Starting Rotation

The top of the Royals rotation is set with Ian Kennedy, Yordano Ventura and Edinson Volquez taking the first three spots. After those two, the rotation gets a little fuzzy for the 4th and 5th spots. Unless an injury happens to one of the first three, I think five other pitchers may cycle into these final two spots: Kris Medlen, Danny Duffy, Chris Young, Kyle Zimmer and Miguel Almonte. I listed them in the order I think they will get a chance to start. Here is my take on how I think it will shake out for each pitcher.

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• Yesterday, I took requests for injury information and decided to go with Sam Berger’s request.

@jeffwzimmerman This maybe a really stupid idea: pitch type profile (ie frequency pitcher throws certain pitches) and odds of DL a/o TJ.

— CarrotJuice (@TheDudeOfNY) January 20, 2016

There were about 1000 routes I could have taken for the answer, but I went with the following:

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The defending World Series champions expect to have nearly the same team intact for 2016 as they did for 2015. After resigning of Alex Gordon, the only two position battles are for the two black holes from the 2015 season, second bases and right field. Instead of the filling the positions from free agency, the Royals have looked at using unimpressive internal options. In shallow leagues, the names may not be exciting, but in deeper leagues or AL-only, these hitters will be rosterable.

Second Base

The Royals second base job has been a huge void for a few years until the Royals traded for Ben Zobrist to help with the 2015 championship run. Here is a comparison of how unproductive the Royals second basemen have been over the past five seasons. Not counting Zobrist’s 1/3 of a season, the Royals’ second basemen have produced 5.3 WAR from 2011 to 2015. Over the same time frame, Zobrist has almost produced the Royals total each single season with 25 total WAR.

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I heard a recent podcast discussion on whether or not it is safe to draft Michael Pineda based on his Tommy John surgery chances in 2016. Pineda would definitely be considered a risk because of the month he spent on the DL with a forearm strain and the way his velocity oscillated around the time of the injury.

Coming into the 2016 season, I pegged his DL chances at 51%. Going on the DL for a couple of weeks or missing more than an entire season are two completely different outcomes. The following is a deep dive into Pineda’s and other pitchers’ Tommy John surgery chances.

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Looking over some recent real and mock fantasy drafts, one name which is coming up as a potential sleeper is Jose Reyes. His fantasy value is unknown with his projected value being quite a bit different than the position he is being taken in fantasy drafts. Dan Swartz had him ranked 34th using Steamer projections while he was actually going 151st in NFBC drafts. The reason for the huge difference comes down to his pending criminal charges for domestic abuse. While the legal, ramifications may take a while to go to court, MLB has enacted a new domestic violence policy which has yet to be tested. I can see why people are reluctant to draft Reyes. Well, here is an attempt to put a reasonable fantasy value on him for 2016.

Estimating games missed

To get the expected games suspended, I went with two methods to find the answer, asking the crowd and asking the expert. Both sources generally agree with the time missed.

For the crowd, I asked my Twitter followers how much time they expected Reyes to be suspended. Most people put the value between 25 and 50 games with an average value near 35 games.

Then I moved on to FanGraphs legal expert Nathaniel Grow. When I asked him how he expected the situation to play out, here is his response.

While Reyes’ status remains uncertain, a suspension somewhere in the 25-50 game range would probably be a reasonable, conservative estimate of the punishment he is likely to face from the league.

So somewhere between 25 and 50 games, which is around where the crowd put the number. I will take the view of a conservative owner and go with a 50 game suspension to figure out his value. If an owner wants to take a chance, they could assume fewer days missed.

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• Kenta Maeda was recently signed by the Dodgers and looks to have some major elbow issues which will eventually cost him some playing time.

The sides agreed to a deal before the new year, but a source told Crasnick that concerns arose over he pitcher’s elbow during a physical. A source told ESPN’s Jim Bowden that the Dodgers also see an issue with Maeda’s shoulder and that a ligament in his elbow is indeed compromised. However, the 27-year-old has been pitching with both issues.

According to a source, the Dodgers know that Maeda will require surgery at some point but feel that signing him is still worth it if they can get three or four useful years out of him.

I have no clue where I am going to value him right now. I have heard his production and arsenal are similar to what Kuroda had which isn’t great. I think the buzz and unknown nature will get him overvalued.

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RotoGraphs writers get invited to be in some way-too-early drafts for various industry sources. I have been lucky enough to be included in a 12-team mock drafts for both Lindy’s and RotoWorld. While I have agreed to not release my full results until the sources are available to the public, I can talk about smaller aspects of the drafts. In this case, I ended up with Masahiro Tanaka in each draft. The doubling up on a risky pick has me wondering if I am overvaluing him. For the formats I was drafting in, I don’t think so. As the league depth increases, I could see his value drop.

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Last week, I examined how a decline in pull rate (Pull%) and contact rate (Contact%) may be a precursor to overall decline. The idea was that if the hitter was worse at doing either or both, they could be in for a larger than normal decline. The research was an initial stab at the data and I got some great comments for future areas of stuady on it. With a few tweaks, I was able to take the ideas and refine the research in order to have a better understanding of what can be a good sign of a major decline.

Idea #1 – Use O-contact% instead of Contact%

Reader Brendan stated the following:

It would be interesting to take this concept and run an ANOVA amongst the 4 groups + control for o-zone contact rate AND z-contact rate separately, being that o-zone contact % is the one peripheral that drops off the cliff dramatically for older players. We’d get an idea about the extent to which overall wRC+ is affected by o-zone contact decline. Hardy’s 2014 and 2015 o-zone contact rate was much lower compared to recent years.

So I analyzed the data with various combinations of Contact%, O-Contact% (outside the zone contact rate), and Z-Contact% (inside the zone contact rate). I looked at several different combinations and none were really any better than Contact%. I decided to move forward with just Contact% for the rest of the analysis.

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• Greg Johns of MLB.com gave an update on former prospect Danny Hultzen.

The plan for Hultzen is to just get him pitching again and see if he can get his shoulder strengthened up enough to compete at some level for a full season. I don’t think they’re worried about rushing him to the Majors or stretching him out for future years. At this point, he just needs to get back on the mound and show he can stay healthy, and the short-term thought is that might be easier in a relief role. One step at a time there.

• Joe Lemire of USA Today wrote an article on the current state injuries and their prevention. Not a bunch of groundbreaking data, but I did find a bit of data I could study.

“We know teams will shut players down if they see certain changes,” TrackMan Baseball general manager John Olshan said, adding that conversely some clubs will hold back a player in rehab until his pitching measurements reach a certain threshold. “They might not know why that’s happening, but they know that somehow the player is compensating.”

I am not sure I am going to go back through the 2015 season look for data, but may be able to track through the 2016 season.

• At the Hardball Times, my year in review on the disabled list. The one item I was happy to make available is this time on the DL estimator. Not the most useful now, but will be great to use once the season starts.

• The Astros finalized their 2016 medical staff.

Players possibly on the DL in 2016

The Red players have had updates since the last report. Click on the “Date” for a link to go to the latest article on the player.

My fellow RotoGraphs writers and I have been working through our 2016 player evaluations. I was tasked with the declining J.J. Hardy. I noticed that two of his core hitting traits, the ability to make contact and pull the ball, had degraded from 2013 to 2014. While Hardy saw an overall decline in his skills when these two skills declined, I wanted to see it was common among other players. I was able to find that decline in these two areas is a sign of a player on a fast decline.

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