I’m caught up with a mix of recent or older news. I’m now off to the Spring Training fastball velocity tracker to catch it up.

American League

Astros

• While Kyle Tucker hasn’t dialed in his swing yet he seems to have a spot on the MLB team.’

Tucker seems to have a spot locked up on the big league club, and he will push for playing time in right field with Reddick, but there’s progress that needs to be made at the plate.

Baker said he sees signs that Tucker’s long left-handed swing is coming around.

“That’s why I’m trying to give him as much time to get ready as possible, because he’s a long-lever guy and the long-lever guys tend to take longer, just like older players take longer to get their timing and get warmed up,” Baker said. “The shorter-lever guys tend to have a shorter stroke, tend to get it quicker than the guys like him being a longer-lever guy.”

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After taking last week off from Mining the News, I’m back with a partial recap and almost no in-depth commentary. It’s still almost 3000 words of projection altering nuggets. Also, I’m trying to catch up on the Spring Training fastball velocity tracker. Hopefully, both will be up-to-date in a day or so.

American League

Angels

• The Angels are considering Patrick Sandoval, Jose Suarez, Matt Andriese, and Jaime Barria for the rotation.

Patrick Sandoval (the Angels’ top pitching prospect, according to MLB Pipeline) started one of the team’s two games on Sunday, while Jose Suarez took the ball in the other. Both are considered candidates for the rotation, as are Matt Andriese and Jaime Barria.

“The candidates are great, it’s just a matter of experience and how they’ll be able to deal with all that,” Maddon said of the 22-year-old Suarez and 23-year-old Sandoval. “If you’re a scout and maybe just ran a fantasy baseball team, you kind of like this stuff. …

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This past Sunday, I participated in the first-ever 12-team mixed LABR auction. I have a whole Process on how to create auction values, though one input that was missing for my analysis was any historical league context. While I’ve competed against some of the other owners, there was no league or ownership history like the other LABR leagues to incorporate. Here is how I approached the league and where I failed to take the market into account and rostered a subpar, unbalanced team.

Just so everyone knows, it’s a 12-team standard (AVG) mixed league with 14 hitters and nine pitchers with five reserves (which dropped from six mid-draft). We have $100 FAAB with $1 minimum bids and any player (besides minor leaguers or players on the IL) picked up must be started that week. After that week, they can move freely to and from the reserve list. Also, there are unlimited IL slots.
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I’m trying to crank this article out three times a week to limit how long it takes me to assemble each one. That said, I’m not sure if/when the next one will be posted since I’m traveling Friday to BHQ’s First Pitch Florida for my mixed LABR auction. I’m guessing sometime late on Friday or sometime Saturday.

Notes

• I’m going to shy away from any current headline injury news (Luis Severino and J.D. Davis). Instead, I’ll try to dig a little deeper to find some “hidden” news that everyone isn’t “breaking”.

• I’ll continue to add in Spring Training velocities whenever I find them to my tracker.

American League

Angels

• Dillon Peters plans on emphasizing his slider to get left-handed hitters out.

Peters spoke after his first appearance of how he planned to begin mixing in a slider during the spring to give left-handed hitters another look. He threw the slider just 3.9 percent of the time last season.

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A couple of items before digging into projection adjusting news.

1. I’ve started collecting spring training fastball velocities and will update them as I find the time.

The Spring Training fastball velocity tracker is live. I'll update it when and if I feel like it, but I can always use some help. If anyone sees a velocity available in a Tweet or article, just tag me and I'll eventually add it. Thanks for the help. -Jeffhttps://t.co/2LaJ5uCDGJ

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) February 22, 2020

One name which immediately sticks out is Alex Wood with a 2 to 3 mph jump. Wood lives off his sinker (50%+ usage). While it’s not a huge swing-and-miss pitch, it does better at 93 mph and higher.

While healthy, he’s a must-own in all formats.
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Note: As noted in the comments, I missed Sean Murphy in the initial evaluation. He has now been added and hopefully, all the counts have been updated.

Every year around this time, I go through the catcher pool to see who I can tolerate. Either I’m getting soft in my advanced age or the catcher pool has improved since last season. I didn’t get nauseous during the process. I’ll myself through the ownable options for different league types.

