Hanley Ramirez’s trade to the Dodgers was a move by Miami to transfer the salary of an under performing player with the hopes of putting that money to better use. With the move though, Ramiriez’s fantasy value changes very little. His new teammates will see some increase in value, but expectations should be tempered.
Yesterday, Anibal Sanchez was traded to the Detroit Tigers. It was a bold move by the Tigers to help them make the playoffs. Today, I am going to look at a few changes that can be expected from him because of his new surroundings and any chance for regression (good or bad).
Recently here at Rotographs, we released our rest of season rankings for starting pitchers, I had Tim Lincecum rated as the sixth-highest fantasy pitcher. To say the least, I took a little heat for that ranking. I will try to justify the ranking today.
Stephen Strasburg is possibly the best starting pitcher so far this season. Here is a quick sampling of his stats:
11.6 K/9, 32% K%
2.6 BB/9, 7% BB%
2.82 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 2.60 xFIP, 2.60 SIERA
These numbers are good enough that I have him ranked as the best fantasy starting pitcher without taking the number of innings he pitches into account. The only knock against him is that he is not a ground ball pitcher with has led to a career BABIP 0.308. When he is on the mound, he is arguably the best fantasy pitcher in the in the game.
Over the past few days, Eno Sarris has been rolling out our consensus ranking for players at various positions. To create my rankings I used ZiPS rest of season stats to compile my rankings. The only time I changed my ranking was because of expected time lost on the D.L. For some players who are having a good 2012 season (Josh Reddick, Jed Lowrie, Allen Craig, Edwin Encarnacion and Trevor Plouffe), my rankings are lower than most people expected. Today, I am going to look at one cause for a player to be out performing his projections: injuries.
Note: I will be looking at lack of past playing time and a measurable change in talent for the other two causes for a player out performing there projections.
Injuries and how they relate to player performance are one of the few last few frontiers in sabermetric studies. This off season, in two separate studies, Mitchel Litchman (MGL) and myself looked at how injuries affect a hitter’s performance. In MGL’s study, he looked at players who went on the DL and how they performed. He found that hitters under performed their SLG in the year of the injury, but the rest of their traits stayed constant. In my study, I looked at players who played through injuries without going on the D.L. and found the same conclusion. In the year after the injury, the player exceeded their projected power numbers.
C.J. Wilson was paid $77.5M this off season to come in and be a front line starter for the Angels. With Jered Weaver and Dan Haren already on the team, he wasn’t going to be the only ace of the staff, but he has pitched like one. It is now time to sell high on Wilson’s great 1st half of the season. He has 9 Wins, a 2.33 ERA (6th among qualified starters) and a 1.17 WHIP. These stats put him within the top 20 SP in production for the 2012 season (16th SP with ESPN’s Player Rater). His stats don’t match his perifial numbers so he has a good chance of regressing quite a bit in the second half of the season.
Lance Lynn – Lance started out the season hot, but recently he has been on the decline. Here are his main fantasy stats by month:
| Month | W | K | WHIP | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 4 | 24 | 0.81 | 1.33 |
| May | 4 | 36 | 1.25 | 3.44 |
| June | 2 | 38 | 1.59 | 5.67 |
Last night was Anthony Rizzo’s 2012 MLB debut and he started it off with a bang. He went 2-4 with a double and an RBI. He got the call up after hitting 0.342 with 23 HRs in AAA. While he has dominated AAA, here is a look at what kind of production can be expected from him in the majors this season.
Here is a look at some data for Jurrjens and Oswalt, who both returned to the majors last Friday night.
(Ownership rates are ESPN and then Yahoo!)
Jair Jurrjens (11%, 21%) – Jurrjens started the season in the Braves rotation, but was sent down to the minors after 4 starts and a 9.37 ERA. While in AAA, he made 10 starts and struggled with 5.18 ERA, 4.7 K/9 and a 1.43 WHIP. Due to injuries with other Braves starting pitchers, he was forced back into their rotation. On Friday night, he had a good outing with 4 K, 1 BB, 1 HBP, 3 H and only 1 Run.
Today, I am looking at some possible 2B options for owners in deeper leagues. The following players are owned in less than 10% of the leagues at ESPN and Yahoo!.
Ownership percentages are ESPN and then Yahoo!.
Ryan Theriot (9%, 7%) – Theriot is just not a talented 2B and it really doesn’t matter. He is getting regular playing time (started 19 of the last 21 games at 2B for the Giants) and is hitting at the top of lineup (#2 hole in 19 of the last 20 games). Both “attributes” will help him to generated plenty of opportunities to score and drive in Runs. He just needs to take advantage of the opportunities.