As a Royals fan, I try my hardest to not roster any to make sure I limit my hometown bias. Two bats, Alex Gordon and Jorge Soler, are heating up to the point they are being rostered in 15-team leagues and even some shallower ones with Soler. It’s time to perform an unbiased examination of the pair.

Alex Gordon

All I’ve been able to hear when Alex Gordon’s name is brought up is:

“F’ it, I guess I’ll take Alex Gordon.”

One of my league mates blurted this statement after struggling to locate an available outfielder in my home AL-only league auction.

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My current aim in fantasy baseball is to find instances where player evaluations can be improved. With several prospects recently getting called up, I am trying to answer the simple question: is there any projection information to be gained from being a highly touted prospect. The short answer is yes, but it took me a while to get good results.

I wanted to keep the analysis simple so I used all available Steamer projections which to back to 2010. Additionally, I used Baseball America’s top 100 ranked prospects for that time frame. From these two data sets, I compared the hitter’s projected results to the actual results for their first few seasons.

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Last week, I wrote about the expected power from JaCoby Jones and Lewis Brinson. In the article, I mentioned the hitter’s rank compared to other hitters with no context resides just the rank. Today, I correct this flaw in my analysis by finding the league averages and putting the data on the 20-80 scouting scale.

While overall ranks do provide some information, it’s tough to put the rankings into context. Nelson Cruz is first in average exit velocity (EV) at 97 mph. Dropping down 2 mph in exit velocity is Luke Maile at #10. Two more is Jacoby Jones at #26. And another two is Francisco Lindor at #75. The first 4 mph in drop was just 26 players while the next 2 mph was 49 players. The batted ball decline rate is not linear and just a few tenths of a mile-per-hour can jump a player 20 spots in the rankings.

I need a way to label hitters and had to invoke some math. I took the hitters with 100 batted balls per season from 2015 to 2017 and found the overall average value. Using the 20-80 scouting scale, I gave the average values a 50-grade.

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Caleb Smith

If I didn’t give Smith a Quick Look, I feel I was failing. I watched the 26-year-old lefty’s game from the 22nd (good camera angle) when he went 6 IP, 2 ER, 10 K’s, and 0 walks.

• Fastball: 91-94 mph. Kept it down and commanded it well. Hitter just couldn’t get a read on this pitch but I couldn’t tell exactly why. Some hitters are seeing it well since it has given up all his home runs.
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I’m of the belief that there is a group of similarly talented players who owners should keep churning to find the latest true breakout. Lewis Brinson (64% FanTrax ownership) and Jacoby Jones (24% owned) are two such players. While Brinson was part of the draft endgame with a 275 NFBC ADP, Jones was waiver wire fodder in almost every league with an ADP of 660. If given the option, I’d gladly own Jones right now.

What’s wrong with Lewis Brinson?

Brinson has been a highly touted prospect for several seasons with Baseball Prospectus having him on their Top-101 back in the 2013 but he jumped onto all major lists starting in 2016.

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Marco Gonzales

The 26-year-old lefty is straight up dealing with a 10.7 K/9 and only a 1.6 BB/9. No pitcher with a strikeout as high as his has a lower walk rate. His K%-BB% is the 12th best among qualified starters.

Gonzales’s great start is being hidden by a .406 BABIP fueled 4.37 ERA. While he struggled giving up runs in his first three starts, he allows nothing in his last two. Gonzales may finally be living up to some of his prospect status from a few years back.

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Mitch Haniger

No one seemed to be targeting Mitch Haniger this draft season with a final NFBC average draft position (ADP) of 219. I picked him up in Tout Wars for $2 in the end game. He seemed to be a player in which owners settled for but didn’t necessarily want. Times have quickly changed as Haniger belted his 8th home run of the season last night and is 8th on ESPN’s player rater. While some regression is possible, most of his early results are sustainable.

Besides the home runs, the 27-year-old outfielder hasn’t been “lucky” to start the season even though his slash line is .324/.395/.716. His .314 BABIP is under his career make of .319. While both his walk (10%) and strikeout (20%) rate have improved, they are each with 2% points of his career numbers.

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Craig Kimbrel

The Kimbrel discussion starts with this graph:

Plenty of narratives can exist explaining the initial velocity drop. He missed a good part of spring training. The cold weather is keeping his velocity down. He’s still warming up.

The drop doesn’t bother me as much as the trend. If he’s still building strength for the season, shouldn’t his velocity start trending up at some point?

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