the position, where I identified those hitters I was most bullish and bearish on compared to the rest of my fellow RotoGraphs rankers.
Yesterday, I reviewed my 2015 hitter xBABIP underachievers and the results were fantastic. Today, I’m going to review the flip side, the 2015 hitter xBABIP overachievers. Let’s see how this group performed.
**To avoid confusion, yes this is supposed to read 2015. It’s a recap of my preseason article that discussed the 2015 xBABIP underachievers.
Today I continue to work my way through my preseason article recaps, this time focusing on xBABIP, the equation that the intelligent and very handsome Alex Chamberlain brewed up. We’ll start with the biggest underachievers from 2015. Let’s see how they performed this season.
So as I do annually, I compared my personal dollar values and resulting rankings to the RotoGraphs consensus rankings (excluding my own of course) at each position before the season began and identified those I was most bullish on as my picks and those I was bearish on as my pans. Last week, Brad Johnson published the catcher end of season values and rankings, so we’ll begin by reviewing my 2016 Pod’s Picks and Pans at catcher.
Yesterday, I reviewed the list of players my ESPN Home Run tracker analysis suggested had significant HR/FB rate downside this season. So today I’m going to check in on the group of players I identified as possessing serious upside. I would imagine this group would have done well simply due to the league-wide power surge. Let’s find out if that was indeed the case.
In addition to the analysis I conduct using my xHR/FB rate equation, I also still look at ESPN Home Run Tracker after the season ends. As usual, I identified a group of hitters before the 2016 season that based on the Home Run Tracker data, appeared to have serious HR/FB downside. Let’s find out how these hitters performed.
