David Price signed with the Red Sox

As a whole, the David Price signing doesn’t change his perception or ranking. He is back in the AL East where he made a majority of his career starts. Fenway is a bit of a hitter’s park, so he could see a bit of increase in his ERA and WHIP. Also, the Red Sox’s roster is not set yet, but its defense could vary greatly depending on its final configuration.

The biggest impact will be which of the other starters gets moved to the bullpen or the minors. I would not be surprised if they keep all of them. Buchholz’s disabled list paper work is already typed out and ready to be signed. The rest of the staff, Rick Porcello, Wade Miley, Eduardo Rodriguez and Joe Kelly, all struggled at some point during the 2015 season. Right now it looks like Joe Kelly is the odd man out, all that could and probably will change by opening day.

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• It has been two weeks since my last report with almost no injury news updates. Hopefully, no news is good news.

• Ryan Braun doesn’t know how his latest back operation will affect his return timetable.

It was Braun’s first visit since undergoing surgery to relieve a bulging disc in his lower back.

“I feel pretty good, knock on wood,” said Braun, who is six weeks post-surgery. “The only surprise is the rehab is a little bit longer than I was anticipating, but other than that, everything went as planned and as expected. The first couple of days post-surgery weren’t fun, they were pretty painful. Other than that, I feel good.”

Braun is undergoing physical therapy four days a week. He downplayed the effect the prolonged rehab will have on his preparation for 2016, since he typically does not begin a throwing program until around Christmas, and he does not begin swinging a bat until January.

Asked when he expects his back to be 100 percent healthy, Braun said, “I have no idea. I’ll know when I get there. Certainly the goal is to be back to 100 percent. That’s my plan. I think it’s realistic, but until I get through the rehab and the physical therapy, I won’t know.”

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Jordan Zimmermann signed by the Tigers

The move to Detroit for the 29-year-old Zimmermann would be considered a downgrade based mainly on him facing a DH more often than a pitcher. The other factors are about the sasme. The ballpark factors are both league average. The 2015 Tigers defense was better than the Nationals according to UZR, but the Tigers also lost their top-rated defender in Cespedes.

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Bryce Harper finally did it. It was over five years ago when he was drafted #1 overall by the Nationals. This past season, the 22-year-old became the top fantasy player with one of the best seasons ever. He will not even be 25 next season, so the only direction he can is up, right? Actually, it’s better to tap the brakes on the Harper love, especially when it comes to his power.

Let’s start with a few facts on Harper everyone should know:

1. He is young.
2. He was probably the most hyped hitting prospect ever.
3. He had a great 2015 season.

In an early industry draft, Harper was taken #1 overall. Even with the above facts, I just can’t take him #1 for two reasons.

Reason #1: Mike Trout Read the rest of this entry »

• Not much injury news this past week. One note, I finished my annual review of the disabled list and it has been sent to the Hardball Times editors. Expect to see it run sometime in the next couple of weeks.

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I will continue to implement player grading on the scouting scales of 20-80. I will use Dan Farnsworth’s scale he discussed in this article.

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We have been a concentrating on our positional reviews here at RotoGraphs and have missed covering the fantasy ramifications of some offseason trades. It is time to catch up on the major players in each trade.

Arizona Diamondbacks traded RHP Jeremy Hellickson to Philadelphia Phillies for RHP Sam McWilliams

Jeremy Hellickson: The 29-year-old righty got a second lease on life with this trade. The Phillies will just start him every few days and live with the results. They really don’t have any other options.

I don’t see the move as a positive for Hellickson’s production. He is going from a one home run park to another so his heavy flyball nature will still generate home runs. The Phillies aren’t going to win a ton of games so he won’t get a bunch of wins. I see him as a matchup pitcher in NL-only or 20-team or deeper leagues.

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• Lance Lynn will miss all of the 2016 season after having Tommy John surgery.

General manager John Mozeliak, who detailed the team’s list of injuries and player surgeries two days after the Cards were eliminated from the postseason, did not disclose any concerns about Lynn’s health at that time. As it turns out, Lynn alerted the club to elbow discomfort more recently, saying he had pitched with it through much of the season.

The Cardinals sent him to Dr. David Altcheck, who confirmed the ligament tear. George Paletta, the Cards’ former medical director, then performed the surgery.

It is tough to determine when the injury happened, but he may have started the season with it. His injury indicators are all over the place. He started the season with a 1.5 mph drop in velocity, but also his best Zone% of the season.

Well, the 2016 season is already over for him and hopefully he will 100% ready for the 2017 season.

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Well, my pain may be your gain. For a future Hardball Times article I am working on, I needed to create some historic pitcher groundball rate (GB%) projections. I decided to go ahead and run the values for 2016 and make them publicly available.

Here is the basic background behind creating the projections.

• I used a three-year weighting of .7 for 2015, .2 for 2014 and .1 for 2013.
• The data was regressed some to a league average rate.
• I didn’t use any aging factors.
• The final r-squared from the projection to actual results is around .67.

With that small amount of background information, here are the projections.

I am pretty sure no one saw an eighth overall 3B ranking from the Giants Matt Duffy. Coming into 2015, he seemed to be a nice late piece in NL-only and deep leagues for the stolen bases and a decent average. The twelve home runs seemed to materialize out of nowhere. He was one of only twenty players with more than 10 HR, 10 SB, and greater than a .280 AVG in 2015. I get the feeling people don’t expect a repeat performance in 2016 and after looking over his performance I think his limited power is legit.

I will start with the easy projections, speed and batting average. The 25-year-old should be able to have a stolen base total in the low teens looking at his history.

Season: Combined SB
2012: 10
2013: 25
2014: 20
2015: 12

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