Archive for Catchers

The 2016 season was a banner year for the longball and not just in relation to the recent downturn in offense. The 5610 hit this year are the second-most ever. Ever. Per plate appearance, it was even more than the 2000 season that saw 5692 homers hit. Within that surge, we saw an all-time high in 20+ home run hitters with 111. The previous high was set in 1999 at 103. Prior to this year, the top 14 seasons for 20+ HR hitters were all set between 1996 and 2009. Adding the 20+ HR hitters from 2014 and 2015 barely eclipses this year’s total (121 to 111) and this year’s output is nearly 2x higher than last year’s (64 to 111).

Let’s take a look at how this year’s home run surge broke down by position, with catcher and first base, second base and shortstop Friday (forgot I had my chat on Thursday), and then third base and outfield early next week. We’ll focus on the 20+ HR hitters at each position and identify some players who could enter those ranks next year.

CATCHER

Backstop saw one of the bigger surges in 20+ HR hitters compared to recent years with eight this year after just 10 in 2014-15 combined, including a whopping four last year (all who did it again this year).

Evan Gattis (32), Yasmani Grandal (27), Jonathan Lucroy (24), Wilson Ramos (22), Salvador Perez (22), Gary Sanchez (20), Russell Martin (20), and Brian McCann (20).

Gattis, Martin, McCann, and Perez were the four who also achieved the feat in 2015 as well. Notice the consensus #1 catcher, Buster Posey, didn’t make the list as he hit just 14 homers this year. He could find his way back in there next year, but it’s no sure bet with just one 20+ HR season over his last four (22 in ’14).

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Joe Camp won his league, probably because he reads us and listens to our podcasts here, I dunno, but that’s my guess, totally not because he’s an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. Anyway, he won his league, and his leaguemates started chirping about a couple trades he made that year that may have appeared lopsided at the time — my personal opinion is that vetoes suck, and are a dampener on league activity, and we should all be active and talking to each other as much as possible, so if you were on it, you would have made that lopsided trade first — and so Mr. Camp set out to prove he would have won the league anyway.

The way he did it? He took the worst team in the league and replaced everyone on the team with the best free agent pickups of the year. He then compared that team with everyone’s originally drafted teams. The free agents easily won — 96 points to 87 for the best drafted team.

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Shockingly, it has been nearly 100 plate appearances since Gary Sanchez was recalled by the Yankees for a full-time role and this is his first dedicated RotoGraphs post. Of course, in itself, not talking about a recently recalled prospect 24 games into his career isn’t noteworthy. Except, when that career begins the way Sanchez’s has.

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Listeners of the podcast should be well familiar with this format. Paul Sporer and I try to come up with a few salient points about each player to help you make your decisions. So This week I thought I’d help as many of you as I possibly could with one article. So let’s take three (okay six) hitters and three pitchers from the twitter mailbag and have us some fun.

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Cameron Rupp has been surging for the past month and a half, producing a .298/.353/.575 slash line over that period. Pretty solid numbers in their own right, and he has been one of the most valuable offensive forces in baseball over this stretch (ranked 29th by wOBA). It is even better when you consider he is a catcher with a 7% owned rate in the Yahoo leagues.

Following the conclusion of the 2015 season, during the end of season meetings, Pete Mackanin suggested Rupp may benefit from altering his bat path. During the off season, Cameron with the aid Chris Edelstein, a batting instructor he has known since childhood, went to work on shortening his bat path and focusing on the top of the ball. He came into spring training this season with a newly adapted swing, one in which he describes as having “a minor adjustment.” In early May, Rupp told Joe Harris, a contributor of MLB.com:

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This week I am doing Part 2 of my ground-breaking, innovative, revolutionary, completely original piece from two weeks ago that no one has ever thought of before, but before I do I want to mention that it was pointed out to me that our very own Alex Chamberlain did some fantastic articles covering the exact same premise for DFS last season: Read the rest of this entry »

The two players I’m recommending this week share almost nothing in common. One is young, powerful, and crushingly enticing. The other is nearing the end of a magnificent career with the same fleetness of foot he enthralled us with 15 years ago. Endless potential versus a potential storybook ending. And if you own either of them right now, you’re likely playing in a very, very deep league.
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In this week’s edition of Deep League Waiver Wire, we take a look at a reliever and a catcher unclaimed in a vast majority of leagues yet worth a closer look.

Michael Feliz (7% Yahoo, 7% ESPN, 11% CBS) – 2016 hasn’t been a good season for fantasy owners who prefer to accumulate saves through the waiver wire. That there have been relatively few closer controversies during the first two months has forced the save-starved to speculate on relievers two or three promotions from the ninth. And Michael Feliz is no exception*.

The Closer Grid on Rotograph’s Bullpen Report has featured the same three Houston relievers for quite some time now: Luke Gregerson, Will Harris, and Ken Giles. But a reliever outside of those three leads the bullpen in K%-BB%, xFIP, and in limiting hard contact. And with 25.2 IP under his belt, he’s been there nearly the whole time, quietly dominating as the rest of the pen accumulated 9 blown saves. As you might have guessed, that reliever is THIS INANIMATE CARBON ROD! Just kidding, it’s Michael Feliz.

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It was suggested that we should celebrate the day that stats stabilize. Today is Grounder Day! Eat a sloppy joe while sitting on a blanket. Drink one of these, or some of this, but I don’t know about having any of this. Grounder Day!

Well, we actually aren’t all the way there. Only about twenty players have officially reached the stabilization point for ground ball rate. But that’s fine. It actually serves as a reminder that stabilization is not something that magically happens at one point. Stabilization happens over a spectrum, and today we know a little more than we did yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll know a little more.

But! Relative to *other* stats on our leaderboards, we know a good deal about a player’s ground ball rate by now. And the beauty of that news is that just knowing a player’s change in ground ball rate can tell us a good deal about what sort of power we should expect from them going forward.

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Let’s go deep down into the depths of your free agent pool. It’s where the risks are great and hidden treasures may emerge. Today’s theme is speculating on two guys that could remain worthless, but will cost you next to nothing to find out.

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