When targetting catchers, I’d like them to do one of two things.

• Provide 15 to 20 home runs power.
• Not tank my batting average.

The first criteria is easier to find with 11 catchers projected for 15 or more homers. Seventeen catchers are projected between 10 and 14. On average in NFBC Main Event leagues last season, owners needed 363 homers to finish third or 30 HR per the 12 non-catchers. If an owner can get 36 homers from his catchers, the amount needed by the other hitters drops to 27.
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A new format, the same in-depth notes. Again, this took too long to dig through. Paul and I are trying to find a way to expedite it.

American League

Astros

• Josh James is being stretched out as a starter.

Hard-throwing right-hander Josh James was working out of the full windup during his first bullpen session of the spring on Friday, which is an indication the Astros plan to stretch him out this spring to be a starter. James entered camp last year competing for a rotation spot, but a right quad injury early in the spring derailed those plans.

• Don’t expect the Astros hitters to play over 150 games this season. Dusty likes to rest.

Former Astros manager AJ Hinch was a proponent of giving players regular days off, and Dusty Baker agrees. Baker said regular players would likely play about 150 games this season, meaning they would get two days off a month.

“I believe in rest days and I believe in telling guys when they have rest days,” he said. “There’s mental rest days, there’s baseball rest days, there’s days you say, ‘Hey man, go out and have a good meal and a couple of drinks and let your hair down a little bit and you won’t be off for another couple of weeks.’”

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I’ve got the draft and auction for two 12-team leagues coming. The Beat Jeff Zimmerman league is this Sunday night at 8 EST and also the mixed LABR auction in Florida. I’ve been grinding down the top-360 players (12 teams x 30 players per team). In these shallower formats, playing time is key for any mid to late-round targets. The following four teams are giving me pause when considering rostering some of their players.

Reds

The Reds have two or three too many players and several players will end up in the 450 to 550 PA range. When healthy, I believe Joey Votto, Mike Moustakas, Nicholas Castellanos, and Eugenio Suarez are safe. Freddy Galvis should be but his bat is so bad, he could lose playing time to possibly Nick Senzel.

The congestion starts in the outfield. Senzel is going to try to play center with Shogo Akiyama, Phillip Ervin, and Travis Jankowski as backup options. That leaves Akiyama along with Aristedes Aquino and Jesse Winker fighting it out for the right-field job.
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Adam Eaton: Fool’s Gold

In every actual or mock draft I’ve done so far this offseason, Eaton jumps to the top of my to draft list but I just can’t pull the trigger on him. First, Eaton’s projection is not sexy with 15 homers, 12 steals, and a .282 AVG (Depth Charts). It’s acceptable but not league winning.

Part of his low cost may be that he’s a 31-year-old, who after two near 700 plate appearance seasons, struggled to stay healthy in 2017 and 2018. Both injuries were to start the season, a knee injury in 2017 and an ankle injury in 2018. Besides missing a couple of days to a knee injury in early September, he was completely healthy last season. BaseballHQ still gives him a health grade of “F” which never helps. My own inputs point to his value going in different directions. I have him rebounding from the injury because his spring speed jumped from 27.5 ft/s to 28.3. But I project his plate appearances to be 492 bases off his age, hitting ability, and past playing time.
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This series is moving weekly. Just too much to keep up with to go any longer than that.

• While Orlando Arcia will start the season as the Brewers shortstop, the team plans on Luis Urias taking over the role once healthy.

Luis Urías vs. Orlando Arcia for Opening Day shortstop duties was supposed to be Milwaukee’s marquee battle when Spring Training gets underway Wednesday. That changed after Urías underwent surgery Jan. 28 for a broken hamate bone in his left hand, a procedure expected to sideline him from games for eight weeks.

With Opening Day set for March 26 against the Cubs at Miller Park, and Urías certain to need some exhibition games to get ready for Major League competition, it’s unlikely he will be active to start the season. So, Arcia will get a head start on what was expected to be an intriguing matchup of young players with much to prove.

“We’re certainly going to give Urías every shot to prove he can play shortstop for us,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said in January, before the ill-timed setback. “That’s why we traded for him.”

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