Author Archive: Paul Sporer

It was a weird breakout season for Xander Bogaerts. He was the undisputed top shortstop in baseball by about $9 and yet it doesn’t really feel like it. He won’t be the top shortstop off the board in 2016 and his home runs + stolen bases didn’t even equal 20. The big season was spurred by an 80-point spike in batting average, 84 runs, and 81 RBI.

Obviously the batting average plays into the rise of the other two, but a lot of it was batting second, third, fourth, or fifth for 103 of his 156 games on a team that scored 4.62 runs per game – fourth-most in baseball. In other words, there was some team-dependent good fortune baked into this season as opposed to a season like Manny Machado’s which showed major skill growth. No other shortstop scored more than 77 runs and only Brandon Crawford topped the RBI total with 84.

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Over the past weekend at the AFL First Pitch Forums held by BaseballHQ.com, I participated in my first draft for 2016. It’s an NFBC 50-round draft&hold. The first 23 rounds occurred there in Arizona and the final 27 will begin online in January. Since it is third base week, I figured it’d be fun to take a look at how an early run 2016 draft treated the pool of top 15 third basemen.

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Isn’t it nice when things work out? At the height of draft season, Nolan Arenado was elevated into the top 50 despite career-highs of 18 HR, 61 RBI, and 133 games played (and not all in the same season). It was a calculated gamble on someone who hadn’t exactly done it for a full season yet. He showed a ton of promise as a high-contact power hitter (13% K, .173 ISO coming into ’15) who also had the security blanket of Coors Field.

Of course, we now know that it really couldn’t have gone better and being drafted 50th was actually a bargain by season’s end as he finished as the 5th-best player overall. Arenado blasted an NL-best 42 HR and drove in an MLB-best 130 runs in 665 PA as he missed just five games all year. His strikeout rate was a career-high 17%, but that’s still better than most power hitters. Of the nine hitters who popped 40+ HR, he was third to only Albert Pujols (11%) and Jose Bautista (16%).

And yet… (yep, I actually have something to complain about within his excellent season)

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Episode 288

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer, Eno Sarris, and Jason Collette are together in Phoenix for Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Forums and Arizona Fall League action! The trio discusses some of the goings-on from the conference including whether or not Justin Verlander and Kyle Hendricks are legit from their ’15 performance. They also discuss some of the players they’ve seen and talked to at AFL including Clint Frazier, Austin Meadows, and Alex Blandino.

Oh, and Paul totally embarrassed himself in his first draft of 2016… and it wasn’t with his picks for once. By the way, here are the first 23 rounds of that NFBC 50 round draft & hold. It’s Kentucky Derby Style slot picking so once your name is drawn from the hat, you can pick your spot. I picked 15 once 1-2-3 were gone (a couple others were, too, I was 6th or 7th out of the hat). I’ll be writing more about this draft in the coming week or so, but here are the pics if you wanna see where someone was (or wasn’t) drafted:

I’m team 15 (click to see clearer)

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Episode 287

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Jason Collette are back for the first offseason edition of the show and they’re talking Dusty Baker & Don Mattingly with their new teams, Thor’s innings increase, some intriguing options that were picked up, and the first part of their Free Agent preview including Matt Wieters, Jason Heyward, and Alex Gordon.

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Mitch Moreland had a career year in 2015. He only matched his previous high in home runs (23), but his AVG, OBP, SLG, 2B, and RBI totals were all the best of his six-year career. He only needed 132 games to set a new high in AB with 471, but his 515 PA were actually only second-highest for him. Was it real? Can he repeat or even grow as he enters his age-30 season?

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Episode 286

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

In this episode, Paul Sporer and Eno Sarris breakdown the World Series and get Eno’s prediction. Who are the key players on each side? How does KC’s contact-heavy game play vs. NYM’s power pitching-poor defense mix? Would you rather have the KC SPs or NYM RPs? And more. Then they discuss the AFL, going on now in Arizona, and highlight some guys they’re looking forward to seeing in two weeks including: Gary Sanchez, Alex Blandino, Dylan Bundy, A.J. Reed, and more.

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Eric Hosmer turned 26 this past Saturday. He completed his fifth season earlier this month and starts his second straight World Series tonight against the Mets. The 2015 season was his best yet, though that was due largely to the team around him as opposed to skills growth within his game.

His .297/.363/.459 line looks a lot like his 2011 (.293/.344/.465) and 2013 (.302/.353/.448) lines, but the 93 RBI and 98 R were easily career highs. Previous highs of 79 RBI and 86 R were both set in that 2013 season. Every other part of his game looked like something we’ve already seen.

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For years Yadier Molina has been the gold standard behind the dish known for both his tremendous defense and durability. He has 412 Gold Glove Awards (fine, just seven) and he’s caught at least 1000 innings seven of the last eight seasons and fewer than 930 just once in his 11 full seasons. Of course even he blushes at the workloads that KC is feeding Salvador Perez.

When Molina first started, his defense was the only reason to play him. He logged a .653 OPS in his first 1429 PA through age-24. The reps started to pay off as he started to turn his elite contact ability into some results with a .720 OPS in 1550 PA from ages 25-27. By now we’re looking at almost 3000 PA through his mid-20s and then we finally got a power surge with a .842 OPS in 1622 PA from ages 28-30 including a career-year in 2012 when he hit .315 with 22 HR, 76 RBI, 65 R, and 12 SB. He finished fourth in the MVP voting that year.

Over the last two seasons, he has been a blend of those first two samples with just a .687 OPS in 975 PA. In 2014, a torn right thumb cost him 40 games in the middle of the season. That injury looks like a signifier of his power decline as he returned to post just a .317 SLG in 27 games that year, but his 39 games prior to the injury yielded just a .315 SLG in 145 PA.

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Derek Norris was drafted as the 18th catcher off the board last spring and wound up eighth by season’s end. It’s pretty hard to label that anything other than a success, and yet it still feels a bit underwhelming when you look at the full line: .250/.305/.404 with 14 HR, 62 RBI, 65 R, and even 4 SB in 557 PA. Perhaps the line leaves me wanting more because the driving force behind his top-10 ranking was the playing time as opposed to any skills improvement.

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