There wasn’t a ton of moves with fantasy implications over the weekend but there was enough to lump together some. I’m still at the point that no major team breakdowns can really start with the two big bats still available. Anyways, here is a breakdown of the moves:

Phillies sign David Robertson

The 33-year-old righty immediately joins the Phillies closer discussion for the simple reason he’s projected to be the best bullpen arm. Steamer has him for a 3.22 ERA with Seranthony Dominguez next at 3.39 and previous closer Hector Neris at 3.62.

The Phillies front office would prefer Robertson to close instead of the other two to save money. The team is already on the hook for his $23 million dollar contract, so his price is set. The more Saves the pre-arbitration arms get, the higher their arbitration contracts will cost.

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When Yusei Kikuchi was posted in early December, he had only a month to sign with a team. For this reason, his signing decision was going to fall over the holidays and Seattle broke the news right before the end of the year. Because of the unique timing, he didn’t get a ton of press, but owners should be aware that he’s a decent starter and not to be ignored on draft day.

First off, the other Jeff beat me to writing about the 27-year-old lefty. Twice to be exact. Once before the signing and once after.
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Now that we’ve hit the holidays and fantasy owners may be staring at a couple of four-day weekends so it might be time to cozy up with your favorite e-reader and bang out the 200+ pages of The Process. As memorable and life-altering as bowl games sponsored by credit unions, auto parts stores, and baked cheese crackers can be, this is a great time of year to take on such a project.

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The Indians, Rays and to everyone’s surprise, Mariners made a trade last week with the following final results:

• Rays get Yandy Diaz and Cole Sulser
• Mariners get Edwin Encarnacion, 77th pick, and $5M
• Indians get Jake Bauers, Carlos Santana, and $6M

For my analysis, I’m going to focus on just Diaz and Bauers. Both have shown great potential but their minor league results have not yet translated to the majors.

Yandy Diaz (NFBC ADP Rank: 475)

With Jason Kipnis and his $17M contract likely to play second and Jose Ramirez at third, Diaz wasn’t guaranteed to play in Clevland. He is now in Tampa.

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A few days ago, I examined some later round NFBC picks trying to find players I prefer over others. I did rank 201 to 270. Today, I’ll continue the search from rank 271 to 350 with a later surprise.

Note: I don’t like the starters after Urias (#281) but many hitters are still interesting. If I’m in a deeper league, I may try to stock up on pitching before I get into this section of the draft.

271: Isiah Kiner-Falefa
272: Michael Wacha
273: Teoscar Hernandez
274: A.J. Minter
275: Jed Lowrie
276: Marco Gonzales
277: Trevor May
278: Drew Steckenrider
279: Adam Jones
280: Daniel Palka

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On Wednesday, the Angels signed Justin Bour to a one-year deal. After a mini-breakout in 2017 when he hit .289 with 25 homers, his batting average dropped to .227 with only 20 home runs in more plate appearances last season. This signing made perfect sense for the Angels who will have Shohei Ohtani rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and Albert Pujols being a member of the walking dead. Overall, this move just about killed what little value any fantasy the three had in weekly leagues but could make them sleepers in daily lineup leagues.

The biggest key is to understand the risk behind each player and let’s start off with the one who has the most questions surrounding him, Ohtani. He’s also considered a safe pick by some analysts. According to reports, he should be able to contribute sooner than the normal nine to 10 months timeline for most hitters returning from the surgery because he’ll only DH.

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The current fantasy focus is evaluating the top-100 or so players, especially the first couple rounds. I’m going to deep dive and investigate some later round values.  I will group 10 players together and pick which one I would take earlier than the others.

201: Arodys Vizcaino
202: Jonathan Schoop
203: Kevin Gausman
204: Luke Voit
205: Chris Taylor
206: Jake Arrieta
207: Forrest Whitley
208: Ross Stripling
209: Odubel Herrera
210: Yusei Kikuchi

There are several players I really like in this group like Taylor, Stripling, and Herrera but easily the best bargain is Kikuchi.

Kikuchi isn’t on par with Asian imports Ohtani or Darvish but he’s still extremely talented. He’s considered to be a better talent than Miles Mikolas and Mikolas is going 86th overall. I believe once Kikuchi signs and everyone gets to know him, his ADP will be cut in half and around a top-100 pick, if not double digits.
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I’m a little weary of the Hot Stove season until about 80% of the free agents have signed. Team compositions change so fast that research done one day is irrelevant the next. Instead of wasting my energy, I normally focus on other topics and wait for everything to settle down and come into focus. Like, how much will Manny Machado’s value change if he signs with the Phillies or the Yankees? Or even the White Sox? Not much if his profile was written now or right after his season ended. He’s still going to be valued in the top-20 picks.

It’s hard sometimes for baseball fans, who play fantasy baseball, to differentiate the general excitement around a baseball move to one that makes a legitimate change in value.

That being said, some free agent signings do have a little more variance depending on where the player signs Jonathan Schoop and Nathan Eovaldi are two such players. Both maxed out their value with their recent signings. Here are my two cents on each.
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This study came about from a comment made in passing by Jeff Erikson and Scott Jenstad in a RotoWire podcast. They were discussing how they were worried more about hitters who were striking out on fastballs instead of breaking balls. They figured it was worse to strikeout on fastballs and it showed the hitter was in decline. I don’t remember the exact show but I agreed and now have time verify. And as usual, the pair was right with three-hitter groups differentiating themselves from the pack.

The first key was that I wasn’t interested in the batter ability to tell balls from strikes. Instead, I wanted to focus on pitches right down the heart of the plate while keeping the strike zone as big as possible to increase the sample size. In the end, the taken pitches in the zone used were called strikes 97% of the time.

Next, I found the swinging strike rate for pitches in the strike zone. I grouped the pitches into several groups.

• All fastballs
• Fastballs > 94 mph
• Fastball < 94 mph
• All non-fastball
• All changeups including splitters
• All breaking balls

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Merrill Kelly

The Diamondbacks signed Merrill Kelly after Kelly spent four years in the Korea Baseball Organization. I never heard of Kelly until the signing some it’s time to put together a profile for him.

First, here’s a tweet from Homin on Kelly’s profile:

KBO season ended. Merrill Kelly, former #rays prospect will play MLB next year. 92-94 mph FB, cutter, two-seam, CH, CV. Various pitches. No plus pitch, but reliable pitcher. Could be good long RP at mlb level. #rays are scouting him heavily.

— Homin Lee (@Homein22) November 13, 2018

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