Well, I can tell pitchers and catchers reported, since there’s been about a ten-fold increase in the amount of injury news. Again, I will not be looking at ding and dent information and try to focus on major changes in an injury status. Make sure you check the injury spreadsheet for updates. About half of the players got updated information.

• Cole Hamels will be out until at least mid-April with left shoulder discomfort.

Hamels said he started to feel the discomfort in his shoulder around Thanksgiving. He said that after meeting with Phillies physician Michael Ciccotti and head athletic trainer Scott Sheridan, they decided he should push back his throwing program one month … Hamels typically begins his program on Dec. 1. He started throwing on Jan. 1. He did not have an MRI.

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I am going to finish my fantasy ranking series today (Part 1 and Part 2). Today, I am going to look at how I set up my draft ranking.  It is a little unique, but indispensable for finding draft day values, but I first need to clear up one issue from yesterday.

I am going to go over one problem people are noticing which is how high catchers are in my rankings and the lack of Robinson Cano. Well here are my projections for each. If you disagree, that is a different discussion, I am just looking at the difference in replacement level values:

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In my last article, I went over the initial work for valuing players in a basic fantasy league (12 5×5 teams with 23 roster positions).  Each league has its own unique rules so the procedure may need to be adjusted accordingly. Today, I am going to finish the positional rankings and begin to come up with an overall ranking.

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About four times a season, Eno unleashes the shocky monkeys and a few of us slow-footed writers are forced to enjoy ranking all the players. For the next few days, I am going to go over how I prepared my rankings.

Note: I am trying to keep the amount of math to a minimum. If somewhere you get lost in the procedure let me know and I can explain the procedure in more detail.

The first item to remember is all leagues are not even close to being the same. In my three keeper leagues, two are points based and the other is an AL only league with one pitcher category being Wins+Saves+Holds. Additionally, some leagues have keepers. How the keeper’s “salary” is set determines a their value. Other league options have innings pitched limits (good rates stats needed) or as in the case of my league with W+S+H, an IP minimum is set to keep owners from only using relief pitchers. Catcher rankings can vary quite a bit from a one catcher to  two catcher leagues or even two catcher slots with a 162 game limit as in Ottoneu. For my rankings, I did them off a basic 5×5 12-team league with 23 positions (14 position players, 9 pitchers).

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It is getting into weekly/daily injury report season for each hurt player until the season starts. All of these reports will be in the spreadsheet unless there is a change is status. Otherwise, not a ton of news this week.

• Cory Luebke will miss all of 2014 with Tommy John surgery. Expect longer than a year for him to rehab since it is his second TJS.

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During the 2013 season, I created three metrics to help find possible injuries: PAIN, HURT and SLOW. So far this offseason, I have looked back at the final 2013 values for PAIN and HURT. I have put off SLOW ( Swinging Late or Whiffing) because the data was a mess a to query and work with.I finally simplified the process so the following is a look at the 2013 SLOW leaders. Also, I will examine if a SLOW bat was behind the second half struggles of Jason Kipnis and Jean Segura.

I created SLOW to see which hitters struggle with fastballs right in the heart of the strikezone. The two requirements are:

• Heart of the strike zone (almost 99% of pitches called strikes and damn you CB Bucknor).
• Fastball speed equal to or greater than 92 mph.

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It is the best side versus the worst side for the 2014 Milwaukee Brewers infield. On the left side is two players with job security and talent. On the other side is a 1000 piece blue sky jigsaw puzzle with 50 or so pieces missing. I will go from the good to the bad to the WTF.

Short Stop – With the infield being bi-polar in nature, Jean Segura suffered through a well documented bi-polar 2013 season. Last week, I looked at the significance of his first and second half stats and found most of his struggles were batted ball related (small bit of BB% decline). Looking over his batted ball data, I found one interesting fact, Segura home run power came from fastballs up in the zone. Here are his fastball home run heat maps from the season’s 1st and 2nd half.

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The Mariners infield situation stabilized quite a bit when Cano signed the deal to take over at second base for the mess left there last season. The infield is generally set and decent except for the huge nested IF THEN ELSE situation at first base. I will start with the known and move to the unknown.

Second base.

No more Dustin Ackley. No more Nick Franklin. It is Robinson Cano’s job. Cano is a great healthy player. No problems here.

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• Jeremy Hellickson will be out until at least mid-May after elbow surgery last week.

Rays right-hander Jeremy Hellickson had arthroscopic surgery on his right elbow last week and expected to be out until mid- to late-May, the Times has learned.

Hellickon, 26, had loose bodies removed from his elbow by Dr. Koco Eaton in what is considered a minor procedure, and is likely to miss the first 6-8 weeks of the season.

Jake Odorizzi will now get a chance in the Rays rotation.

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Coming into the 2014 season, Jean Segura’s 2013 production still baffles me (I have two more pieces on him coming up in the future). He had a an amazing first half (11 HR, 27 SB, .325 AVG) and then his production dropped off in the second half (1 HR, 17 SB, .241 AVG) which no obvious signs of change. Other players showed the same decline like Chris Davis (.461 wOBA to .365) and Jason Kipnis (.387 wOBA to .317).  Players exist on the other end of the spectrum. They seemed to get better in the second half of the season. Elvis Andrus went from hitting .242 with no home runs to .313 with four dingers.

Having more data is always better. Using three to fours years worth of data make the best projections. It is just human nature to remember the most recent results and quickly react off of them. Whether it is fantasy baseball or the economy, people jump immediately to action. I will look at probably the smallest set of data (besides pitch velocity) which fantasy expects use: half season data.

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