The Toronto Blue Jays set their bullpen to shuffle mode just three games into the ‘15 season. Brett Cecil’s dip in velocity started this mess for fantasy owners, but there’s a good chance that Cecil is just building up arm strength since he missed a few weeks in the Spring with shoulder soreness. The left-hander’s fourseamer sat in the 87 mph range on Wednesday night — down from a 94 mph average in ‘14 — but jumped back up to over 91 mph in Thursday’s outing in the Bronx against the Yankees. Cecil faced one over the minimum in Thursday’s appearance, surrendered a free pass and induced a pair of strikeouts on 14 pitches (nine strikes) to earn a hold.
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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

Catcher

Devin Mesoraco
Brayan Pena

Entering the 2014 season the RotoGraphs team ranked Devin Mesoraco 18th among catchers, but a “coming out party” for the former first-round selection lead to an end of season ranking of third among catchers according to Zach Sanders. In order to achieve said ranking, Mesoraco triple slashed .273/.359/.534 with 25 homers, 80 batted in and swiped a single base. Fantasy baseball owners apparently feel that more of the same is to come in ‘15 as Mesoraco sports an ADP of 81 (third among catchers) in NFBC and fourth among catchers — including the likes of Carlos Santana, who is no longer catcher eligible on some sites — at FantasyPros with an average ADP of 80.
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Another year, another set of bold predictions to nail down. If you’d like to check out some of my past predictions, here are 2013’s along with the review and here are 2014’s predictions and the subsequent review.

As usual, firing squad please report directly to the comments section.

Here goes nothing:

1. Drew Pomeranz and Jesse Hahn will be top 75 starters
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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Atlanta Braves made quite the splash this offseason, but it wasn’t the type of splash that resulted in fans walking down Georgia streets chanting and waving tomahawks, it was more of the eyebrow raising, head scratching, guess we’re retooling a bit splash. And this is not me saying one way or another that I like or dislike the moves that were made, just noting that the roster looks completely different than a year ago.

Catcher

Christian Bethancourt
A.J. Pierzynski

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Closer:

Addison Reed

Addison Reed’s first season in Arizona went off with just a little bit of a hitch. He converted 32-of-38 saves and posted career bests in strikeout minus walk percentage (21.4%), swinging strike rate (13.1% SwStr%) and Skill-Interactive ERA (2.63 SIERA). Unfortunately, Reed lost a tick on his fastball for the third consecutive season and fell victim to some bad luck in the home run per fly ball rate department (13.9% HR/FB), which is partially to blame for the 4.25 ERA he posted in 62 appearances.
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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Pirates’ relievers finished among the top ten bullpens in the league with a 3.24 ERA, 48 saves and 90 holds in ‘14, but fell towards the middle-to-end of the pack in FIP (3.72), K-BB% (13.1%) and WAR (0.7). The bulk of last year’s bullpen remains intact, but a late-season call-up and an offseason acquisition may make the Bucs’ bullpen better than it was in their last 162.

The Closer:

Mark Melancon
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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Colorado Rockies’ bullpen is coming off a 2014 season in which they finished last in the league in saves (24), fielding independent pitching (4.24) and surrendered the most home runs (62), but somehow managed to scrape together 1.5 WAR. To be fair though, the Rockies also finished with the fewest blown saves in baseball (26), so finishing last in the league in save totals isn’t entirely due to their inability to convert, it probably has more to do with the lack of opportunities. For those fake baseballers in holds or solds (holds + saves) leagues, you may want to put the two setup men listed below on your short list of relievers to target.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Closer/s:

The Houston Astros made a concerted effort to strengthen the backend of their bullpen this past Winter, but even with all that spending, the ninth-inning still needs the Spring to be officially sorted out. The Astros’ shelled out $18.5 million over three-years to sign right-hander Luke Gregerson, so he will presumably get the first crack at the ninth-inning role, but we shouldn’t count out Chad Qualls until an official announcement is made.

Luke Gregerson

In 2014 for the Athletics, Gregerson posted a 2.12 ERA (3.24 FIP) with a 1.01 WHIP and a 20.8% K% in 65 trips to the bump. But in 11 opportunities to save games last year Gregerson managed to successfully convert only three. And over the course of his career, the right-hander is only 19-of-51 in save chances. (Edit: Should be noted that not all blown saves occurred in the ninth inning) In terms of offerings, it appears as if Gregerson lost some steady zip on both his fastball, slider and change since 2009. Additionally, his ability to induce swings-and-misses (13.3% SwStr%) was still above league average for relievers last year (10.5% SwStr%), but that too has been on the a decline in each of the past three seasons. There is no doubt that Luke Gregerson is a great depth addition to the Astros’ bullpen, but mixed results in high leverage situations along with the dip in velocity and ability cause hitters to miss leads me to believe he is far from a lock to be the closer come Opening Day.

Chad Qualls
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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Closer

David Robertson

The Chicago White Sox shored up their ninth-inning by signing free-agent David Robertson away from the New York Yankees on a four-year deal worth $46 million. The right-hander is on the heels of a career-best 39-save season with a 3.08 ERA (2.68 FIP) and a 1.06 WHIP in 63 appearances (64.1 IP), but his success extends beyond just last season. Since 2011, Robertson is among the top-ten among qualified relievers in ERA (2.20), K/9 (12.35) and fourth in WAR (7.6) behind only Craig Kimbrel, Greg Holland and Aroldis Chapman despite securing just 45 saves over that span.

Robertson isn’t exactly headed to a pitcher’s park, but the move to U.S. Cellular Field should allow Robertson to surrender fewer homers than he did in Yankee Stadium (7 HR, 15.6% HR/FB% in ‘14). Additionally, Robertson’s ability to stay healthy and make 60 or more appearances in each of the past five seasons should be taken into consideration and make him a potential top five reliever on draft/auction day.
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The end of the 2014 fantasy baseball season is here. Now it’s time to look back at the bold-ish predictions I made in March to see how I did:

10. Khris Davis will hit 25 homers and steal 15 bases.

In his first full season in the league, Davis triple slashed .244/.299/.457 with 22 homers and four stolen bases. While the power projection was within striking distance, the speed projection was way off. Looking back, I put too much value into Davis’ ability to swipe bases during his time Single-A and Advanced-A. Despite missing out in the prediction, I do like the player and will likely have a bunch of shares in 2015.

0-for-1
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